Mouthing Off | How to get rid of rice weevils in my kitchen? They’ve invaded my pantry and won’t go away
Andrew Sun vents his frustrations about a rice weevil infestation in his Hong Kong kitchen and gives tips on how to combat the creature
This has not been a good pasta year for me.
The problem has nothing to do with any Italian culinary events I may have attended, nor my professional work with chefs from ristorantes and trattorias in the dining industry. My annoyance derives from within my own pantry.
In Hong Kong, we have all had to confront annoying pests at some point. A single buzzing mosquito can keep me awake an entire night. A trail of ants marching from a crack in the floor disturbs me. Geckos might be harmless, but I still get a heart attack whenever one surprises me on a ceiling corner. And of course, nobody likes to be freaked out by a cockroach in the kitchen.
However, nothing has frustrated me more than a tiny little bug that is suddenly showing up in my boxes and bags of stored grains and noodles. The insect in question is called the rice weevil – Latin name Sitophilus oryzae.
They are smaller than a grain of rice, but if even one is loose in your rice container, hundreds could appear within weeks.
The dark-coloured bug is distinguished by a snout that it uses to feed and burrow into grains of rice, flour, noodles and dried pasta.