Thawing question

swordsmn · April 2015

Disclaimer:

I am not an experienced kitchen/cooking guy. My wife is now disabled and enjoying the fact I'm now embracing our BGE more.
(formerly it was delivery, microwave or food I'd pick up on way home). So I'm a cooking dork

Soooo I know only enough basics on food storage and prep to be cautious, and I probably throw away more than I need to to be cautious.

ok, so now the question(s)

i want to stop ALWAYS buying my raw material for the BGE the day or two before my cooks, i.e. This old man wants to learn to use a freezer properly.
In your reply, bear in mind I'm grilling for two people only. Me and wifey...
My MAIN questions are mostly about max retention time in fridge AFTER I decide to thaw chicken or beef to cook in next day or two.

Note: I am blessed with a very cool vacmaster chamber vacuum sealer so what I freeze gets frozen when I get home from butcher or groc store.

***May I assume I should keep the beef and chicken still vacuum sealed while it thaws?

i will generally thaw in fridge btw

What prompted this paranoia was I have some boneless skinless chicken breasts (2) in a pouch I froze several weeks ago .

I took the pouch out of freezer severaldays ago - pouch is still intact/sealed but I've yet to grill em.
So, sitting in fridge, how many days can I let those sit in before cooking? Looking for a safe conservative number before I should toss em

Please suggest max number of days for steak, bb ribs, ground beef and chicken (wings or other chicken pieces)

and this: In future I won't freeze mass quantities in one bag. I'll freeze a lb of ground beef and try to thaw as needed.
generally I plan to take the item out of freeze the night before for next evenings cook.
that should be enough time to thaw most stuff , yes, except maybe big hunks of brisket etc. which I've yet to try to cook?

is that enough time to thaw a rack of baby backs?

sorry if these are stupid basics but I sometimes run into a day or two where I fear I won't be able to cook x or y that I thawed and I don't want to let the thawed product sit in the fridge too long.

UrbanForestTurnings · April 2015

Not a stupid question . Think about how long your butcher will hold a product in the raw. If you buy fresh than freeze I'm sure your safe for a few days, smell it. I think ground meat will spoi faster, I'm sure the USDA has guidelines.

RRP · April 2015

Good Morning,
Your questions are valid ones!

Here's a link covering thawing times and methods.
http://www.stilltasty.com/articles/view/9

And then here is a link that covers the "suggested" safe time for many foods stored in a refrigerator.
http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/charts/storagetimes.html

BTW - it's just the two of us as well so I understand where you are coming from. As you already said what works for us is repackaging into portions we use for 1 meal and then storing and freezing using Food Saver bags.

UrbanForestTurnings · April 2015

And to save time on your prep work.

st¡ke · April 2015

please keep in mind a very important difference which most people overlook or, worse, assume to be the same: safety and quality are two different things.

What that means is you can keep food safely a lot longer than you think.

Bread, for example will be "good", concerning SAFETY, on your counter for a lot longer then it will be good in QUALITY. It will get moldy and stale. But it's safe. It's just not GOOD

eggs are good for teo months or more. Just not as fresh. For sunny side up, they will be fine. But fresher is better. But for boiled eggs, older may be better, because they peel more easily for example

if it is all vacuum packed, don't panic. Don't toss something at three days just because you picked an arbitrary number to begin suspecting your food

there's no universal answer.

but if your fridge is around the upper 30s, you can keep food a whole lot longer than you think. For most refrigerators too, the freezer side supplies cold air to the fridge through the meat drawer. Meat won't really freeze at 32, so that drawer stays super cold. Meat will be safe for weeks. Quality may suffer after a couple though. Gets funky, but not deathly.

I'm sorry there's no simple rule. The charts are all with regard to freshness and quality, nod food safety. So realize you have enormous latitude

there's no logic to throwing out a steak you bought a week ago and haven't cooked, while there's a whole rib eye subprimal aging for a month in your beer fridge

Fish gets funky sooner. Deli meat gets slimy from all the cell damage. Liver ages too quickly. But most of the stuff we eat stays good a week-plus. And some gets better

how's that for a non-answer answer?

Shiff · April 2015

Also keep in mind that some meats will come from the market already in cryovac packages (such as briskets). When you open a cryovac package, you will probably get a sulfur like smell. This is not a sign that the meat is bad, it is just the smell from being vacuum sealed. You may also get this smell from your own vacuum sealed packages. The smell will dissipate after an hour or so - rinsing under water will help.

st¡ke · April 2015

Yep. The cryo industry is experimenting with coatings on the liner to minimize the sulfur smell. I believe it's attributed to the proteins breaking down naturally, but don't quite recall

Zmokin · April 2015

st¡ke said:

please keep in mind a very important difference which most people overlook or, worse, assume to be the same: safety and quality are two different things.

What that means is you can keep food safely a lot longer than you think.

Bread, for example will be "good", concerning SAFETY, on your counter for a lot longer then it will be good in QUALITY. It will get moldy and stale. But it's safe. It's just not GOOD

eggs are good for teo months or more. Just not as fresh. For sunny side up, they will be fine. But fresher is better. But for boiled eggs, older may be better, because they peel more easily for example

if it is all vacuum packed, don't panic. Don't toss something at three days just because you picked an arbitrary number to begin suspecting your food

there's no universal answer.

but if your fridge is around the upper 30s, you can keep food a whole lot longer than you think. For most refrigerators too, the freezer side supplies cold air to the fridge through the meat drawer. Meat won't really freeze at 32, so that drawer stays super cold. Meat will be safe for weeks. Quality may suffer after a couple though. Gets funky, but not deathly.

I'm sorry there's no simple rule. The charts are all with regard to freshness and quality, nod food safety. So realize you have enormous latitude

there's no logic to throwing out a steak you bought a week ago and haven't cooked, while there's a whole rib eye subprimal aging for a month in your beer fridge

Fish gets funky sooner. Deli meat gets slimy from all the cell damage. Liver ages too quickly. But most of the stuff we eat stays good a week-plus. And some gets better

how's that for a non-answer answer?

I agree with the above and also what others have said. I actually modify many recipes that call for 1 lb hamburger to 1/2 lb hamburger as that minimizes leftovers for a family of 3. so I freeze a lot of pre-measured quantities.

There are also options to thawing in the fridge for a couple of days.

Ribs could go straight from the freezer onto the egg if you want, let the egg thaw them while cooking them. Same is true for other meats. Most pre-formed hamburger patties recommend cooking from the frozen state.

For some things, you can speed up the thawing process by using the 10% duty cycle on your microwave. I will usually put a 1/2 lb ball of hamburger in the microwave for 5 minutes at 10% (power cycle 1 out of 9), then let sit for a few minutes, flip it over and repeat 5 minutes at 10%. This will speed up the thawing and should prevent it from starting to cook. If your microwave doesn't have a turntable that spins, you may want to break this into five 2 minute cycles and flip, rotate, and re-locate the hamburger every 2 minutes.

Depending upon the power of your microwave, you may want to go longer.
The above 10 minutes won't completely thaw the ball typically, but it will take hours off the thaw time required.

jtcBoynton · April 2015

To get the most out of your freezer, I would suggest:
vacuum seal.
portion items before freezing.
utilize the defrost cycle of your microwave.
Cook many items direct from the freezer without thawing.

You might be surprised how many meals you can cook without needing to plan 3-4 days ahead to allow for thawing in the fridge. Two person portions are easy to quickly thaw without prior planning.

thegooddocta · April 2015

I'm not a good planner when it comes to food because my travel schedule for work is irregular. Because of that, I typically thaw day of so I'll start it in the vac pack in cold water with the faucet dripping as slowly as it can to keep the water moving. It's a great way to thaw on or two portions quickly. For whole chickens etc., I just throw those in the fridge to thaw early in the week expecting that I'll cook it over the weekend, and be able to get a couple of meals out of it. Hope that thawing method helps!

Little Steven · April 2015

I don't even think about food that's been in the fridge (mainly beer fridge which is like 33*) for at least a week. I have had a primal strip loin in there that's three months old. As stike says fish will lose it's appeal quicker. The vacmaster is your best friend in this regard. I store leftovers a long time to cause we don't really use them. We load the kids up when they visit.

swordsmn · April 2015

Thanks everyone. That helps. I didn't want my paranoia to cause me to toss perfectly good stuff. You guys hv assisted us a lot over the past yr of egging. Wife's acct is Jaime, we orig had Jaime_Doug. We appreciate all the tips.

Little Steven · April 2015

BTW I just bought six hard frozen Cornish hens and stuck them in cold water for an hour and a half and they are ready to go on the egg now.

DMW · April 2015

I think @SGH mentioned he thaws briskets by using them as a seat cushion.

Little Steven · April 2015

I just went off my brisket

st¡ke · April 2015

I like to warm up a tuna melt sandwich by tucking it under my arm pit for a half an hour

Little Steven · April 2015

Please don't tell us what you do with frozen sausage

Thawing question

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