How harmful is it to cook/use rice products that are infected. Must I throw all boxed items away? Can I open first and only dispose of those where little black bugs are visible? Will cooking destroy any harmful effects.
By joan corcoran from MD
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This may sound distasteful, but when I was a young bride and we were dirt poor, I just sifted the bug infested grain (flour, rice, whatever) to get the bugs out and used the cleaned grain. we never had any harmful effects, though with today's over cleaning, you might want to take garlic or charcoal tabs with it, to be sure.
I called the Konriko Rice Co. in Louisiana when this happened to me. The man there said that all rice products develop bugs if left in the heat for a long time.
Rice is not expensive, and doctor bills are. Weavels are born in the various grains, then hatch over time.
Nothing is worth keeping if the food has gone bad. "When in doubt...don't" is a good way to think when dealing with food.
To Prevent: freeze all rice and pasta products overnight right away after you buy them. then take them out and put on a clean shelf (not in the cabinet with the already infested stuff).
And clean out your cupboard of anything that might already have the black bugs so they don't migrate into newly purchases products.
According to my Mom: everyone used to have this problem "back in the day". when she says "everyone" she literally means everyone, rich or poor. It was the norm to just sift out or pick out the black bugs and cook as usual.
By the way, don't blame yourself, most of the grain products are infested when you buy them (it's a harvesting or warehouse thing). Most people don't notice anything until the bug(s) multiply. Hope that helps. The freezer thing, it's the best. works every time.
Food for thought: flour may have up to 5% of ground beetles in it, as to keep grains completely insect free would mean putting so much poison in that we could not eat it anymore. I heard a scientist say on the radio that those ground bugs actually enhance the nutritional value of the flour!
If you put a few bay leaves on your shelves and inside any opened flour or grain product it will keep the weavils eggs from hatching out!
I have been doing this for years and it works great
You can usually get a large quantity of bay leaves for very little money if you go to the Mexican section of the grocery store {they sell the spices in small plastic bags instead of expensive metal or glass containers, about 79 cents} or buy it in the bulk bins.
We don't all have large freezers we can store everything in and this is a great natural cure for pantry bugs.
I have also found these little bugs in my dry bean, so these days I freeze every kind of pasta bean and rice and flour at least over night when i first bring them home. Then I don't have any problems with the grains or beans or rice being stored in the cupboard. I find freezing them works better for me than the bay leaves.
I take any rice in my airtight containers, and just sift through a window screen I take out of my dining room. I just keep shaking until the surface below stops accumulating bugs. Wipe it down, shake again until no more show up down there.
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