Freezer left open all night!

[MintsPi]

My daughter left the freezer door slightly ajar last night and everything has started to defrost. Do I need to throw everything away? It was left open about 14 hours.

I have the following in it (just did a big freezer shop) -

Ice cream - Cornettos still solid, Ben and Jerrys very gloopy
Fish Fillet and Fish fingers - pretty soft
Potato Wedges, Stuffing Balls, Mini roast potatoes - still fairly hard
Breaded chicken fillets - about 75 percent hard
Potato waffles and chips - quite soft
Various veggie/Quorn bits - all about half defrosted or above.

I'd take my chances re freezing the potato products . Turn the ice cream into a milk shake and id cook up everything else then either re freeze or tehy will be OK to pick at fir lunches fir a day or two after

I'd put anything back that is still solid. Cook some of the soft things for lunch and some for dinner, they'll keep in the fridge.
Cook the quorn and frozen veggies into pasta sauces or anything else and then refreeze.

Could you cook stuff and keep it in the fridge for re heating?

The fish fillet is DPs. He has said he'll have it for dinner although I'm a bit suspect. Should I put it in the fridge or try to cook it now? freezer door has been shut about an hour now.

If it hasn’t defrosted completely it’ll be fine. Don’t open the door for 24 hours.

I'd just shut the door and let it all fully freeze again. There's nothing there that sounds too worrying to me.

I’d just move it all to the fridge and eat it over the next few days, except the ice cream.

I know this doesn't answer your question but after this happen to us a few times I bought a freezer monitor, like the one below. It sounds an alarm if the temperature in the freezer drops below a level that you set and it has certainly been worth the investment.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07B9QZHLS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?psc=1&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&ie=UTF8

Thanks for the advice everyone and thank you for that link happytoseeyou - that's a great idea.

www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/food-safety-during-power-outage is from the US Gov, and is quite useful (scroll down for the frozen bit). As a general rule, if food has ice crystals still, it's fine. The key thing is that the food has not gone above 4 degrees, as that's the temp at which significant bacterial growth can begin.

Hmm not sure anything had ice crystals on tbh.

Everything was still cold though - definitely higher than fridge temperature.

This happened to us recently, really annoying . One freezer was left open, the other (fridge freezer) broke down - all in a week!!

We left stuff that hadn't defrosted, ate the ice cream and cooked up what he could, using it for dinner, chopped up breaded chicken for snacks etc. Wasn't too bad, we wasted a few bits but nothing major

Sorry, I meant ice in rather than on! As in the food is still very very cold, partially frozen, not entirely yielding.

I am generally very cautious about this kind of stuff, though, even when I know it will be safe really, I often can't bring myself to use it (see chilled supermarket food left in the car, milk left on the side etc - I tend to think about it for ages and then chuck out!).