Putting Food By - Janet Greene [98]
A freezer full of meat does not warm up so fast as a freezer full of baked foods. Reason: the meat is denser, and so is more like a block of solid ice.
The colder the food, the longer it will keep. The larger a well-stacked freezer, the longer the food will stay frozen. But you must not open the door.
Emergency Measures for a Long Stoppage
If you foresee that your freezer will be out of running order for more than 48 hours, try to locate a supply of dry ice—which is carbon dioxide in its solid state (it’s solid at–107 F). It has no liquid state, but becomes a gas when it is in the presence of oxygen, and hence evaporates into nothing after several days in the freezer. Look under “Dry Ice” or “Ice and Fuel” online or in the Yellow Pages; and try places that sell welders’ supplies too: in some machine shops, the welders use carbon dioxide to freeze—and thereby shrink—metal that they are working on. A 50-pound cake of dry ice is 10 × 10 × 10 inches. A 10-pound piece of dry ice will hold 20 pounds of food frozen for around 24 hours, so do your arithmetic and order accordingly.
When you get your dry ice, wrap it in many layers of newspaper (that great insulator) and use lineman’s gloves to handle it, because just touching the stuff can cause severe frostbite.
Consolidate the food packages into a compact pile. Put heavy cardboard directly on the food packages and lay the dry ice on the cardboard. Then cover the entire freezer with blankets, but leave the air-vent openings free so the motor won’t overheat in case the current comes on unexpectedly.
But If All That Food Thaws . . .
If, despite your emergency measures, the food in your freezer thaws, there are several things you can do. You can refreeze some of it, you can cook up some of it and freeze the cooked dishes from scratch; some of it you may can. And some you may have to destroy.
WHEN TO REFREEZE
When food has thawed, it still contains many ice crystals; individual pieces may be able to be separated, but they still contain ice in their tissues; and dense foods, or ones that pack solidly, might have a firm-to-hard core of ice in the middle of the package, in addition to the crystals in the tissues. Many thawed foods may be refrozen. Be sure to re-label them for limited storage.
When food has defrosted, all the ice crystals in its tissues have warmed to liquid. No foods that have warmed above refrigeration temperature—except very strong-acid fruits—should be refrozen. Reason: defrosted low-acid foods, if refrozen, are possible sources of food poisoning. (Technically, if the foods have just reached refrigeration temperature, they are still safe to refreeze. But the problem is, how can we know for sure what their temperature is, and how long it has held at an acceptable level? We can’t.)
If the foods are still icy—see below—they may still be safe.
Remember, however, that defrosted low-acid foods, vegetables, shell-fish, and precooked dishes all maybe spoiled although they have no telltale odor, and could be downright dangerous if cooked up and served.
WHAT CAN BE SAFELY REFROZEN
The first check of thawed food in a package or a non-rigid container is to squeeze it. Don’t open it. Squeeze it: if you can feel good, firm crystals inside, the package is OK to refreeze—provided that the food is not highly perishable in the first place, and of course that its quality is appealing.
Of course food in rigid containers must be opened to be inspected for adequate ice crystals.
Even though they’re defrosted, strong-acid fruits may be refrozen if they’re still cold; there will be definite loss in quality, however.
Refreeze thawed vegetables only if they contain plenty of ice crystals.
Give wrapped meat packages the squeeze test. Beef, pork, veal, lamb and poultry that are firm with ice crystals may be refrozen, but you can always cook them up in convenience dishes and freeze them from scratch. The salt in merely thawed short-storage