Would you serve 4-day old rice

[Teaching3bears]

Cooked rice that has been refrigerated for 4 days?

[Grace Hopper]

Nope

[Pawz4me]

Plain rice, nothing added to it -- yes.

[cintinative]

There is something weird about rice where you are not supposed to keep it very long. 

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/rice-food-poisoning

[marbel]

6 minutes ago, cintinative said:

There is something weird about rice where you are not supposed to keep it very long. 

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/rice-food-poisoning

Agreed. I freeze or toss rice within 2 days.

Edited December 13, 2023 by marbel

[Pawz4me]

6 minutes ago, cintinative said:

There is something weird about rice where you are not supposed to keep it very long. 

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/rice-food-poisoning

And that says it should be eaten within four to six days. I wouldn't keep it six days, but four -- yes.

[Lucy the Valiant]

Would I *SERVE it? No. Would I let a ravenous teenager reheat it and eat it? Sure. 😉

[wendyroo]

Sure.

At that point I would probably throw it into chicken soup with rice to rehydrate it and pep it up.

[Malory]

I may not serve it to guests, but in the family, we've eaten four-day-old rice plenty of times without issues. 

[KungFuPanda]

I’d do fried rice with it. 

[Lecka]

I would eat it.  
 

 

[freesia]

Yes 

[Katy]

No

[EKS]

I try to use most leftovers within 2-3 days.  So, no.

[Corraleno]

I'd make fried rice with it.

[Clarita]

I would serve it to my family yes, though they are so spoiled they probably would scoff it unless I dolled it up. I'll serve it to really close friends after dolling it up (soup rice, fried rice, rice pudding, etc.).

If I was hungry would I just microwave it, yup. 

[cjzimmer1]

yes

[Kassia]

I would up to 4 days as long as it didn't seem slimy or off in any way.  But I'd toss it after 4 days.

[Frances]

Absolutely yes.

[Ausmumof3]

No. I’d eat it myself. I would allow my fam to eat it with the proviso that they understand it’s older and eat at your own risk as we like to say. I wouldn’t serve to guests or at a family meal. The issues around rice are more to do with improper cooling so age is less important than handling, but I don’t trust my older fridge too much. Rice is very cheap and not worth risking giving someone else food poisoning for. 

[Grace Hopper]

I should add, rice is one of the few dishes I’ve successfully learned to scale back serving sizes when preparing. We prefer the texture of fresh cooked rice and it’s easy to make more as needed (like if I make a big pot of gumbo, I don’t make a huge batch of rice).

If we have leftovers and don’t eat it plain the next day, I’ll make fried rice (and eat it all that day). If I plan to make fried rice from the get go, I will cook and refrigerate the rice overnight, but definitely cook it the very next day. 
 

I honestly love the Trader Joe microwaveable rice pouches. So handy and doesn’t make excessive amounts. Perfect for just me and dh. 

[PeterPan]

3 hours ago, cintinative said:

There is something weird about rice where you are not supposed to keep it very long. 

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/rice-food-poisoning

I'd never heard of this so I'm reading the article. It *appears* the bacillus cereus dies above a certain temp (145F=110C) and cooking rice in the instant pot (which I do) means it's exposed to much higher than that (240F=115C?). So in theory, the leftover rice might not have this particular issue if it was cooked in the instant pot.

I cook my rice in the instant pot in a very large batch that I portion, so we seldom have leftovers on a given day anyway.

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Grace Hopper said:

rice pouches.

I freeze my rice into baggies that end up about that size. If you pack them flat, you can even break the rice up to use just the amount you need for the dish you're making. 

I got a 2 person wok a while back, so I often make stirfry for lunch for me and ds. It's super handy to have just the right amount of rice. I try not to overcook it before freezing, so it's nice and tight for stirfry. 

[BeachGal]

It would depend if the initially cooked rice was cooled quickly in the refrigerator. However, four days in the fridge is getting too old for me. I would probably not eat it.

https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/safefood/2019/04/05/safe-handling-of-cooked-rice/

What we know. Rice and other grains can carry spores of the bacterium Bacillus cereus. Like other spores, Bacillus  spores will survive the rice-cooking process. If the cooked rice is not properly cooled, then the Bacillus spores can germinate and produce a toxin that can make a person sick. The myth about not reheating rice, or not eating reheated rice, is most likely linked to illness that people have experienced from eating cooked rice that was improperly cooled; reheating would not destroy the toxin and so people got sick from ‘reheated’ rice.

[MercyA]

Yes.

[ScoutTN]

Yes.

[Harriet Vane]

Yes. In the refrigerator is totally fine for longer than that.

[Spryte]

We never have leftover rice — unless it’s planned — so no. After reading the above about food poisoning — double no.

[SKL]

I eat rice that old all the time.  Is it supposed to be bad for me?  😛

[cintinative]

9 hours ago, SKL said:

I eat rice that old all the time.  Is it supposed to be bad for me?  😛

It sounds like the issue is if it is no reheated to the required temp (if it was not cooled properly).

As for not cooling properly, we are definitely not spreading out the rice on a tray to cool in the fridge before transferring to a container like the article suggests. 🤔  However, like others have mentioned, rice doesn't last that long in my house. If I find any past three days, generally it's a quarter or half cup or some amount no one wants so I toss it.

[Pam in CT]

Yes.

 

Leftover rice generally gets eaten earlier than that in my house -- happily, everyone who lives or bounces back to visit is pretty good about eating rando leftovers sitting in the fridge. And if for some reason there's a LOT of leftover rice I might make it into fried rice or rice pudding or throw it into jambalaya or a slow-baked whatever just because we eat any and all of those things.  And if "serving plain" I'd def rehydrate it and sort of... fluff it up, IYKWIM, maybe melt a little butter in to pep up the flavor.  But yes.

[katilac]

Sure. 

It never gets served to guests because I will be cooking something intentionally if I have guests. 

[Heartstrings]

I do all the time.  I cook rice up for the week every Sunday and use it for fried rice type stuff a couple of times each week.  Fried rice is meant to be made from left over rice.   Save a step cooking.  

Edited December 14, 2023 by Heartstrings

[Heartstrings]

2 hours ago, cintinative said:

As for not cooling properly, we are definitely not spreading out the rice on a tray to cool in the fridge before transferring to a container like the article suggests. 🤔  However, like others have mentioned, rice doesn't last that long in my house. If I find any past three days, generally it's a quarter or half cup or some amount no one wants so I toss it.

I don’t use a tray, but I use basically a 9x13 ish container to keep my batch of rice every week. 

[Karen A]

 Rice seldom lasts that long here either, but we've certainly eaten 6 day old rice before. We re-heat our leftover rice in the micro with a maybe an additional tsp of water per serving added to soften it up. I sure don't take any special care getting it in the fridge or anything either.