Can you eat expired Boil in Bag Rice?

Boil in a bag rice and I have a long history. Even though I have a degree in culinary arts, making rice was always difficult for me. I always ended up with extra crunchy rice or watery rice.

Boil in a bag rice was perfect because it is pretty much fool proof. You boil the bag for about 10 minutes, and you drain it for perfect white rice. Now over the years, I have finally mastered regular white rice, but I did come across a box of expired boil in a bag rice recently.

This made me wonder if boil in a bag rice really expires and how to determine if you can eat it! I personally test all of my expired food experiments, so we made expired boil in a bag rice for dinner!

Does boil in a bag rice expire?

Technically speaking every food item eventually expires except maybe salt. Plain white rice is considered shelf stable and will easily last 25-20 years if stored well. (You can get more information about regular dry white and brown rice by reading “What happens if you eat expired rice?“)

Boil in the bag rice is not plain white rice though. Boil in a Bag rice is rice that has been partially cooked and dried. This pre-cooking lets you make rice in 10 minutes or less, when it normally takes 25 minutes to cook rice.

This extra step of partially cooking the rice does change the product, so this means it can affect the quality of the product over time.

According to makers of Success Rice, they recommend that their products can be used for up to 2 years from the expiration date as long as it is stored well.

I believe that is a very conservative estimate. As long as you store your rice in ideal conditions like in a cool dry pantry or cabinet, it will last for much longer than 2 years past the best buy date. You will also want to keep your rice out of direct sunlight and away from extreme temperature changes.

If you live in a very hot humid area like south Florida, you may want to consider freezing your rice in order to store it long term. (Pro Tip: put the rice inside of Ziploc bag first, so that you have another layer to protect the rice from absorbing moisture in the freezer.)

How can you tell if boil in a bag rice is bad?

I recently came across a box of boil in a bag white rice that expired in January of 2021. That means this rice is almost exactly 2 years past the expiration date which is truly a coincidence that Success believes it good up until the two-year point.

Whenever I find an expired product or a friend gives me an expired product, I don’t always know how the item was stored for its entire existence. So, I have to use my 5 senses plus common sense to determine if the product is still worth eating.

So, let’s walk through the sound, see, touch, smell, and taste of this expired Boil in a Bag rice and see how it holds up.

1. Sound– when you open the box there are two plastic bags of rice inside. I immediately picked up both bags and shook the box. I could not hear any lose rice at the bottom of the box. This passes my sound test.
2. See– next I inspect the outbox for any signs of moisture like discoloration or stains on the outside and there is none. I also inspect the individual rice bags to see if there are any punctures or tears. Everything looks good, and I also noted that the rice inside looks the right color of white and I see no specks any other color inside the bag. This passes the see test.
3. Smell– White rice and Boil in a bag rice should not really have a smell at all. It is really just a very slight neutral smell. The bags smelled just like plastic which is what I expected it to smell like. This passes the smell test.
4. Touch– I used my fingers to move the rice around and squeeze it. Since boil in a bag rice has little holes in the bag, my major concern was it absorbing moisture. This would be seen by large clumps of rice sticking together. None of the rice was sticky or clumped. This passes the touch test.
5. Taste– I always leave taste last just in case. It is pretty difficult to taste Boil in a Bag rice that hasn’t been cooked so I pulled out a pan and started boiling water. After it cooked for the recommended 10 minutes, I let the bag drain and then I dumped it into a tupperware container. I like to add butter to my rice, but I waited to do that. Just in case I gave the rice a little sniff to make sure it didn’t have any weird odor after being cooked and it smelled fine. I took a taste and it tasted just like every other bag of Boil in a Bag rice I have ever made. This passes the taste test!

The final verdict on the 2 years past expiration date Boil in a Bag rice was that it tasted perfectly fine, and no one got sick.

What happens if you eat expired boil in a bag rice?

Now if you were to go through the five senses and notice at any point that something is not quite right and seems questionable, I would go ahead and toss it.

Foods like Boil in a Bag rice can absorb moisture and start to grow mold and bacteria. This can make you sick. Thankfully the boil bags are transparent, and you can easily see the rice.

This means you should be able to notice if a product may be contaminated or may not be safe to eat. As a precaution, if I can’t full see the product, I will dump it out in a bowl so I can easily examine it rather than guess.

Overall, as long as the Boil in a Bag rice is stored well, it is perfectly safe to eat even more than 2 years after the expiration or best by date. Just run through your 5 senses first and use your common sense.

For more expired food tests, check out “What happens if you eat expired Canned Black-Eyed Peas?” and “Can you eat expired Whole Wheat Tortillas?“