Does thorough cooking give you a second life on refreezing previously frozen food?
I have some turkeys that I bought in a frozen state (49 cents per pound!!) and I’m roasting both of them, but I know I’ll be sick of turkey long before it goes bad on me, so I want to freeze some turkey meat for when I’ll be able to look at it without groaning again. If it’s thoroughly cooked, way beyond any bacteria being able to live in it, it seems to me refreezing presents no health problem, but I’m also aware of the prohibition against refreezing previously frozen food. Is that an oversimplification that I may freely ignore, or is there something to it that I’m unaware of?
I do this all the time, have done for as long as I can recall. Never had a problem
Just use your good judgement on the freshness and quality of the food at each stage and thaw properly, cook thoroughly, freeze properly, thaw properly, reheat thoroughly.
I’m no expert, but I don’t think you have to worry about health concerns. The taste and texture of the bird may be affected, though (although I doubt even that).
This is a question I’ve always meant to ask, too. I thaw out ground beef and make a big batch of spaghetti sauce or chili, and want to freeze the leftovers. So far I’ve avoided it, but now I’ll go ahead and re-freeze and not worry about it.
We do this quite often and there’s never been a problem. We vaccum seal the leftovers in ~1qt servings for freezing and then later when we want to heat it back up we plop the bag in a pan of simmering water and let it sit for half an hour or so. By then it’s no longer frozen solid and can be heated on the stove in just a few minutes.
I’ve never frozen anything with rice or potatoes in it but everything else has worked out fine. Its also a good way to make homemade meals for camping.
I’ve heard that the mushiness is from the ice crystals cutting the cell walls in the food. The longer it takes to freeze, the larger the crystals and the more mushy the food will get. Freezing the food quickly will make smaller crystals which won’t cut the cells as much. If possible, put the food in the coldest part of your freezer so it freezes as fast as possible.
Ditto. It’s a routine part of my cooking, especially in winter, to make extra and freeze some of it; and most of the time the ingredients, especially in winter, came out of the freezer to start with.
Proper cooking is a reset.
Potatoes IME don’t freeze well. I don’t know how the commercial frozen potato people do it, but when I tried I got awful texture. Not dangerous, though.
Some things with rice seem to freeze OK – soups, for instance. Rice pudding didn’t work, again texture problems.
And if possible, don’t freeze too much at once; and if there’s multiple packages, spread them around in the freezer until they’re frozen. I have two chest freezers and if there’s a lot of stuff I’ll divide it up between them.
Refreezing cooked food that has had frozen ingredients in it is pretty standard. Nothing at all wrong with it. I do it all the time – never any issue. My usual routine is buy meat on sale – throw it in the freezer – make a stew one day – freeze any leftovers for a future lunch.
I’ve even frozen and refrozen uncooked meat. I bought a giant pork loin at Costco a while back and forgot to cut it up into thirds or quarters to freeze separately. So I unthawed the whole thing in my fridge, portioned it out, and refroze it. (That I did look up to see if it would be okay, though I couldn’t see why not.) I’ve made chops and roasts since with the re-frozen meat, and I couldn’t tell any difference. Texture seemed perfectly fine. Flavor was normal.
What they said about refreezing. It’s significantly aesthetic concerns.
Cooked turkey freezes really nicely if you slice it and immerse the slices in gravy. I often buy a big turkey at a post-Christmas reduced price, roast the whole bird, carve it, make gravy from the bones and giblets, then portion it out into containers and freeze. Really easy Sunday dinner when you only have to think about prepping the vegetables