Flour mites Need Storage Idea

HappyIdiotTalk

Sure! I can give you the rough guide. My OH's sister lives in Italy and showed me what to do but even after years of regular practive I've not still mastered it. OH says its nice, but I'm a bit of a prefectionist and never live up to my own standards. But here goes:

Ingredients
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1 Tin of Cirio plum tomatos blitzed in the tin with a hand blender - 40 odd p.
1 Onion finely chopped, large or small - 10p?
2 cloves of garlic chopped finely - 5p.
2tbsps of Olive Oil (not extra virgin)
Salt
Sugar
Pepper
2 tbsps grated Parmasan cheese
Bird eye chilli (optional)
Pasta, (traditionally penne).


Notes:
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For the onions, try and get them from someone that grows them in the allotment or back garden. If not just get the best you can find or organic. Use supermarket onions last. I say this because the one ingredient thats likely to make or break the sauce is the onion, it has a MASSIVE impact on the end result.

I add small amounts of salt all the way through cooking to bring out the flavour of all the ingridients that go in, so dont add to much all at once. This is called layering I think.

Down to it:
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Heat a medium or large sauce pan on the cooker over a medium-high heat and when its hot add some olive oil and then the chopped onions immeadiately after. Stir, add a small pinch of salt and stir again. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes stiring every so often and then add the chopped garlic, a tiny bit more salt, and cook for another few minutes until the onion is transulcent. DONT LET ANYTHING BROWN!

Pour in the blitzed tomatos and turn the heat to high until it boils. Turn the heat down to medium and add a little bit more salt, a pinch of sugar and a little glug of olive oil. Put the lid on and allow to boil for a couple of minutes to get the heat up inside the sauce pan, and then turn the gas down to the lowest setting and leave to cook for 20 minutes.

Go have a cup of tea or glass of wine, or prepare something else while you wait.

After your 20 minutes are up get a large pot of water on the stove and bring to the boil, add your penne (we use a level cereal bowl full per person), then some salt and a little olive oil to combat sticking.

Just before the pasta is cooked check the sauce and add more salt or sugar if you think its needed (dont allow it to get sweet or salty tasting though). Grated parmasan is optional at this point, as is a pinch of chilli powder.

Pour over drained penne and grate over some parmasan and pepper! Lovely jubly! This is the basic sauce, you can add tuna fish and all sorts of other stuff to it after cooking. But we usually just eat it as is. Good luck, I'm running late for DD's tumble tots so much dash!

bj-sailaway

That's great, I'll have a go. Can you freeze it?

JoeyEmma

Wow, I've never heard of flour mites before. I just keep mine in those cardboard Homepride boxes and keep refilling them and have never seen anything crawling in my flour.

Alison_B

As previousl mentioned Ikea have some nice glass jars. At weekend I saw some really nice ones in Matalan - think they have the rubber seal. They wre bullet jars and came in some nice colours too.

HappyIdiotTalk

bj-sailaway wrote:

That's great, I'll have a go. Can you freeze it?

Yeah you can. I dont do that often, but when I do it doesn't seem to effect it at all.

JoeyEmma wrote:

Wow, I've never heard of flour mites before. I just keep mine in those cardboard Homepride boxes and keep refilling them and have never seen anything crawling in my flour.

Think yourself lucky, its horrible finding the little scumbags! They should be banned! :rotfl:

tawnyowls

tankgirl1 wrote:

i saw a flour tub today in the local charity shop

Anfea didn't like those the other week, though - a blue enamel was one of the red herrings in the challenge because they're not sealed.

HappyIdiotTalk wrote:

Checked out four charity shops on Tuesday. No luck. I did buy 2 containers from a £1-Land type shop, but when I'd got them home, washed them and put the lids on I was disappointed to discover I didn't get a very good seal. The lids acually wobble around and pop off if you flex the container to much. They'll do for now but only until I've had a chance to get to Ikea or Woolies.

Wilkinson's had some big plastic tubs quite recently. I got a massive tub some time back that was sold for storing washing powder (can't remember where, sorry), but maybe you'd find something like that in the laundry section?

Cat72

I put my flour in the refridgerator for 24 hours when I purchase it- is this ok or does it need to be the freezer ? never realised these mites existed until I read it on here. I was just getting into the joys of breadmaking when the word mites came up ....... :eek:

HappyIdiotTalk

Cat72 wrote:

I put my flour in the refridgerator for 24 hours when I purchase it- is this ok or does it need to be the freezer ? never realised these mites existed until I read it on here. I was just getting into the joys of breadmaking when the word mites came up ....... :eek:

Dont think the fridge would cut it, best use the freezer.

Flour is full of ground up fauna anyway so I wouldn't worry to much. Its just not very nice seeing things actually moving around in there. If I spot anything it gets chucked out because I'm squemish like that.

Cat72

Thanks freezer it is - have a few packs in just now! best to err on the side of caution.