A freezer is one of the best ways to store food, as long as you have power available. Meat, vegetables, dairy products, bread and most other staples can be frozen for just about everything.
Your freezer isn’t a machine for miracles, though. You need to obey a few basic rules to keep the food in good shape for a long time. Get it wrong and you will possibly find that your food is rotting and maybe even unhealthy to consume.
For freezer storage, some general guidelines are:
- Using a deep freezer that can maintain the temperature at 0ºF or lower to safely store food for long periods of time. Buying a freezer thermometer and periodically testing the temperature is also a smart idea.
- Keep the freezer as complete as it can. Any time the door is opened, a half-empty freezer spills cold air, letting warm air in. It has to cool down again until the door is closed. There’s less space for warm air to take up in the full freezer. Put in empty cardboard boxes if there’s a lot of empty space in yours, they’ll help trap cold air inside. This isn’t a concern if you have a chest freezer, because when you open the door, the thicker cold air will remain inside.
- Don’t put a lot of food at once into your freezer. That will overload the cooling power of the freezer, and increase the inside temperature. The food you just put in will also take longer to freeze, and slow freezing decreases food quality. Don’t put in more than three pounds of freezer space every day per cubic foot.
Related: How to Dry Plums for Long-Term Storage Just Like Grandma
- Don’t pack food too tightly inside. If it freezes, the water in it can grow, so close-packed food can get hurt. On the other hand, place it against the side of the freezer if you want to freeze something more quickly.
- Pack them in freezer bags before freezing your food. These are easy to cover, protect against water vapor and leaks, and you can write on them what the contents are. Good labeling makes finding what you want simpler and easier, so you don’t need to hold the door open and let cold air out as you look at bags to see what’s in them.
- Your food will remain frozen for between two and four days if a black-out happens, as long as you immediately secure the freezer. Leave it unopened; keep it in a cool place and insulate it with blankets or quilts (but make sure the compressor is not covered). A full freezer corresponds to this two to four-day rule; if your freezer is just half full, it might only hold food frozen for around 24 hours.
- If the food in your freezer gets thawed during a power outage, you may still be able to refreeze it. It should be safe to refreeze if it is just partly thawed and still has ice crystals, and the freezer temperature has never gone above 40ºF. Otherwise, eat it immediately.
Related: My Famine Food Storage Menu
Food will stay indefinitely frozen and be safe to eat scientifically, because bacteria will not grow. All frozen foods, however, can deteriorate in consistency over time and become unpleasant to eat when defrosted. The time it takes for:
Also, you should know that the chart above has some variations depending on the specific type of food.
