Freezer defrosted - what do you throw out?

[QueenofmyPrinces]

I came down this morning to find the door had been left open on one our freezers and so everything has defrosted.

In this freezer we have ice lollies, ice cream, pizzas, Frozen chips, fish fingers, chicken nuggets, chicken burgers, turkey burgers, sausages etc etc - basically, all the quick go-to foods. We also have portions of batch cooked lasagnes and chillis.

Thankfully all our fresh meat is kicked in another freezer.

Anyhow - I told my husband that everything, bar the ice lollies and frozen chips, had to be thrown out as they contain meat.

He looked horrified and said it wasn’t necessary and I was being OTT!

Surely I’m not?

I have yet to empty the freezer for fear of me actually wasting food that according to my husband, once re-frozen will be ok to eat?!?!

YANBU - everything needs throwing.
YANBU - you’re being OTT!

How much can you eat in the next 3 days?

Cook it and have a mass buffet for days 😁

Can’t you cook it all and shove it in the fridge and spend the next few days eating it?

When ours was left open we cooked up loads, refroze some (still alive to tell the tale) and ate some over that week. There was no way I was losing £150-200 worth of food. There was horror stories out there but they are mostly bollocks.

The raw meat products will be fine if they've only been defrosted for a short while. Cook them all well and refreeze.

Put the lasagne etc in the fridge to eat over the next few nights.

Cook it all and refreeze once cooked / eat the stuff that won’t freeze well

The freezer door was left open from about 6pm last night until I realised at about 8am this morning....so 26 hours. It was the big puddle of water on the kitchen floor that gave it away.

Great idea about eating chilli and lasagne for the next 3 days

6pm last night til 8am is 14 hours surely. It won't have gone off in that time. I'd cook it today and put the batch cooked stuff in the fridge

You might find some of the food that was more in the middle of the freezer and lower isn’t so far gone that you can’t just keep it as it was. Best to go through and check.
My DH is an arse for leaving our freezer open.

Yeah cook it all and either fridge and eat or refreeze once cooked

For me it would depend how defrosted things were, so is probably go through and bin some things and keep others, and as others have said thaw fully and share with neighbours/ eat some of the meals over the next few days. I hate eating food but agree not poisoning people is important too 😂

How embarrassing about my poor math

Have no idea why I thought it was 26 hours

There are 3 bags of sausages, 3 bags of nuggets, 4 boxes of chicken burgers, 4 boxes of turkey burgers, 4 pizzas and 2 boxes of fish fingers.

That’s a lot of cooking

Was the stuff still cold? Like fridge cold? Anything that is would be fine refozen, maybe just sharpie it with a note to eat quickly once defrosted again.

If you think about it, if you freeze when you buy stuff, that had three days date on it, you’ve used up one of those days, if it’s still fridge cold.

I hate wasting food

My DH is an arse for leaving our freezer open.

My 6 year old is the culprit here....

Oh and it’s all still fine to eat/cook now I’d think. It’s just as if it’s been out for a couple of hours, bearing in mind the defrosting time.

I’m going to go and see what can be salvaged as opposed to just putting it all in the bin then.

14 hours, is anything still cold? Ive had stuff longer than that in a camping coolbox and it's still been frozen.

Cook anything raw and refreeze.

Batch cook stuff, fridge for three possible four days.Pizza etc, well you are going to eat a lot of buffet!

Chicken burgers, fish fingers, nuggets and pizza will be fine. I'd probably bin the sausages

The pizzas and the sausages can live defrosted in the fridge for at least a week. Probably the burgers too. I'd cook all the nuggets then put them in wraps, cold, for lunches today and tomorrow. Chuck the fish fingers.

Eat the lasagne and chilli for dinner the next few nights.

Cook everything. Eat that for the next few days. The sausages can be frozen again once cooked.

You can cook and eat what you can, and potentially some of it can be refrozen AFTER it has been cooked - so burgers and sausages etc could be salvageable that way. Today and tomorrow (cook it all today and fridge overnight) will be interesting eating!

But unfortunately it sounds like a lot of restocking may be needed.

Will your house insurance cover it? Some policies do.

You'll probably find the excess on the policy makes it uneconomical to make a claim and you could only claim if you have accidental damage and freezer cover. They'd also probably expect you to mitigate the losses by salvaging what you can. It'd be different if you went away and came back to a defrosted freezer after an indeterminate amount of time with everything spoiled.

When this happened to me I just cooked everything and refroze it.

I'd cook (where necessary) and refreeze pretty much all of it and leave some bits out to eat over the next few days, eg, burgers. I certainly wouldn't throw any of it away bar the melted ice cream. I would also refreeze the nuggets, etc, if I couldn't manage to eat them all in that time. It's never done me any harm in the past, eg, forgot to freeze some nugget type things before (shopping came around 10pm, didn't see them until early morning) so put them in when I realised...they were still fine.