Frozen meat

If the cryovaced meat is kept below 5 degrees C all the time it should be fine. I do that when I go on an extended sailing trip, the meat is cryovaced and frozen at home, on departure day it goes into the boat fridge - no freezer - and has been kept there on trips exceeding 2 months. The meat was fine.

Just don't thaw it completely and then re chill it.

Hi David,
You should be fine. Our old Finch gas fridge often soft-freezes the cryovaced meat and we've never had a problem. Keep it nice and cold until you want to use it and don't keep too long.
Louise

I have a Waeco but borrowed a friends 50L Engel for a trip across to Perth from the Gold Coast. I put my frozen vac packed meat at the bottom of the fridge and ran it on the 2.5 setting on the dial. I placed a layer of cardboard on top of the frozen meat and filled the rest of the fridge with essentials like milk, cold food and of course, beer. When I got to Perth the meat at the bottom was still frozen yet the stuff in the middle and at the top stayed very cold but did not freeze. The temp gauge in the Engel, reading from somewhere near the bottom I suspect, was -1

What I am saying is experiment with your Waeco to see if you can achieve this. If it has a straight dial setting then somewhere just above 3 out of 10 steps on the dial works for my 40L Waeco. If you also have a temperature gauge then try running your fridge with a reading of just below zero. The temp at the top should be higher than that reading. Others might find that this doesn't work for their Waecos so it will be interesting to see what they have experienced.

One caveat - the fridge must be full for this to work.

I believe that the above responses have answered the question. Yes. It will be fine.

Just an idea when you get home.

We have two fridges and on each we have an external temperature gauge and a cheap volt meter. Both are easily visible from outside of the car and at night. This lets us easily monitor the fridges and make adjustments as we travel.

The volt meter is wired into the internals of the fridges so that we can be assured they show the actual voltage in the fridge not just the voltage at the car battery. They were purchased from ebay and are identical to ebay item number 220768546856.

The thermometers meters have long enough leads with small sensors on the end that are just dropped into the fridges. Again from ebay and the same as ebay item number 200768203122.

A worthwhile project when back home.

Thermometer meter:


And for the voltage:

Thanks for all the replies,
The wife is feeling much better about it now! We just got off the oodnadatta a d heading to the rock now.

David