Protect Your Freezer!

How much do you depend on your freezer?

So many homesteaders have a freezer full of food!  It’s a big convenience when our gardens ‘come in’ all at once, to be able to freeze extra and then can or dehydrate as the garden wanes and is less productive.  During hunting season, freezers are priceless to store meat or chill it before processing.  Most of us probably can meat, but still, freezing food is invaluable to a homestead.  And a full freezer could cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to replace that food, should something happen to the appliance itself.  Not to mention the security of knowing where your food is and where it came from.

Have you taken precautions for protecting that most valuable appliance?  Here are a few steps that could save a lot of time, headache, work and expense.  Take a few simple precautions  to protect that investment and secure your family’s food storage.

headache, work, and expense.  Take a few simple precautions to protect that investment and secure your family’s food storage.

Protect Your Freezer

• A chest freezer costs less to run than an upright, due to opening the door and cold air ‘spilling out’.
• If power fails, keep the door closed as long as possible, until power is restored. If the outage is extended, remove food in batches and try to leave the door closed as much as possible.
• Empty space is more expensive to cool. If your freezer is half full, the empty air space costs more to keep cool than when it is full.  Recycle your milk jugs, juice jugs, two litre bottles, and other food-grade plastic containers.  Fill with water and then place around the edges of the frozen food.   Fill the empty space as you get more jugs.  This contributes in two ways: 1.  Should the power go out, the ice buy a few days to help keep everything cool until the freezer is fixed or everything can be preserved in other ways.  2.  In an emergency, this is a source of clean, stored water.
• Pack foods in water. Some foods can be packaged in water  or other liquid to help prevent freezer burn.  This too, allows a few more days should an emergency outage happen.
• If you are anticipating an extended power interruption within the next 2-3 days, reduce temperature to -10 degrees F or -20 degrees F. The colder the food, the longer it takes to thaw.
• In most cases, food in a full freezer will stay frozen approximately two days. If it’s half full, food may stay frozen up to one day.  Precautions such as filling the air space with ice will increase the length of time food will stay frozen.
• A freezer full of meat will remain colder longer than a freezer full of baked food, due to the density and amount of liquids.
• Invest in a good freezer thermometer. Take the temperature in the freezer in two or three different locations to make sure the food is at a safe temperature.
• Package food in flat containers. Zipper bags can be filled, the air removed, and stored flat on their sides to stack better and closer.  This eliminates wasted air space that is more expensive to keep cool.
• According to Joan Hegerfeld-Baker, former SDSU Extension Food Safety Specialist, If food is safe to eat, it is safe to refreeze. “When you find that the freezer is off, check the temperature in two or three locations,” said Hegerfeld-Baker. “Then, take a look at the packages of food. If foods still contain ice crystals and/or if the inside temperature is 40°F or lower and has been at that temperature no longer than one to two days, food that was safe when it was originally frozen should still be safe. It can be refrozen or cooked and eaten.” Food held at 40°F or higher should be examined more closely, Hegerfeld-Baker said. “If the color or odor of thawed beef, pork, lamb or poultry is poor or questionable and you are not certain of the amount of time the food was at 40°F for higher discard the meat,” she said.
• It is difficult to tell by the odor whether vegetables, shellfish and cooked foods are spoiled. Bacteria multiply rapidly in these foods, so do not eat or refreeze any that have thawed completely.
• If ice crystals remain in foods, it’s safe to refreeze them. The texture will be compromised, nutritional value may be lower, and flavor and color will not be top quality. So it may be better to can or dehydrate any food that is beginning to thaw. If refreezing food, do so quickly to retain the best quality.
• Probably the most important safe precaution you can take, is to invest in a freezer alarm. These range in price from $45 to $150 and can last for years.  But in comparison to the potential loss of thousands of dollars of food plus your sense of food security, this is a minimal cost for maintenance.
• Don’t plug the freezer into a GFCI outlet, unless you have a freezer monitor. Power fluctuations can knock off the GFCI outlet and cause a loss of power.
• Good maintenance is key. Vacuum the coils periodically and check temperature regularly to make sure the temperatures aren’t fluctuating.  Defrost regularly.  Check seals and gaskets for closure.