Would you cook red quinoa five years past its best before?

[Whatarewedoing]

Long overdue tidy-up of kitchen cupboards revealed an unopened packet of red quinoa. It's five and a half years past its 'best before' date of December 2020. Do you think it's still nice or will I waste lots of time and other ingredients trying? It looks just fine, but I cook so rarely with quinoa that I dont know what to look out for.

A more appropriate question may be :
why would someone use quinoa five years out of date ?

Cook it separately, don’t add other things to it, then smell it and eat a bit first before mixing with other things.

Five years wouldn’t put me off.

It's hardly 10kg of saffron, just bin it and buy some more.

I would. I’m currently eating peanut butter 3 years out of date and it hasn’t killed me.

I would eat a lot of things past their date, even by 2-3 years, but I wouldn’t at 5 years past their date.

Well yours is definitely an ancient grain. Maybe cook and try some before serving it mixing with anything.

It's dried. It lasts for years. You are going to boil it. I wouldn't give it a second thought

Yes. It’s best before not use by.

It will probably taste like it's spent the last five and a half years in a cupboard. And bearing in mind it was probably given a use-by date around two years after it was packaged, it is going to be at least 7 years old and a bit musty by now.

(speaking from the recent experience of eating some out-of-date cake sprinkles, and they are made of sugar so you'd think they would last forever)

Yes.
Grains last a LONG time .
I mean- you’re going to cook them in boiling water so even if there was anything nefarious in it it would be boiled away.

No.

Yes definitely unless it looks like it’s sprouting or something. To be honest it would never occur to me to even look at the date on something like that, rice, pasta etc.

I would. I hate waste and pulses etc are bound to be fine.

Yes. I wouldn’t even have looked at the best before date

"Best before" isn't a health warning like "use by" dates. It just means the food might not taste quite as good. Grains, pulses, pasta etc can last for years. It wouldn't bother me at all, especially as it's an unopened packet.

Plant some and see whether it sprouts. 😂

Not unless it was the Zombie Apocolypse and it was all that was left in my prepper's store, no.

It will probably be rock hard, not soften up and have little to no nutritional value by now.

No. I'd just buy some more. Obv not a regular thing in your house so buy it if/when required

I used ground rice that was 12 years out of date about a month ago. It was fine.

Based on that I'd also expect there to be nothing wrong with the quinoa so would use it.