Freezing rice

[WorkingItOutForMyself]

My son is 8 months old and we are doing a combo of BLW and spoon feeding.

He is in nursery 2 days a week and looked after by inlaws for 2 days too. I provide lunch for nursery as I'm not keen on their offerings (long story) and for the inlaws too.

Usually I make extra of what we have, and freeze in portions for them to give him.

I made a rice dish the other day and he loved it but I didn't freeze any because rice is a tricky food to store.

I bought some of that frozen rice, and wondered if I could mix that in with cooled cooked food to freeze (does that make sense)

It would then be defrosted with the meal and microwaved as needed.

Is that safe? Rice is a minefield!! Any tips??

What about providing a pouch of microwave rice? You can get kids vegetable rice in a smaller packet e.g. Tilda Sunshine rice. It's not exactly cheap but if it's not very often then maybe it would be ok.

I add some frozen rice alongside frozen stews etc and defrost it altogether in the microwave. I don't think I would add it to food and refreeze it though, that feels slightly risky.

Could you freeze the food first and then pour some frozen rice on top into whatever container you're using?

That's kind of what I mean - plates

I was thinking of freezing the food in ice cube trays and then when I decant them into pots for nursery, adding some of the frozen rice on top. The rice is shop bought pre frozen as I was just too nervous to freeze my own (silly, I don't worry about much but I do worry about rice ).

By lunchtime the whole lot would be defrosted (in the fridge) and quickly zapped in the microwave before serving.

The microwave rice instructions say to microwave it in its little pouch from frozen. Anyone see any problem with letting it defrost first and then heating along with the meal?

I definitely wouldn't be cooking then refreezing anything.

I used the Avent food storage cups for all 3 of my DCs and froze any leftovers including risottos and all sorts and we never knowingly made them ill.

The microwave rice pouches I meant aren't frozen. So there's no need to worry about the whole defrosting thing. They aren't even chilled, you keep them in the cupboard.

I should say we were careful about making sure it was cooled before going into the freezer and used each cup of food within a month. I found this worked really well.