— Sue Baker

So, you know, in most professional kitchens you, when you're cooking something like that, like rice or beans, you have something called a, um, a speed chiller or, um, and it basically will get temperature down really, really fast on items to be able to store them. And I will kind of repeat that process at home. I will often take, like, you know, if I know I'm just gonna be using rice or beans and I'm saving them for later, I'll actually put them into, uh, like onto a, a pan, a sheet pan and put 'em into the freezer to be able to bring that temperature down quickly as possible. Um, and then put it into the container. I'm gonna be using it for later for beans, like later, I'll just take them right the fridge onto a salad, rice, I might microwave it for a bit temperature, make sure it's safe. There's been a lot of things about eating, you know, rice, uh, you know, after a certain amount of time can be dangerous. There's mixed reviews about that. So I usually err on the side being safe. So I'm usually going to heat, uh, rice up afterward, um, if I'm using it for um, something else. Um, but as long as you cooled it quick enough to be able to make that happen, you're eating it pretty quickly after you're making it. You don't have to worry about that as much. If you're looking at five days later, I would definitely heat it up.