Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2

Original poster

Do i really have to bin everything?

45 replies

thunderbuddy · 01/03/2017 13:01

DD has turned the freezer off probably thinking it was the toaster I presume. She noticed last night when she offered to make tea and noticed the veg burgers were a bit defrosted. She said nothing and put them on to cook.

So this afternoon I got home and found the entire chest freezer defrosted. Everything is fully defrosted some of it is warm mush.

Can I really not refreeze anything?
If it has been off since Monday night (I used chicken Monday night and it was still frozen) will any of it be safe to eat tonight?

Swears loudly

OP posts:

SpeckleDust · 01/03/2017 13:48

Blimey - you lot are being a bit over-cautious!

I would go with the more sensible mantra of sniff-checking things (especially meat) to see if it smells bad or not. I would seriously doubt after less than 12 hours un-chilled anything would have grown enough bacteria to make it inedible.

I'd cook any meat/more expensive items and re-freeze them. The cooking process will kill most of the bacteria that has grown anyway.

Disclaimer I never (touch wood) get food-related illnesses from anything I have prepared myself and am very dismissive of use-by dates.

BouleBaker · 01/03/2017 13:49

Are you covered on your house insurance? Sometimes there is a clause in there for freezer failure. Not sure if it covers accidental failure.

littlefrog3 · 01/03/2017 13:51

This has happened to me several times. (The freezer being switched off - and it happened overnight once!) I chucked stuff that has meat in it (beef and chicken burgers, fish, and meat pies etc,) and also ice cream as it's no good once it's been thawed out. But I kept everything else; all the veg, potato wedges, oven chips, hash browns, the vegetarian food we have, onion rings, yorkie puddings, veggie pizza, bread, and most other stuff with no meat.

We are not dead yet, and have never been ill from anything that was re-frozen. As I said, no meat products though. But everything else, yeah...there is no reason why you can't re-freeze it.

SpeckleDust · 01/03/2017 13:53

Out of interest - what have you got in there?

My freezer is playing up at the moment so I've been trying to use everything up from in there. Found 1kg of red gooseberries and made a crumble that was so sharp it made us all nearly cry .

SomewhatIdiosyncratic · 01/03/2017 13:54

I'm fairly lax, but ended up dumping an entire freezer full of warm soggy food courtesy of my 2 year old who'd pulled up a chair and switched the fuse switch off. I discovered when I was making breakfast before work so no chance to cook or save anything. Very depressing to dump so much food.

The switch has tape over it now so he can't to go fiddling.

IsabelleSE19 · 01/03/2017 13:55

ExitStage

Oh fuck OP. What are you going to do with that body you stashed in there?

You can refreeze a body so long as you're not going to eat it.

ExitStage · 01/03/2017 14:07

Isabelle

You're right. Even cannibals have to think of food safety these days.

So OP, cook the body. Gas mark 6, for about three days basting frequently.

DramaAlpaca · 01/03/2017 14:08

Aaargh, what a pain. This happened to us when DH accidentally unplugged the freezer before we went on holiday. The smell when we got back was disgusting, you'd think we really did have a body in there.

As others have said, your insurance might cover it. Ours did. The only thing was we had to keep the stinky defrosted freezer contents until the insurance assessor had seen them to make sure we weren't pulling a fast one.

If it's not too far gone, you might be able to salvage some of it, cook and refreeze, but if it's all soggy mush you'll have to dump it.

bigearsthethird · 01/03/2017 14:22

Your veg and bread will be fine to refreeze. Any meat/fish though you can cook and then refreeze it once its been cooked.

RortyCrankle · 01/03/2017 14:27

OMG please don't re-freeze it all as someone suggested. I know someone who did this and she had food poisoning that was so bad she nearly died. Can you claim on insurance?

moggle · 01/03/2017 14:31

I remember DH doing this in the middle of a heatwave. We'd been going out a few years and had days before moved into our first place together, so the freezer was full of food, lots of meat and stuff, but we were young and couldn't afford to waste it. I was away with work. He left the freezer door slightly ajar and only noticed the next evening. Ran to the 24 hour shop on the corner and bought canned tomatoes, jars of curry sauce etc and spent the night sweating in the heat while cooking all the meat into spag bol, chilli, curry etc to use it all up. He even thought to go beg takeaway containers from the local chinese as we didn't have enough tupperware.
One of those things that made me really love him even more - that he just went and did that without calling and having a self indulgent moan about it to me first, just got on with it and fixed the problem.

Anyway... I personally would refreeze the non meat stuff (except things like ice cream) and if I had time to do it as soon as I noticed, or before it was too warm, I would cook all the meat and refreeze it. However I defrost meat out on the side all the time and it is usually room temp by the time I cook it. I'm happy that thorough cooking kills off any bugs. One thing I would do though is mark the containers and I'd make sure that when I defrosted them I did it by the letter of the 'law' - no leaving those out on the side all day.

drspouse · 01/03/2017 14:38

No you do NOT need to bin everything.

We had a freezer incident when we had a power cut in a storm - 24h off - we knew it was off straight away so did not open it.

Veg we refroze, I think we had some cake/biscuits in the freezer too and did that too.

Raw meat we cooked it - as moggle DH we made stuff with sauce, we also cooked chicken and made a pie - we had 1 thing of pastry that defrosted so we ate that pie straight away and then made 2 more with new, non-frozen pastry so the pies went in the freezer again un-baked (but with chicken cooked) and we baked them to eat later. We also cooked a couple of things in the slow cooker - so I think we had pie day 1, slow cooker 1 day 2 and froze some cooked stew, slow cooker 2 on day 3 and ditto.

Leftovers we put straight in the fridge and ate for lunch/within 3-4 days (they were not properly defrosted by the time the power came back on).

Ice cream we threw out, ditto fish, and bread we just left out and ate ASAP.

The DC were off school/nursery so we were all eating all meals at home!

HappyFlappy · 01/03/2017 14:39

As others have suggested - cook all you can and re-freeze and/or have a party.

And give DD a bill to replace everything to be paid when she gets her first job as an adult. Add interest annually.

drspouse · 01/03/2017 14:39

If it's only been 12 hours, is your freezer on too warm a setting? I find that some things straight out of the freezer, into the fridge, aren't actually defrosted after 12 hours.

CottonSock · 01/03/2017 14:43

I wouldn't bin veggie stuff eithet

TinfoilHattie · 01/03/2017 15:09

Yes cook what you can and refreeze - this happened to me once and I think I spent a whole day cooking sausages and using endless mince for spag bol or chilli.

Original poster

thunderbuddy · 01/03/2017 16:44

Insurance does not cover I have looked.
It is all warm mush, not helped by at least four lollies and ice creams I have found which the kids seem to have taken a bite from and then put back which had nicely melted along with a bag of meatballs which they had seemingly knocked over to find what they needed and have leaked on anything savable.

On the plus side the dog who has an iron like stomach will be having a chicken feast tonight...

OP posts:

DramaAlpaca · 01/03/2017 18:27

Oh that's annoying about the insurance.

On the bright side, at least you'll save on dog food

Trifleorbust · 01/03/2017 19:00

I wouldn't bin veg - why would I? To be honest I probably wouldn't bin any sealed items. I'm lax like that.

Orangedaisy · 01/03/2017 20:55

Make soup with any defrosted veg. This is how we discovered DD loves pea soup, almost worth losing a freezer full for.

Flip

1 2

Swipe left for the next trending thread