Thursday, Oct 29, 2009 at 14:38
Tony. I can't instantly find any specifics, but I seem to remember people, and even spurts, saying that fish and chicken may not be as durable as lamb and beef. But it is all relative: if you have a mishap, and say the fridge is deprived of power for a few hours, then you would have to treat thawed raw chicken a bit carefully. But I would have no worries with raw frozen chicken at, say, minus 10 or thereabouts lasting for weeks or longer. Even cool raw chicken (say around zero or plus 3 or 4 degrees) would have to be fine for several days. We tend to use chicken tights fillets (no bones) because they are more compact than, say, chicken quarters. If you have a problem
cook them up, if not, leave them raw and frozen.
To give you an idea, last month, we left
Adelaide with 12 meat meals for 2 (one meal of raw steaks; the rest precooked casseroles, curries etc.) plus another 6 meals for 2 for some friends who we wre re-stocking at Mount Dare. That whole lot, plus four 1.5 litre ice blocks, were all frozen at
home to about minus 14 degrees. The total cold mass was enough to ensure NOTHING thawed in the next two weeks, despite the fridge getting up to around minus 6 at the worst (ambient temp around 40 degrees once or twice, mostly in the thirties in the day time, and down to around 12 overnight.)
I had the thermostat on about setting 2 (OK, I confess its an Engel) over night, and flat out while travelling (about 4 hours only per day). Back in
Adelaide 12 days later, we threw away the last three blocks of ice.
Only if the meat thaws will it make a real difference whether you freeze while raw, or
cook first. But we play safe, and
cook a lot first, just to create a 'secondary safety' margin.
Remember, if you buy a thermometer with a memory, you can review the maximum temp from time to time to make sure you haven't missed anything. Most of the cheap Dick Smith/Jaycar/ Engel models have this.
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