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REFRIGERATION

Food storage

How to store cooked rice and biryani

Cooked rice is one of the foods most often linked to food poisoning in commercial kitchens. Raw rice can carry spores of Bacillus cereus, which survive cooking. If cooked rice is left warm for hours, the spores germinate, multiply and can produce toxins, some of which are not destroyed by reheating. The problem is almost always slow cooling or long holding at room temperature, not the fridge itself. Cooked rice, pulao and biryani should be either kept hot for service or cooled quickly and chilled at 0 to +4 °C, then reheated thoroughly only once.

  • Chilled0 to +4 °C (after rapid cooling)
  • Frozen−18 °C or colder

Do

  • Cool rice quickly. Spread it in shallow trays no more than a few centimetres deep, rather than leaving it in the deep handi or rice cooker.
  • A widely used rule is to bring cooked food below about 21 °C within two hours and to fridge temperature within a further four hours. Your food-safety plan may set tighter limits.
  • Once cool enough to handle, cover the trays and chill them on a shelf with good airflow.
  • Keep hot rice and biryani for service above the hot-holding temperature your plan sets, not lukewarm on a counter.
  • Reheat chilled rice until it is steaming hot right through, and reheat only once.
  • Freeze surplus cooked rice in flat portions if you will not use it soon.
  • Label trays with the time of cooking and the time they went into the fridge.

Avoid

  • Do not leave a pot of rice to cool on the stove or counter overnight.
  • Do not put a full, hot, deep vessel of biryani straight into a packed fridge; it warms everything around it and the centre stays warm for hours.
  • Do not reheat the same rice more than once.
  • Do not mix leftover rice with freshly cooked rice.
  • Do not keep rice in a bain-marie that is not hot enough.

In Indian conditions

Biryani and rice are cooked in very large quantities in Indian restaurants, cloud kitchens and catering, often hours before service. Large handis of biryani are traditionally held on dum or in insulated containers, which is fine if they stay hot, but leftovers cooled slowly in the same vessel are a common hazard. In 40 °C kitchens, rice left out cools slowly and sits in the danger zone for a long time. Wedding caterers should plan blast cooling or shallow-tray cooling and enough reach-in capacity for leftovers. During power cuts, rice that has spent hours warm should be discarded rather than reheated.

General good practice for commercial kitchens and shops. Where your FSSAI licence conditions or food-safety plan set stricter limits, follow those.