Rice – Remediation Methods for Rice Contaminated with Broken Glass

rice

A picture is worth a thousand words…

Still Life: Rice with Broken Glass Jar

I dropped a glass jar filled with rice. I've picked up the macro-sized pieces of glass, but am wondering if there is any way on earth to make the rice safe to eat, given that I am sure it contains small fragments and shards of glass. I could, naturally, go through it grain-by-grain, but this is only a couple of bucks worth of rice, and I don't think it warrants the time.

Does anyone have any suggestions? (Or is this too localized?) I would also welcome suggestions for a better tag than "rice."

Best Answer

Purely academic (because I wouldn't even use the rice for blind baking) but just dissolve salt into the water until the rice starts to float. The glass will remain at the bottom. Give a good stir to avoid surface tension and glass-stuck-to-rice problems. Rice farmers used to do this (and probably still do in some countries) to separate out little stones and even damaged grains.

If the solution saturates before the rice starts floating (i.e. salt no longer dissolves), try warm-water instead or another food-safe salt like Epsom salts which lead to a greater specific density of the solution).