Hi...anyone practice or follow to eat frozen Meat like chicken, mutton, beef or pork?. Few people are express their views or drawback ideas about frozen meats. So please share your opinion.
I keep around 10,000 pounds of Pork/Beef/Poultry/Deer/Rabbit/Tree Rat/Fish in five 35cuft Chest and one 26cuft upright freezers at -30. Only drawback I can see is if the power goes out for a extended period of time and you don't have a alternate way to power them. Have had few folks Boldly State they only eat fresh never frozen meat....... Have yet to see one of them that can tell the difference. Kind of goes without saying that if you raise livestock, you don't kill a steer to cut one steak out You gotta do something with the other 500-600 pounds of beef on the carcass or it gets kind of ripe. The Porker Freezer/ One Ribeye was frozen for a couple of years, One was not Frozen. Ignore the Pork Steaks they are off the same hog butchered the day before.
As usual Thunder5Ranch hits the nail on the head. My limited experience with frozen meat is that for most people it doesn't really work in the long run as the "new" freezers don't really cut it. 80 years ago we had "locker" storage in town at the meat market. It was kept at -30 and you rented a space to keep your meat when it was butchered, cut and double wrapped in freezer paper. You took what you needed home weekly and kept it in refrigerator. It was kept at a constant -30 and at worst you would get "freezer burn", a discoloration of the meat and a slight drying out as I remember it. Fast forward to today's home freezer as part of the refrigerator. It is kept at least 0 degrees, not -30, is warmed at least once per day to keep it "frost free" and some method is used to remove the moisture causing the "frost". Then if it is an upright, the cold air falls out every time you open the door and warm air rushes in, and the moisture in the air freezes on the exposed surfaces and has to be removed in the next defrost cycle. When you add food, it well may be at room temp or higher, that in turn warms up the surrounding foods and starts the freeze thaw cycle all over again. It does well with TV dinners, ice cream, etc, that is going to be used in a couple weeks and the food will be safe to eat. Most will not keep food pleasant to look at and ready to be cooked well for 6 months however. If you pre freeze your meat etc to -30 before adding it to the storage units, wrap it well, use a chest type unit kept at -30, limit the opening time, and do not "defrost" it, it will keep food edible for several years. I have kept frozen dried fruits, cooking oils, fish,frozen veggies, etc in a chest freezer for several years and still were very usable. Not a big meat eater, but it is worth having a freezer to keep nuts, cooking oils, dried fruits, garden veggies, etc, usable for a lot longer time. The biggest lesson I learned is that a very loud temp alert is an absolute must as one unit was on a circuit that blew a breaker, sump pump went bad, and I lost everything in it. Usual prep things apply, power, security, rotating supplies, must process in order to move, etc. Most new energy efficient ones don't use much power, but seem to last about 10 years or less, not 30 years like the old ones, and are quite expensive and not made in the USA.
We both left out the biggest advance in frozen anything storage! Vacuum Bags, Where old butchers paper was good for 6 Months Vac bags are good for 6+ years. A good habit I got into with the meat business was logging the freezer temps twice per day, every day. If not doing that yep you need some kind of audio/visual alarm system. If you are into the tech stuff I am seeing freezers with wireless connections that talk to you via a smart phone. On another note a standard freezer from the Box store will run at 0- minus 5 if you want to go lower you are going to have to modify the existing PSI from the standard 5 to 8-9 PSI which instantly VOIDS the Warranty and will cause the compressor to burn out much sooner. Better to spend more money and get commercial freezers with a cascade cooling system...... Basically two compressors running two different coolants that work in stages and a heat exchanger. For the average freezer user there really is no need for Ultra Low Freezers and the 0 to -5 works fine. I used to run a total of 16 35cuft freezers in the market meat trailers and the warehouse. I ran 10 standard Whirlpools in the trailers because they all emptied out over the course of a week of going to markets and did fine keeping temps in the +5 to 0 range even with the constant opening and closing. The 6 Commercial Cascades were fixed in the on farm warehouse and run at -30, they restocked the trailer freezers as needed. I sold it but the big main freezer was a 12x24 super insulated metal box walk in freezer that also used a very large commercial cascade system. When I brought a trailer load of meat back from the packing plant (Came back in the +20 to +30 temp Range) It went into the walk in and spaced out for fast freezing down to -30. She was a energy hog but she was one cold Lady! Her new owner LOVES HER and had some upgrades done to make her more energy efficient but still just as cold hearted. Something folks rarely consider with freezing is the Thermal Mass of what is being frozen. If you bring a steers worth of 30 degree beef back and pack it into a freezer that it will fill up. IT IS GOING TO TAKE A LONG TIME for that to reach 0 degrees in the center due to the thermal mass. Much better to use a couple of freezers and space things out so it all freezes fast and then combine it into one freezer. Or have the packing plant hold it in their freezer until it is -20 and then transport it home and into one freezer. That would not work for me since I use a smaller plant and my 10 steers or 20 hogs at a time filled a large portion of their freezer. So they cooled it down to +20 to +30 and we loaded it all into my cold box truck to free their freezer space up for other customers. Plant is only 15 minutes from the farm so no big deal. Rolled in backed up to the walk in pulled the rolling ramp out and sent it all into the walk in for fast freezing after moving everything that was already frozen to - 30 to the warehouse freezers. That defeated the thermal mass problem with large volumes of meat and getting it frozen quickly. Thermal Mass is also your friend. A Freezer FULL of meat at 0 will stay at ZERO for a solid 24 hours and will stay below 30 for several days if the power goes out. A half full freezer will NOT, the less thermal mass in the freezer the faster it warms and thaws. The more gaps and spaces between packages......... the faster it warms and thaws. The more tightly packed and full the the slower it warms and thaws. Since sort of retiring and down sizing the whole operation I kept 5 of the 6 cascade freezers One for BEEF/PORK/POULTRY/FRUITS and Vegetables and the 5th is kind of a catch all for frozen pizzas and such. I miss the big walk in freezer and the big walk in fridge at times........ I don't miss the $1800- $2200 per Month Electric bills! So still learning how to live with the small scale version. Really dreading moving 5 of the freezers into the food shipping container. The warehouse is becoming Mrs T5Rs Craft Krap Workshop and she wants "THOSE DAMN FREEZERS OUT" of her newly claimed territory LOL. Another note about Cascade system freezers.... they weigh a couple hundred pounds more than the very light weight Box Store Freezers. My upright that changes from Fridge-freezer-to Ultra Cold Freezer with the flip of a switch has 3 stages of compressors and weighs in at 370 pounds, a box store upright freezer come in at around 120 pounds for the same size. One does not simply grab a friend to help move them
I KEEP MEAT, AIRTIGHT, IN A MANUAL DEFROST CHEST FREEZER AT 0 DEG F. FOR YEARS AND IT IS STILL GREAT!
Beef, pork, chicken, turkey, venison, various seafood and fish...all frozen in vacuum bags around 5-10 deg F. Don't own a frost free freezer but rarely have ice build-up. Lasts for years without issues. The old meat lockers were great...store a few steers and hogs then bring 'em home when the old (1950s vintage) Coldspot got low. Took a while...28 cu ft. That would keep contents at -20F without breathing hard.
Frozen meat hurts my teeth, We prefer our meat on the pit flipped occasionally for consistent cooking thru and thru. About 30 minutes for a slow cooked burger topped with American cheese then served on bread with oven baked Tatar tots or fry's.
I live in AK. Unless I pay $$$$ for local meat, frozen is the only choice. Hell, even some of the bread is shipped up frozen...
I am asking this question, because few people are facing food poison issue due to eat frozen meat Items.
I DO NOT THINK YOU SHOULD EAT FROZEN MEAT MAYBE WARM IT UP TO 40 OR 50 DEG F I LIKE MINE REAL HOT I KNOW SOME PEOPLE THAT EAT RAW MEAT BUT NOT I, YET, JMHO
…..seems to be more of an issue with the maintenance of the meat being frozen (ie it has thawed and deteriorated) vs frozen/thawed/cooked meat being an issue. Oldest I know I ate was over 8yrs. It was vac packed venison that got lost in the freezer. Put it in a stew and it was just fine.
