Freezer disaster!!

[perhapstomorrow]

Help. I've just realised our freezer has been unplugged and its defrosted! I'm so upset as it was full of my preps. Is there anything I can save? I have bread, meat, veg, butter and cheese in there. I am not sure how long it was unplugged for but it's in the garage so everything is still cold. There's at least a couple hundred pounds worth of food. Any advise welcome.

If the meat was frozen raw cook it and refreshed

Refreeze even

I think our home insurance covers freezer disasters. Could this be an option?

Cook and refreeze meat and fish. Veg mainly refreezes with no harm if it is still cold. Ice-cream may be a right off.

Looks like the things in the centre of the freezer are still frozen. I've got about 5 packs of sausages and some bacon that will need using. I think the veg is ok. All the frozen fruit has defrosted, so we will be having lots of smoothies for the next week. Do you think it will be ok to refreeze cheese? I have about 2kg in there.

Thawed or partially thawed food in the freezer may be safelyrefrozenif it still contains ice crystals or is at 40 °F or below. Partial thawing andrefreezingmay affect the quality of some food, but the food will be safe to eat.

That's according to the gov site for food safety

Oh, love. This happened to me just before dd was born. As pp have said, cook any meat.

Fruit is fine to refreeze, but if its juicy (eg berries) then it will be a solid block.

The cheese will be fine to refreeze, but might change texture so better for cooking than using as is.

Looks like things aren't quite so bad as I first thought. The upside is that I've now ordered a fridge/freezer alarm. Will mean I can monitor the temp from inside the house and if it starts rising it will sound an alarm.

I hope you manage to sort it out. I sympathise so much.

Happened here too. Now I keep my fish at the back/bottom of the drawers and veg at the front.