Freezer defrosting

[AlmaSinger]

Morning all,

I think the time has finally come to defrost the freezer, but what is the best way of going about it? This mainly needs doing because a huge iceberg of ice had built up of the underside of the top shelf, and I am having trouble fitting things in and closing the drawers.

Is there any way I can hack the ice off without turning the freezer off? This would be especially useful as I do not want to have to eat everything inside the freezer first!

I was wondering this too - I have an upright fridge freezer but I can't seemto turn the freezer part off without turning the fridge off too.

I've seen a fridge / freezer defroster spray in the Betterware catalogue so I might get that - anyone tried it?

Currently our freezer is a little one separate to the fridge, but previously we have had a combined one and I never, ever managed to turn off just the freezer!

There's no avoiding it, you do have to turn the power off.

Put all the frozen food in the kitchen sink, it's only going to be there for an hour and it will still be frozen solid if it's all squashed together.

Leave the door open for 30 minutes to get the defrosting started, then get your hairdryer and start gently blowing some warm air (not hot air) onto the iceberg. Get a plastic or wooden (not metal!) spatula and start scraping out the ice. It shouldn't take very long.

I actually find it really satisfying to chip off the sheets of ice. Is that weird ?

Hairdryer! Wow what a fab idea! I have a smeg fridge freezer. Don't ever buy one, the seals are crap and I have to defrost it every 3 or 4 months.

Oh don't use a hairdryer you will electricute yourself! No Joke.

My method is unplug fridge freezer
Put contents of freezer into fridge as much as you can fit
Anything left can be put in cool bags if you have them or old fashioned way is wrap in newspaper.
Boil the kettle and fill a mixing bowl with the boiling water and put it on on the middle shelf, shut the door.

This will speed up the process considerably, keep refilling the bowl and put it in a different spot each time.

My Dad is an electrician, I told him about this and he had a quite entertaining fit Please don't use a hairdryer < or an Iron he says >

Ok...number of methods.

If you have a steam cleaner it may have attachments you can use that is a very good option, and very quick.

Other option as said is bowls of steaming water. Personally I do this and get a medicine syringe with v hot/boiling water to target the big lumps where they are fixed (then they will fall off and can be removed as ice and don't actually waste energy actually defrosting).

Personally I go for the hair dryer although mine is technically frost free and only actually freezes one bit at bottom so no dripping melt water onto harder.

*onto hairdryer (sorry predictive text)

Yes schroeder is right! When I've had freezers that need defrosting I always used to fill baking trays with boiling water and put them on the racks and then close the door for a few minutes - this helps the ice to melt a bit - it will start to fall off in big lumps (sometimes I have had to pull at the ice to speed things up but never use metal or hack too hard incase you pierece anything). My widowed dad has used defrost spray he bought off QVC which he says was very good.

Yes, never use metal implements to scrape off ice

I use a hairdryer and I don't see the problem - I never put it into the freezer so there's no danger of it getting splashed.