Airtight containers for flour please

[SleepFreeZone]

Just found weevils in some flour and other items in my cupboard and need some advice on containers please. I cook bread every other day so rattle through the Strong flour but things like self raising and plain just sit around the cupboard 😬

Also does all flour tend to come with weevils in the first place so am I just stopping the little bastards from spreading? Would you avoid value flours and go for branded varieties? I found most of them in the Tesco value self raising that hadn't been opened but had sat in the cupboard for a long time. I don't even think they make it anymore so that probably speaks volumes about how long it's sat there 🙈

you need to throw out any other food they may have have go into (lentils, cereals etc) and then give the cupboards a really good clean, especially in all corners and cracks, a female can lay 1000s of eggs! Then put any new flour into air-tight contains, could be glass jars with tight-fitting lids or tuperware type stuff.

I buy value flour rather than branded and I've never had a problem (yet!) I keep it in those big glass jars from Ikea that have a rubber seal.

Either Kilner type jars (IKEA do v cheap) or lock n lock storage boxes from Lakeland.

I've pulled everything else out and thrown away the icing sugar they were in and the bicarbonate. I've cleaned the cupboard but I suspect I might find some more. I'm not particularly squeamish but equally if I know they are in something I'd rather just throw it away.

They sell sticky paper traps for flour moths. I'd use one for about a month to catch any grown-up versions.
I know weevils are expected to be in flour (the American Food and Drug rules even state the amount, ugh!) and value brands will probably be close to that.
So I'd get rid of all your old flour, clean out the cupvoard and wash/disinfect it, then put up the sticky paper and use airtight containers. My favourite style was from Poundland, an airtight transparent graduated cylinder with a clippy lid.

flour moth trap

I had this a few years back. It's grim isn't it! I chucked everything they were in - and they'd got into loads of things from an unopened bag of flour -it was pretty perforated by their escape routes and really cleaned out the cupboards with a diluted bleach solution. I now keep flour in big ikea jars which are the predecessors of these and haven't had another issue since.

I read somewhere that they have an aversion to bay so I have a few loose leaves in each of my food cupboards now.

I use big lock and lock tubs for flour.

I use the wilco cheaper versions of lock&lock - I had an occasional recurrent weevil problem up till about a year ago when I threw everything in the cupboard away and started afresh with these containers. Back at the time I read an article that said I might still get weevils occasionally as there would be expected to be a few eggs in the flour when you buy it in the supermarket sometimes but if you have a high turnover they may never hatch.

You don't need to worry about whole-unground grains like rice or popcorn kernels - weevils can't eat those, but anything ground or processed they can eat (even the glue holding cardboard boxes together!)

That's my issue I think. The plain and self raising rarely get used. At least though I can buy them, put them in containers and if the weevils are in them over time they won't contaminate anything else.

I love Ikea but rarely go there and find their delivery too expensive. I am pretty close to a Wilko though.

I've bought containers from a poundland, they certainly do the job. OK they might not be fancy 'branded' items, but they are out of sight in a cupboard!

I've heard that if you freeze flour for a few hours it will stop any eggs from hatching. I try not to think too much about the dead eggs in cakes etc.

They never get into Tupperware.

Ooh freezing flour sounds like a good idea! I'm not bothered about insects or eggs etc as I eat tons of salad and veg and I know I'm eating all sorts of stuff lol. But it doesn't feel right to use something that's crawling with black insects, even if I know they'll die in the cooking process. That's just a step too far (although I did say to DP recently that it seems crazy we don't utilise insects more in this country as a protein source, maybe they heard!!).

You can keep flour permanently in the freezer and it stops the problem