Storing rice, and why aged basmati cooks better.

What ageing does to a grain of basmati

Rice straight off the harvest is a soft, moist grain. Its endosperm holds more water than it will six months later, its starch is loosely packed, and it cooks fast and clings. Left in a dry store, the grain slowly loses moisture and the starch settles into a tighter arrangement. The practical consequence is that an aged grain can absorb noticeably more water during cooking before it gives way, which is what lets it stretch along its length rather than swell fat and burst.

That is why the ageing is deliberate and not just what happens to unsold stock. A year is a common resting period, and some households hold basmati longer. There is a trade-off: the aroma of fresh basmati is at its strongest right after harvest and fades slowly with storage, so what you gain in behaviour you give up a little of in fragrance. For biryani and pulao, where the grain has to survive a lot, most cooks accept that every time.

How to tell new-crop rice from aged rice

The clearest sign shows up in the pot rather than in the bag. If your usual water ratio suddenly produces a soft, sticky, slightly collapsed rice when it has always worked before, you are almost certainly cooking new crop. New rice needs less water and less time than the bag you finished last month, and it will clump where the previous one stayed separate.

Before cooking, there are softer tells. New rice often has a chalkier, more opaque belly on the grain and gives slightly under a fingernail; aged grain is harder and more translucent. A bag of well-aged rice also rattles drier when you pour it. And new rice smells greener and grassier, which is pleasant and can mislead you into thinking it is the better buy.

• New crop: less water, shorter cook, softer and stickier result, strongest aroma.
• Well-aged: more water, longer cook, dramatic elongation, separate grains, slightly quieter aroma.
• Never mix the two in one container. They cook at different rates and the pot comes out uneven.

Storing rice so it stays dry

Milled rice is remarkably durable compared with atta, for one reason: the bran and germ that carry oil have been polished off, so there is very little to turn rancid. What can go wrong is almost entirely moisture and smell. Rice is hygroscopic and it takes up odours from whatever it stands next to, so an airtight container in a cool, dark cupboard solves most of the problem before it starts.

Keep the container off the floor and away from an outside wall, where condensation collects. Do not wash rice and then store it — even lightly damp grain goes musty and sticks together. Keep the pack date written on the lid so you know how far into its ageing a bag is, and finish one container before starting the next rather than topping up, which mixes old and new and hides which one has been sitting.

• Airtight and rigid beats a clipped bag. A rolled-over sack breathes.
• Keep rice away from detergent, phenyl and open masala jars; it will take up the smell.
• Do not store rice above the stove or on top of the fridge, where warm air collects.
• Sun the empty container before refilling and make sure it is bone dry.

Rice pests, and how they differ from the ones in atta

Two insects show up in rice and they leave different evidence. The rice weevil bores into an individual grain, develops inside it, and chews its way out, so the signs are small round holes in the grains and a fine flour-like dust settling at the bottom of the container. The rice moth is the other one: its larvae spin silk, and you find grains stuck together in soft clumps and webbing along the inside of the lid.

As with atta, the eggs generally arrive with the grain rather than crawling in, so freezing a newly bought bag for three or four days before it goes into storage is the most effective single step. Spreading rice in the sun on a clean sheet is the traditional method and it does drive out damp and adults, but it will not reach eggs already inside a grain. A handful of stray adults in otherwise sound, sweet-smelling rice can be sieved out and the rice used up quickly. Webbing, clumping, a musty smell or holes through much of the bag means the batch has gone, and the container needs emptying, washing and drying before anything else goes in it.

Should you age rice yourself?

It is entirely possible, and plenty of families in Punjab still do it: buy a large quantity when the new crop lands, seal it properly, put it somewhere cool and dry, and leave it alone for a year. The requirements are a genuinely dry storeroom, a container that keeps insects out for twelve months, and the discipline not to open it. In a flat in town, with monsoon humidity and no spare room, those conditions are harder to hit than they sound, and a bag that ages badly is worse than new rice.

The shortcut is to let someone else carry the year. The basmati in our pantry aisle is sold already aged and extra long grain, which is the same advantage without a sack sitting in your kitchen through a Lahore summer. Whichever route you take, the storage rules above are what protect it once it is yours.

When new rice is the better choice

Aged is not universally better; it is better for the dishes where separate, elongated grains are the goal. Kheer wants the opposite. So does khichri, and so does any rice dish meant to hold together softly rather than stand apart. The starch that leaches out of a younger, softer grain is exactly what thickens the milk in a kheer and binds a khichri, and using a hard, well-aged basmati for either leaves you with a thin, loose result and separate grains floating in it.

It is the one good reason to keep two rices in the house rather than one.