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Comment by objektif | Hacker News Reader

What is the issue with cooked rice?

IIRC the issue is with cultures that leave rice out on the counter at room temperature, because of historical inertia from per-refrigeration times. In that case, it does support life like anything else moist and pH neutral.

But there is no problem if you follow good food safety practices -- everybody puts the lid back on the pot after they've served themselves, and any leftover goes in the fridge within 4 hours of cooking.

Cooked rice goes bad pretty quickly even in the fridge and can make you pretty sick if you eat it.

This is not true.

Sure it’s true. Uncooked rice often contains the bacteria Bacillus cereus. These bacteria can form protective spores that survive the cooking process and if the rice is cooled slowly these bacteria spores can germinate, grow and produce a toxin that causes vomiting.

If you’ve eaten the dish known as fried rice, the rice used there has been cooked and then chilled for 24 hours. So while what you’re saying is true, the topic is complex.

Most web results I found say rice is good for 3-4 days in the fridge, but it’s safest if you cool it quickly after cooking.

But 24 hours is fine. I just got some food poisoning from eating 5 or 6 day old rice a few times and was surprised it went bad in under a week.

People don't understand that refrigeration stops the growth of toxic bacteria, and throw away perfectly good rice because they lack a basic understanding of biology.

Would you really say “stops”? Not “slows”? Things still do go bad in there, idk about bacteria though— but mold for sure.

> People don't understand that refrigeration stops the growth of toxic bacteria

I’ve never met a single person who doesn’t know this.

The issue is not refrigeration, but how you got to there: how is the hot rice cooled before putting it in the fridge.

I imagine not everyone has a blast chiller at home. Does one leave it to cool off naturally, and in what kind of container? Perhaps overnight?

During this process, the rice can take hours to go from 90°C to room temp, and it is during this process that the toxins are created. It might be too late when you put it in the fridge.

Cooling off needs ro be done as quickly as possible by spreading the rice, for instance.

It is not necessarily the lack of basic understanding of biology that causes people to get sick and therefore many to throw away good rice, but the incomplete understanding of the cooking process.

When you get a box of cold rice, there is no way of smelling how it has been cooled and if it is toxic or not.

In all my experiences, rice cools off pretty fast and dries out pretty fast. It may be starchy and risk B. cereus but it really isn't the greatest medium for it unlike pasta covered in sauce.

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