I’m looking for reassurance that my food is safe. No gory stories please.
About a couple years ago, I bought a freezer thermometer after my refrigerator was broken and was fixed. Before that, I didn’t know what the temperature was in the freezer and assumed the food was safe. Well the refrigerator temperature is fine as it never goes below 40 degrees.
And the freezer temperature is fine for the most part as I can get it to hover around zero degrees. But the freezer has a defrost feature where the temperature goes to 10 degrees and up to 20 degrees for some period of time. I’m guessing the period of time is between 15-30 minutes since I can’t open the freezer to check or it would throw off the reading.
So is it safe for frozen food to get to 10 or 20 degrees for some length of time?
Yea, that’s fine, 30 minutes at 20 degrees isn’t going to present any problems at all. Don’t forget, that’s the air temp, it will take a lot longer for the food to rise from 0 to 20. Your fridge, OTOH seems a few degrees warm, mine came out of the box set at 37.
My comment about my refrigerator wasn’t very accurate. Sorry. I set my refrigerator temperature to 30 degrees, so that’s the normal temperature. It goes to 35 degrees when it does the defrost cycle, so it generally doesn’t go above 40 degrees.
Guy who worked in the meat department of the supermarket, here.
In summary, what Joey P said. It is normal for a freezer to warm up for a while. Your food should remain hard frozen for that short while. Think of what happens to the same frozen food if you leave it on the counter (much warmer) for 15-20 minutes. Nothing really, it would still be rock solid.
Further to the replies so far, bear in mind that the difference between zero and twenty degrees isn’t one of food safety but rather of keeping quality, mainly the slowing of oxidation (rancidity). Food can be kept safely at twenty indefinitely, but flavor will suffer sooner. Not aware of any specific guidelines, but would imagine that occasional brief spells of twenty don’t cause much trouble in this regard either.
No understands the concept of defrost better then people that have walk-ins, where you can really feel it.
“Joey the cooler is warm”
“Let me know in 30 minutes of it’s still warm”
That’s usually the end of that.
My FIL is head of maintence at a hospital and recently went around and retimed the defrosters on all the coolers and freezers in the buiding to go at night. He got sick of getting the sames calls at the same time every day. Now that it’s at night, he knows if someone’s calling about a warm freezer, there’s actually a problem.
MrFloppy, neat refrigerator. Sounds pretty high tech.
Sapo, it helps to know where you got your knowledge from. Since you know that meat won’t spoil at that temperature, that gives me comfort. I’m a vegan and don’t have any meat to worry about so that was helpful.
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PBear42**, interesting about the food quality. Since I don’t eat meat, I’m less worried about freezer burn and meat drying out and stuff. I mostly keep frozen vegetables and beans in the freezer. But thanks for the info.
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JoeyP**, thanks again. Besides wasting energy (which I do a lot of anyway), is there a downside to having my refrigerator be too cold. I don’t mind the occasional frozen thing in the refrigerator, but generally liquids don’t freeze in there.
The problem is going to be things freezing, but more then just the obvious liquids. Do you have a problem with vegetables going bad sooner then you’d think they should? Leafy items like parsley and cilantro turning slimey after a day or two? In general, produce doesn’t take well to be frozen, even just a little and for not to long.
I’d raise it up to somewhere between 35-37.
Is there a reason why you keep it down so low?
Ah, OK. No problems there. I haven’t noticed a problem with leafy greens but then I don’t buy any that are in my refrigerator that long, so maybe that’s why I haven’t noticed.
I just keep it low because I feel better when the defrost cycle makes it go up 5-7 degrees that my refrigerator is still under 40 degrees.