In the kitchen, every caring housewife must have an assortment of cereals: buckwheat, rice, wheat, semolina, oatmeal and pearl barley. By including cereal dishes in your daily menu, you can get a nutritious, varied and healthy table. Cereals have a long shelf life, but if stored incorrectly or for too long, they create a threat of pests. They especially love bulk products: bread grinder, red flour beetle, flour bug, food moth.
To protect cereals from the appearance of tenants in them, you should follow the basic rules for their storage, starting from the day of purchase. Basic methods of protection.
Quality control upon purchase
The main indicators of product quality are: integrity of packaging, current expiration date, absence of black spots or visible larvae, bugs. Sticky lumps are evidence of improper storage.
Primary heat treatment
The larvae, invisible to the naked eye, will die at a temperature of 60 degrees, but this will not harm the quality of the grains themselves. By opening the production packaging and checking for the presence of living creatures in the cereal, it can be calcined in the oven. Heating for 5 minutes in the microwave will have the same effect.
Exposure to cold
Pests and their offspring cannot withstand cold temperatures. After staying in the freezer for 4 days, not even a trace of the larvae will remain. In winter, the cereal can be kept on the balcony for several days.
Selection of capacity
Industrial bags and boxes are not suitable for storing cereal products. Glass containers with a tight-fitting lid are ideal containers for them. Bugs cannot penetrate such banks from the outside.
Determining storage space
Dark, closed cabinets are a favorite breeding ground for pests. There is no place for cereals here. Open shelves protected from direct sunlight are an ideal option.
Using spices
Shelves and cabinets with containers filled with cereals and flour can be made unpleasant for pests by placing dried cloves, garlic, bay leaves or red hot pepper pods on them. You can also put a small amount of spices inside the jar, but you will have to rinse the cereal well before cooking.
Compliance with storage periods
Constant monitoring of expiration dates is not the last place on the list of important measures to protect cereals from the invasion of bugs. Spoiled flour and cereals will become an excellent place for unwanted residents to appear, multiply and gradually infect all supplies.
Neighborhood check
Periodic inspection of all cereals for the presence of food pests is mandatory. If you find the slightest hint of them, go through all the supplies, throw away the unusable ones, treat the surfaces with soapy water, paying special attention to the cracks between the walls.
The question of how to protect cereals from pests is very important and relevant. Having appeared in one of the types of bulk products stored at home, the bugs rapidly multiply and spread around, capturing more and more new places and infecting food products that come their way. Getting rid of them once and for all is difficult and painfully difficult.It will take a lot of time and every effort. It is easier to prevent their occurrence than to waste time and effort fighting them later.
