Freezing staples?

[lmarshal1]

I have considerable freezer space and am cheap at heart. I've thought of buying large bags of rice and flour (sold at prices quite a lot lower per pound than the smaller bags), repackaging them in large plastic bags placed in new plastic buckets with lids, and scooping out what I need. What keeps well and for how long? Is the savings worth it? Does the quality suffer, etc? Thanks. lkm

[shellfishfiend]

I often buy flour on sale and freeze it. I have never noticed a problem. Now I don't bake bread, so I don't know how freezing would affect flour used for bread.

I have only frozen cooked rice, never tried freezing it raw. I also freeze nuts and have really good luck with keeping those for a much longer period than they would last outside the freezer.

A bonus to freezing flour is that you don't have to worry about bugs.

[lmarshal1]

Thanks for comments. I've had good luck with freezing nuts too. I'm always careful to make sure I package my freezables well. I'm wondering if freezing rice would dry it out and make it brittle?? lkm

[mrsadm]

Here is a good web site about how to freeze various foods (click on "General Information" for a section on foods that do not freeze well):

How to Freeze

[SuzySushi]

Rice will keep well without freezing. Put in sealed plastic (we use special rice tubs) and make sure to seal airtight so bugs can't get in (we run a strip of package sealing tape around the edge of the lid just to make sure). We then store the tubs under our sofa. We've used rice that I've stored for more than a year without any noticeable difference in quality.

[lmarshal1]

mrsadm: Thanks for the site on freezing foods. We have quite a lot of asparagus this year and I looked that up you the site you mentioned.

SuziSushi: I think you're right about the rice. I haven't found anything about freezing it. I do kind of figure it will dry out and get brittle frozen.

lkm

[Boy R D]

I'm a big fan of the food saver vacuum sealer. It's expensive but it will do a good job of holding the quality of frozen food as well as non frozen dry goods such as rice.

[abooja]

I disagree with their time frame for frozen bacon. I always buy bulk packages of bacon (haven't yet gotten into charcuterie), vacuum seal four strips at a time and store all the sealed bags in a larger bag in my freezer, often for many months at a time. I've never noticed a difference in quality.

I also freeze much of my flour. I bake constantly and have never had a problem with the flour not reacting or tasting the way it should. I just bought 35 pounds of King Arthur A/P flour for just this purpose, as with their recent free shipping offer, it was a lot cheaper than paying $4.49 for a 5-lb. bag at my local Wegman's. The 25-lb. bag would have been even cheaper than the individual 5-lb bags I purchased, but I was too lazy to break down the bags into smaller ones. I can't imagine vacuum sealing flour.

[aliénor]

i have kept flour-types such as rice, wheat, etc- in my freezer, but i am not sure how long they can be kept. also i would like to know if it is okay to take out the 5 lb bag of flour that has been in the freezer for over a year and now leave it in the pantry to use daily or weekly. would any moisture in the thawed bag cause damage to the product. i feel quite unsure about this and would love to hear what people have to say about this practice. my preference is to now take out some of this frozen flour and start using it and freeing up freezer space

thanks for all your input