Should You Store Pasta and Rice in Your Emergency Food Supply?

• They need to be cooked. A foolproof emergency plan should have foods that can be eaten hot or cold, such as tins. If you use dried pasta/rice it is essential that you have a camping-style stove along with plenty of spare gas.

• You need lots of water to cook pasta (conventionally approx. 1 litre per 100g pasta) and less for rice (approx. 200ml of water for 100g of rice, depending on the variety). However, pasta can be cooked using considerably less water, depending on the cooking method.

The biggest issue here is that your top priority is to preserve safe drinking water. Using up as much as 5 litres of that just to cook a 500g family pack of pasta would seem very wasteful.

So, what possible solutions could you consider?

You could resolve the cooking issue by getting a camping gas stove along with a large supply of gas canisters. This would allow you to cook even in a total grid down situation (no electricity/gas/water), provided you have a safe place to use the stove.

In terms of water, the priority is to ensure you have sufficient drinking water in your inventory. This equates to 3 litres per person per day as per my article on building a supply of water. Once you have achieved this, you could add an extra supply of bottled water to your inventory.

For example, let’s say you wanted to add two 500g packs of pasta to your emergency food supply. Using the conventional cooking method, each pack would use approximately 5 litres, and thus 10 litres altogether to cook. This is an example of a conventional cooking method rather than the minimum amount of water needed. You could buy 2 x 5l bottles of water then, using a marker, label these as “Cooking only”. These should still contain safe drinking water, with the label simply indicating that they are reserved for cooking. Then keep these bottles separate from your main supply of bottled drinking water.

An alternative worth considering is ready-to-eat rice pouches, such as microwave rice. These have the advantage of being fully cooked and can generally be eaten hot or cold, without the need for additional water or cooking fuel. However, always check the packaging to ensure the product is suitable for eating cold.

The main disadvantage is their relatively short shelf life compared with dried rice. This means you would need to check expiry dates and replace them more frequently. They are also considerably more expensive than dried rice.

For these reasons, I wouldn't consider rice pouches an ideal choice for a long-term emergency food supply, although they could be a useful addition if you are prepared to rotate your stock regularly.

If you would still like to include dried pasta or rice in your emergency food supply, I would recommend looking at quick-cook varieties.

Some quick-cook pasta varieties can be ready in as little as 3–5 minutes, while certain quick-cook rice products can be prepared in around 5 minutes. This is considerably faster than conventional dried pasta and rice.

The main advantage is that you would use less cooking gas, helping your supply of fuel last longer during an emergency. Depending on the cooking method, you may also be able to reduce the amount of water required.

Quick-cook varieties can cost a little more than standard pasta and rice, but I believe the reduced cooking time makes them worth considering for emergency supplies.

Remember, however, that you would still need a suitable stove, sufficient fuel and safe water to prepare them.

As you can now see, dried pasta and rice are not quite the cheap and easy solutions which they may at first appear to be. In addition, extra bottled water increases both the cost and the amount of storage space required.

As such, it's up to you to decide if you wish to invest in the extra cooking gas and water which would allow you to add dried pasta/rice to your emergency supplies. I would always recommend you have a camping stove in any case, simply because tinned foods are much better hot than cold. My advice though would be to first ensure you have the core of your supplies built around tinned foods and bottled water for drinking. That said, a small amount of pasta or rice would be a nice addition to have in your emergency inventory.