The Common Store-Bought Food That's Not Worth The Extra Money

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Grocery shopping can be a bit of a minefield. The shelves of any store are packed with so many different products that the comparisons and bargain-hunting are downright exhausting. We all want to save as much money as we can during our weekly shopping, but picking the best deals can be overwhelming. There is, however, one common store-bought food that you can scratch off of your list for good: microwavable rice. Those little pouches of partially-cooked rice that can be microwaved in just 90 seconds may seem terribly convenient, but when you do the math, there's no way you should be shelling out that much money to shave a few minutes off cooking time.

Rice is cheap, and rice is simple to make. It can be intimidating at first to figure out the ideal cook time and ratio of grain to water, but a little trial and error — and maybe a guide to cooking different types of rice — is all you need to perfect the process. Once you figure out what works for you, you'll wonder why you ever wasted money on those microwavable packets. 

Or, if you want to keep with the completely carefree style of those packets, you can invest in a good rice cooker, like this $20 6-Cup Rice Cooker from Aroma. Considering that each microwavable rice packet provides around one cup of rice for $1.50 (or more), while a 5-pound bag of rice costs about $3.50, it pretty much pays for itself. Five pounds of uncooked rice yields about 36 cups of cooked rice. That's $23.50 spent for the rice and the cooker, but it'd be over $50 if you bought the microwavable stuff — and the rice cooker is a one-time expense.

If you don't want another appliance cluttering up your kitchen and you're still too intimidated to try boiling rice on the stove, there are no shortage of other methods out there. For one thing, you can actually just microwave regular rice. It takes about ten minutes in total, between the time in the microwave and the time spent resting. So if you start it before you begin cooking whatever you plan to serve with that rice, it will be ready with plenty of time to spare.

Alternatively, there's a food fad from the 1940s that can also help with this conundrum: instant rice. Instant rice is pre-cooked and dried so that it can be prepared at home in about five minutes. There are lots of instant rice brands on the market, and price-wise they all fall squarely between the cost of standard rice and microwavable packets. Again, five minutes isn't quite as quick as 90 seconds, but does anyone really need to put food on the table that quickly? If you can't spare a few extra minutes to cook it on the spot, just prep your rice ahead of time and store it in the fridge or freeze it.

There is no denying that a microwavable packet of rice that's ready in under two minutes is a tempting offering, but it is very clear why it's one of the store-bought items that frugal shoppers skip. A little bit of knowledge and a few extra minutes can save you a lot of money when it comes to this favorite grain.