How to get rid of weevils in rice?

Recently, I have the annoying weevils running riot in my bag of rice. So, I have tried several methods :

1) Buy only 5 kg packet of rice so that we do not keep for too long.

2) Do not store the rice in a wooden container but leave the rice in the packet. Weevils tend to lay eggs in the wooden container.

3) Put dried chillies to make the weevils dance in the heat and die. (LOL)

rice weevils

Unfortunately, this petua orang Melayu doesn’t work for my rice. Maybe the weevils love spices.

I didn’t have much rice left in the plastic bag so what I did was :

1) Put the rice and the weevils in the microwave and give the weevils a merry-go-round ride. I thought they would die. But nope. Still running around.

2) Pour a pot of boiling water and oh mammaa…..die they did. So, I washed the rice through several rinse of water and cooked two days, four meals rice at one go. *roll eyes* Now I have to eat white rice, fried rice and more fried rice for two days.

rice weevils

Since small, we have been taught never to waste rice. So throwing the perfectly good rice away is not an option. So, eat I must. Weevils or not.

However, I just on this website that weevils can cause food poisoning! Ah well, it is too late now. I have eaten lots of weevils infested rice. Not the black coloured insects but maybe the eggs and larvaes. Who knows….

Weevils are often found in dry foods including nuts,seeds, cereal and grain products. In a domestic setting, they are most likely found when opening a bag of flour, even though they will just as happily infest most types of grain including oats, barley and breakfast cereals. Their presence is often indicated by the granules of the infested item sticking together in strings, as if caught in a cobweb. If ingested, E. coli infection and other various diseases can be contracted from weevils, depending on their diet.

After I got rid of this packet of rice with weevils, I am going to open another new bag of 5 kg rice. I hope I don’t have any weevils hiding around to lay eggs on the new bag of rice. Here are some ways to prevent weevils :

Basic Weevil Control

* Some infestations of packaged food originate in the food-processing plant or warehouse. Broken packages should not be purchased, or should be exchanged for unbroken packages when discovered, for the chance of these being infested is greater than for perfectly sealed ones.

* Periodic cleaning of the shelves helps to prevent infestation of stored food products by pantry pests. Certain pantry pests need only small amounts of food to live and breed.

* Do not mix old and new lots of foodstuffs. If the old material is infested, the pest will quickly invade the new.

* Place exposed food in containers with tight-fitting lids.

* If you are unsure about an item being infested, place it in a plastic bag where you will be able to catch anything that emerges.

* If you find the pantry pest accumulating in the bag, you know the foodstuff is contaminated and needs to be discarded.

(more suggestions on How to get rid of weevils)

I just wonder….sometimes, I find weevils in the pasta imported from Australia, sometimes flour from Canada and other times pasta from Italy. Then, there are weevils in rice from Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. Now, I wonder if these weevils speak the same weevil language?

23 Replies to “How to get rid of weevils in rice?”

  1. lilian, my mom’s petua is place a piece of white cloth on the top of the bin. in a while, these pesky weevils will crawl onto the cloth. remove cloth and shake them away at the sink then drown them muahahaha 😛

    anyway, since i dun eat rice often, i store my rice in the fridge. one year later still no weevils one, yes i kept the rice dat long ok 😛

  2. I thought, only me have this problem. I don’t how to solve this.Yes I did method 1 and 3 but they still happily running around.
    last time i don’t that prob. do you notice it’s happen lately? my sister told me could be from the packacging. FYI, I used fragrance rice

  3. My MIL put some pamelo’s leaves in the bag of rice. I saw her doing that during the rice price hike. She opened up almost every packet of rice and out some pamelo leaves in it. The fragrance from the leave will keep the weevil far far away.

  4. Weevils can get into all sorts of dry goods in the cupboard rice, beans, flour, etc even dry chillies. They love chillies! They eat the inside of dry chillies and leave you with just the skins.
    There are various weevils from larger ones like those shown in your picture to tiny ones in flour. Some red ones stink too.
    We do get weevils in UK. Pesky little devils they are.
    The only way I know how to get rid of them humanly and not poisoned the food is by freezing to kill the weevils and their eggs. You can freeze the rice or flour in plastic container. For rice you may have to dry it under the sun after freezing to get rid of any moisture. Another important thing to do is once you’ve found out you got weevils, you need to take everything out of the cupboard and do a spring clean.

  5. u may put a few cloves of garlic in the bag when u start a new bag. it works. i buy 10 kg bag for a family of 5.

  6. My mum used to tie a bag of pepper in the rice bin. She learnt that from a British missionary stationed in Malaysia. I think its the tropics that somehow encourages weevils. I sent a packet of Hungarian paprika to a friend in Malaysia.. 6 months later all weevils but I still have mine..lost and forgotten in the basement for 2.5 years and nothing. Same for flour.All thrown out as they were too old but no weevils.

  7. My MIL taught me to distribute the rice into few containers (if one is infested, the others are safe) and place a clove of garlic in each container before placing them in the fridge.

    So far so good, can be kept for few months.

  8. Hehe. Funny but true post. My mom also put the dried chili in the rice tumbler. It works for her. I seem to be having problem w the jasmine rice and nasi impit packets but never basmathi.

    And iv also eaten rice ‘infested’ but thoroughly rince so now just gotta pray lah i guess hoh? lol.

  9. Die weevils dieeeeeeee …… After reading this post, I immediately chucked cloves of garlic and stuck the balance of my rice in the freezer …… I shall see what happens when I wake up for sahur tmrw morning ….. Excellent topic with excellent ideas ……….

  10. Oops, I just finished the rice with weevils today, of course I washed it thoroughly but I still feeling disgusting after reading ur post. * ek * vomitting

  11. hehe, funny post. So weevils can survive the microwave? That’s incredible =O I enjoyed reading the 101 ways you tried to exterminate them, keke 🙂 Next time I know what to do if my rice gets infested … currently I just put some garlic cloves together with the rice in an airtight container to keep them away…

  12. My 5kg bag of opened rice has been sitting in the vegetable crisper of my refridgerator for almost a year (that shows how much cooking goes on in my kitchen) no weevils to be seen…

  13. Lilian, My mom teach me to put the rice in the fridge. Like babe_KL said, one year the rice is still ok. Once I open the packet (5kg also) I store them in nestle/walls ice-cream tubs. A 5 kg packet fills up about 4 boxes. Then I put all into the fridge.

  14. Peeled garlic helps. It is a well known “secret” in Hong Kong, Taiwan. 🙂

    I think those weevils speak the same language, because they eat and shit at the same place. yuck!

  15. I did all those mentioned by the rest here especially the garlic but it doesn’t work until I noticed weevils in my rice has been dying ever since I put a small amount of ants poison(meant for ants!:P) at the corner of my cabinets. No more weevils for months already! Yay!

  16. I just spent the previous night sifting my rice with a strainer after finding out that my rice has weevils too. Actually my house has 5 types of rice : Thai fragrant, Thai, Calrose, Basmati and Mixed brown. So far, only the Thai fragrant has yet to be infested due to it being very new. The other types we only cook once in a while.

    Anyway, after sifting, I went to my Japanese $2 shop (Daiso) and they stock special weevil repellant packets to be placed in the rice bin. One type had a strong odour of wasabi and garlic whereas the other barely had any smell. Will see how it goes after I add these to my rice stock…

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