Sniper-T
03-20-2012, 12:08 PM
As you all know, I ‘lost’ power to my large deep freeze, and lost a whole whack of food. These are some of the observations I made about the experience, and how it will change how I operate my freezers in the future.
I’ve always heard that if you do not open the freezer, food will stay frozen for a really long time. It was 2-1/2 days that we had above freezing temperatures, and my freezer was well on its way to being completely thawed.
I’ve always heard that the food will slowly thaw from the top down, so you may lose a few things off the top, but everything below that will be fine. This is only partially true at best. If your freezer is packed as a solid mass, with no airspaces between anything, then this might be true. But from top to bottom, anywhere that there as a gap big enough for air to transfer down, then anything touching that airspace was thawed.
Case in point, When I butchered last year’s bear, I cleared part of my freezer, and stacked all the packages in a solid mass, basically to minimize space used. As I was going through the freezer, the outside edges of the packages were thawed(ing) but all the center parts were still frozen solid.
I packed most of my deer tightly into milk crates, and had them stacked. All along the outside edge of the crate, where the spaces are in the plastic moulding, the meat was thawed, yet there were ‘lines’ of frozen meat, wherever the plastic was. And the inside portions were still frozen.
Even if you have everything packed good and tight, the stuff at the bottom still isn’t safe, even if it remains frozen/or partially. As the stuff from the top melts, and as the frost melts, all this liquid goes down to the bottom, to create a bloody, fishy, stinky soup, that all the bottom stuff lies in. While some plastic bags could be wiped off, I didn’t want to take a chance that some soup got inside.
The best result I had for staying frozen, was a cardboard box full of moose meat (coveted), that was at the bottom, and packed tight. EVERYTHING in that box was still frozen solid, even the portion that was in the soup. Sadly, It was all double wrapped in butcher paper, which ‘wicked’ enough water to ruin any thought of salvage.
Some ‘obvious’ observations:
Big masses like roasts or turkeys fared the best in non-thawing, where small items like shrimp or scallops fared poorly, regardless of location.
Non meat items fared poorly in general: perogy’s, pizzas, appetizers, fruit, veggies, etc.
Prepackaged items like chicken wings, riblets, etc, all failed completely.
Some changes I am going to make going forward…
I will place spacer blocks on the bottom of the freezer, as many as required to support the weight above. I will cover these with perforated material, to elevate everything a few inches off the bottom (create a soup basin, if you will).
I still really like the milk crates for organizing and taking things from the big freezer to the smaller house freezer, but they really did nothing to help preserve the food, so I am going to line the bottom and sides with cardboard first, pack my food into them, and cover with another piece of cardboard.
I had meat packed in every medium imaginable, from blister packs, to shrink wrap, to zip-locks, to butcher paper… depending on where I was, and who I was butchering with, determined what I did that year. I found rogue packages of this or that throughout, and the one form of packaging that continued to impress me was having the meat wrapped in saran wrap, tight and air-free, and then wrapped in butcher paper. I found a couple of steaks wrapped like this from 2006 that had zero freezer burn yet some zip-locked geese from last spring were showing signs.
I will minimize how much ‘comfort’ stuff I have (like frozen pizzas, etc), because they really won’t last long if the power is out.
I will be adding a light to the freezer, so I can tell at a glance if it is running or not.
Thoughts?
I’ve always heard that if you do not open the freezer, food will stay frozen for a really long time. It was 2-1/2 days that we had above freezing temperatures, and my freezer was well on its way to being completely thawed.
I’ve always heard that the food will slowly thaw from the top down, so you may lose a few things off the top, but everything below that will be fine. This is only partially true at best. If your freezer is packed as a solid mass, with no airspaces between anything, then this might be true. But from top to bottom, anywhere that there as a gap big enough for air to transfer down, then anything touching that airspace was thawed.
Case in point, When I butchered last year’s bear, I cleared part of my freezer, and stacked all the packages in a solid mass, basically to minimize space used. As I was going through the freezer, the outside edges of the packages were thawed(ing) but all the center parts were still frozen solid.
I packed most of my deer tightly into milk crates, and had them stacked. All along the outside edge of the crate, where the spaces are in the plastic moulding, the meat was thawed, yet there were ‘lines’ of frozen meat, wherever the plastic was. And the inside portions were still frozen.
Even if you have everything packed good and tight, the stuff at the bottom still isn’t safe, even if it remains frozen/or partially. As the stuff from the top melts, and as the frost melts, all this liquid goes down to the bottom, to create a bloody, fishy, stinky soup, that all the bottom stuff lies in. While some plastic bags could be wiped off, I didn’t want to take a chance that some soup got inside.
The best result I had for staying frozen, was a cardboard box full of moose meat (coveted), that was at the bottom, and packed tight. EVERYTHING in that box was still frozen solid, even the portion that was in the soup. Sadly, It was all double wrapped in butcher paper, which ‘wicked’ enough water to ruin any thought of salvage.
Some ‘obvious’ observations:
Big masses like roasts or turkeys fared the best in non-thawing, where small items like shrimp or scallops fared poorly, regardless of location.
Non meat items fared poorly in general: perogy’s, pizzas, appetizers, fruit, veggies, etc.
Prepackaged items like chicken wings, riblets, etc, all failed completely.
Some changes I am going to make going forward…
I will place spacer blocks on the bottom of the freezer, as many as required to support the weight above. I will cover these with perforated material, to elevate everything a few inches off the bottom (create a soup basin, if you will).
I still really like the milk crates for organizing and taking things from the big freezer to the smaller house freezer, but they really did nothing to help preserve the food, so I am going to line the bottom and sides with cardboard first, pack my food into them, and cover with another piece of cardboard.
I had meat packed in every medium imaginable, from blister packs, to shrink wrap, to zip-locks, to butcher paper… depending on where I was, and who I was butchering with, determined what I did that year. I found rogue packages of this or that throughout, and the one form of packaging that continued to impress me was having the meat wrapped in saran wrap, tight and air-free, and then wrapped in butcher paper. I found a couple of steaks wrapped like this from 2006 that had zero freezer burn yet some zip-locked geese from last spring were showing signs.
I will minimize how much ‘comfort’ stuff I have (like frozen pizzas, etc), because they really won’t last long if the power is out.
I will be adding a light to the freezer, so I can tell at a glance if it is running or not.
Thoughts?