I am new to the food preps "game" and have been cooking brown rice, dehydrating it, then storing it in vacuum sealed jars. Another post in these forums suggests you can store brown rice up to 7 years (if properly prepared), but there is a threat of it going rancid. My question is how do you know it is rancid (other than ingesting and getting sick)? Is there a smell/color/something else? Or, do you just take your chance?
Rancid food test?
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Interesting. Are you freeze drying the rice or just dehydrating like jerky?
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Sadly, there are no easy home tests on rancidity. By the time your nose warns you, it is beyond late. Only a food lab can test reliably.
We get by on posted guidelines if we are smart.
I can point you to a specific brown rice recipe made by one of our leading food experts who has a lab background.
https://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=747081
The jars are fine for a few years, but if you want real longevity in any stored dry food you have to go with mylar and O2As.
We get by on posted guidelines if we are smart.
I can point you to a specific brown rice recipe made by one of our leading food experts who has a lab background.
https://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=747081
The jars are fine for a few years, but if you want real longevity in any stored dry food you have to go with mylar and O2As.
I'm using a food dehydrator.
Ah, cool, that was the posting I referred to in my original post!
Your response raises a couple new questions.
When you say "cook it like pasta", what exactly does that mean? Does it mean add a significantly larger amount of water than the instructions call for (e.g. 1 cup of rice gets 1 3/4 cups of water for my particular rice)?
I was under the impression jars (if stored away from light) were as good or better than mylar. Am I wrong?
Also, if I vacuum seal the jars, are O2As still needed?
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Glass jars are as fine as mylar if kept out of the light. You can use O2As in glass mason jars.
The vacuuming is the problem. A kitchen vacuum appliance cannot create true vacuum. Gas remains. If you could obtain full vacuum the jar would become an implosion hazard. Now if you had an airtight box of welded and X-Ray tested 1/4 plate steel you could get down to max vacuum. You'd need a much more powerful pump too.
Kitchen vacs are for short or mid term storage only. For true long term storage you only use O2As. No vacuum is used. Vacuums do nothing to help O2A's and can potentially lead to other O2A failures.
I have a constant battle with novice members online at SB but here is the truth.
There is absolutely zero value for a kitchen vacuum appliance for the long term storage of nonfat dry foods.
Mind you, the entirely of that sentence must be examined. Short term and some mid term can be done. Foods with fat fail fast, regardless of the choice you make.
But the fact remains, no prepper ever needed to buy a kitchen vac to get foods to store long term. It's not really even cost effective when mylar/O2As can be done for less than a dollar gallon volume. Vac bags and the jars cost you more.
As for the recipe, that isn't mine, but she was referring to cooking it with more water than can be soaked up. You boil the rice until the grain is done and pour it through a colander.
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Don't try to rush it.
The universe will not likely crash in the few months needed to read more here before you go buying a bunch of food.
But a big pile of food gone wrong can crash your finances.
The urge to pile up food sometimes gets ahead of the need to learn first.
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