Can you freeze grains/ rice/ flour/ etc?

[ShellieC]

I will be buying my staples in bulk now and have a large freezer that needs to be filled up. Does anyone know if grains, rice, flour, and other staples can be frozen? I would like to know they are kept fresh and don't have as much storage space inside as I do in my big garage freezer. Thanks!

[lisarussell]

If the grains aren't ground they don't need to be frozen but once they're ground, freezing can preserve some of the nutrients.

Another reason to freeze would be if you have a problem with moths or weevils

I can't imagine why else these would need freezing- store in a cool dry place is all I do

[mamadelbosque]

I freeze all my grains/beans/legumes/etc when I first get them for at least a week or so to kill off any bugs in them, but then pour into airtight containers (glass jars or big plastic buckets, etc).

[RunnerDuck]

You can but if you have a whole freezer to fill I can think of more important things to stock it with.

I do tend to freeze grainy nutty etc things I don't use quickly... and for some reason I freeze my own "shake n bake" mix as well as oat flour (throw oats in the blender). I don't know why. I probably don't have to.

We did have a problem with pantry moths for a while and were freezing everything for a while - I hope that's behind us. Pantry moths should be renamed "zipping around your whole house and driving you bonkers, not just getting in your food and making you say ick" moths. But that's kind of a long title...

[ShellieC]

Do they last for years outside of the freezer? If so I won't worry so much about it and will just freeze ground grains that stay freesher that way & not the whole stuff.

I've got 1/2 a side of beef in there too but it doesn't make a dent in how much space is still available. It's a deep, huge freezer that was given to me & is super useful but will take some work to fill. The good thing is I'll have lots of space to stash home-made prepared freezer meals in there before I have my baby in August. We also fill big empty protien powder jugs & milk jugs with water and store them in there to help save energy and so that we have water (after it thaws) if there is a power outage.

[tanyalynn]

I store all my whole grains, ground or not, in the freezer. Even whole, I think the fats will go rancid at room temp--not really sure how long it would take, but I don't know how long since they were harvested before they got to me, so I think freezing is best. I don't freeze refined flours that have no fat, or white rice, or things like that. I've had grains migrate to the back of my freezer and obviously sit there for a long time, and have had no quality issues when I finally use them.

The only thing to consider, I'd think, is if you're in a humid environment, you may want to make extra-sure that the stuff you're freezing is in an air-tight container, it'd be a bummer to have humid/moist paper (like a bag of flour) sit like that for a long time, I'd think. I live in Houston, land of humidity, so maybe it's not an issue most places.

Your freezer sounds awesome. Wow.

[mamadelbosque]

Most grains/beans have a 5-10+ year shelf life outside of a freezer. Inside, I suppose they'd last pretty much indefinetly. The exception to this is brown rice which (supposedly) goes bad in 3 months... though mines kept for 6-12 just peachy fine.