cornflour (and flour) shelf life

It's an absolute baby at a year and a half

I have never seen a weevil in any sort of flour in my entire life and I sometimes have bags for much more than a year It doesn't degrade either. Your flours are perfectly safe.

The dates are a legal requirement and for dried goods they're more likely to be based on guesswork than any food science.

Regular flour can go "off" in my experience. I smell it to check! There's a normal "floury" smell and the off smell, which comes through in anything baked with it. It wouldn't harm you, but the products end up being given to birds.
Cornflour, is actually corn starch, and doesn't go off in the same way, as it has no protein or other ingredients that can degrade.
I would keep cornflour for years, but try to use flour within about 6 months- but use smell test!

Just checked, my tin of Tesco cornflour is Nov 2017!

I don’t use it very often, as you can probably tell.

Looks and smells absolutely fine, I shall keep using it on the rare occasions when I need cornflour.

I’ve found weevils in old unopened packets of flour so now I reckon anything more than a year old out it goes. The flour in question was kept at a holiday house, probably a couple of years old. Horrible little things that must have been there all the time unhatched.

thanks for the responses,

nanna8, me too, at the bottom of a cupboard actually
on a stone floor, the bag was a jumpin’ in the home of
someone very famous where I was working, advised to
sieve it and say nothing !

Flour is made from wheat or other grains which contain oils which can go rancid. This would be when they smell off. If kept in a cool dry place this shouldn't happen though and I have never had it happen. I do get a lot of meal moths, though, but these are mainly in oats and coarser wheat products such as semolina or polenta.

Never had any problems with cornflour though, even though I bought a packet too many some time back and it doesn't get used up too quickly as you only need a spoonful at a time. I keep it in a Kilner jar with a rubber seal.

I keep forgetting to use it when baking cakes or biscuits. You can replace some of the normal flour with cornflour for a lighter texture.

TBH it wouldn’t even occur to me to chuck it.

During the first lockdown I used a number of dry-goods items (pretty ancient GF flour was just one) that were all way out of date, in some cases by several years - yellow split peas was another I can recall.
All were absolutely fine.

nanna8

I’ve found weevils in old unopened packets of flour so now I reckon anything more than a year old out it goes. The flour in question was kept at a holiday house, probably a couple of years old. Horrible little things that must have been there all the time unhatched.

Used to get those in so many things when living in a v hot climate in the M East. We had to first put flour in the freezer, and then sieve the mini corpses out.

Weetabix were known among expats as Weevilbrix!

When I moved last year I threw out a little pot of ground ginger that cost 9d.

Yes, you read it right.

I buy flour several bags at a time from the mill and was advised by a miller to keep them in the freezer. I transfer one or two to the fridge when I'm getting near to needing to use them. They keep pretty well.

I keep mine in the freezer, if there’s room, and always freeze it for a couple of days even if I then transfer it to the cupboard. I’ve only seen weevils once ever, they’re harmless and killed by cooking anyway. I’m never bothered about the BBE dates on flour and have recently ly finished cornflour with a BBE of 06/2024, it made perfectly nice shortbread.

This reminds me of an occasion just last year when I decided to get out the kitchen steps and tackle an upper cupboard! All the dried fruit, nuts etc are in boxes as well as their original bags, they were all ok. But there was also another box, about the size of a bag of flour, with some brown rice in it. It was sealed and the bag was too, thankfully! The rice was crawling will little mites 😱😱 ! It quite gave me the heeby geebies! Went straight into the bin…….but I did salvage the box which was used again after a thorough delousing!!

yup freeze flour, cornflour and nuts. Keeps them fresh.

I vacuum seal my bags of flour as soon as I buy them. I've heard this will extend it's shelf life by a good 2 years, not that my flour lasts that long as I love baking and also make my own bread weekly.

I put my bag of flour into a freezer bag and freeze it for a few days before putting into a tin with a tight fitting lid.
This keeps it bug free.

nanna8

I’ve found weevils in old unopened packets of flour so now I reckon anything more than a year old out it goes. The flour in question was kept at a holiday house, probably a couple of years old. Horrible little things that must have been there all the time unhatched.

They can be part of a new packet of flour, and will not harm if the "egg" is cooked, but they can hatch and not quite what you would want to eat.
Generic advice is to wrap and freeze a new pack to kill them off.

I have Homepride offer tins and store as soon as opened. My cornflour goes straight into Tupperware and I have no idea how old - I get a new one when it runs out

I had an in-date packet of cornflour that had weevils in, and also had risotto rice with rice moth!! I still shudder at the thought! The rice was unopened and well in-date, Tesco took the package and refunded me with no quibble.

Any kind of flour must be stored in a dry place, and to avoid food moths or weevils in sealed jars, not just in the paper packaging it is sold in. The same applies to oats and barley.

I have never had any kind of flour going off.

I've realised from this thread that the moths I've been seeing might be meal or pantry moths of some kind so will have to have a thorough trawl of my food cupboard. Most of the dried goods that I keep are in sealed jars anyway, so hopefully not too much of an infestation.

Like others I have some fairly old flour but always apply the sniff test to see if it is musty as the flavour does come through in baking. I've always understood however that it's dangerous to eat rye flour that is old (Ergot poisoning) but apparently modern processing minimises the risk.

ferry23

When I moved last year I threw out a little pot of ground ginger that cost 9d.

Yes, you read it right.

this reminds me of moving into a large Edwardian house with a pantry in 2006
when we had moved everything in, my OH gleeful found cans of Guinness in there amongst other delights, poured on into a glass, good thing he didnt drink from the can, treacle, best before 1997, like tar

I used to find weevils in fairly new bags of flour and always threw them away. Then I invested in large Tupperware containers for flour and have never had any problem since. I keep cornflour in a glass jar, don’t use it very often and suspect it’s way past its use by date!

Two years ago I found weevils in a bag of flour. It was in the larder. The whole kitchen was infested with them even though I kept most things in containers but the containers weren’t airtight. They got into everything and I had to throw out lots of food. They were even in my stock cubes and they were in a cupboard on the other side of the kitchen. It took months to get rid of them. Even recently I found some in a box of porridge that was in a tin. Most of my store cupboard food is now in airtight containers. I now put my flour in the freezer for a while when I buy it. This will kill any weevils that are in it. I never want an infestation like that again. I think they thrive in the sort of damp weather that we now have. I found them crawling up walls for months. I put bay leaves and cloves everywhere to deter them ( but have to be careful with the bay leaves as they’re poisonous to dogs). On a Facebook page there were people that were still struggling to get rid of them so I was lucky that it only took a few months. They like things like dog kibble, too so that is now in airtight containers. An unopened box of Bonio was full of them. I’ve got some cornflour that’s over it’s bb date but it’s in an airtight container. I’d hate anyone to have an infestation of the horrible things.