My local grocery has what they call a meat stock up sale about every two months that has some good prices. I live alone and on a pretty tight budget so like to take advantage of this to put some meat in my freezer. One thing they always have is chicken for a very inviting price. However it is previously frozen and sold only in 10 pound bags. needless to say I’m not going to cook 10 pounds of anything at one time. So…can I package this in single serve portions and safely refreeze it?
Refreezing food is not recommended. You would be best off cooking that 10 pounds (or whatever) of chicken, and then freezing what you can’t eat right away.
I’ve done plenty of microwave partial thaws and a quick refreeze after repackaging. You don’t need to thaw it completely to get the 10# hunk soft enough to bust apart into a half dozen portions. Especially when aided by a heavy knife and mallet.
I have done exactly what you are suggesting more times than I can remember. I have never suffered any ill effects from doing so. Just because the meat was frozen doesn’t mean any bacteria have grown to dangerous levels before you refreeze it. Also, it’s chicken- who doesn’t thoroughly cook chicken (refrozen or not) in this day and age?
Now I wait for someone else to say the quality will suffer from refreezing, even if it’s not unsafe to do so. I’m going to guess you’re considering leg quarters- believe me, as long as you wrap them up so as to prevent freezer burn and eat them up in a moth or two, they’ll be just fine.
Yeah, I buy those ten pound bags of leg quarters all the time, let them partially thaw (n hour or so, maybe by the time I get them home) to the point you can rip the pieces apart, and refreeze them. in separate baggies. Sometimes as low as 39c a pound. But I always cook chicken stewed in a pot with other stuff, so I can’t vouch for it maintaining a good frying texture.
I’ve done. It’s fine.
Because refreezing generally results in lower quality taste/texture of the food. It’s still perfectly healthy; just not top quality taste.
But like others have said, there is no need to completely thaw it out to separate into individual freezer portions.
You can also put the chicken in warm running water (the “hot” tap in the sink) and melt through the ice holding the pieces together without giving time for the heat to completely thaw through the meat.
This is probably safer than thawing naturally at room temperature then re-freezing, just because the total time in the ‘danger zone’ temperature range is shorter.
As others said the primary risk from thawing and refreezing meat is deterioration in quality, not safety - although if something is thawed naturally (say overnight) and re-frozen, and this is done again and again, you have to add up all those thawed times and treat as if that was one continuous period of non-chilled storage.
Thank you all for your input.
This is not the same as refreezing meat that has been completely thawed.
I guess the thing you have to be careful of if you are running the stuff under water is splashing of potential contamination - a lot of people seem to like to wash fresh meat under running water before cooking it, but current advice is not to do that - not because it makes the meat unsafe, but because washing a raw chicken in your sink may splash the juices onto nearby surfaces etc.
The OP said the chicken was previously frozen. I take that to mean that it is not sold still frozen, but is already thawed when purchased. It seems to me that the responses saying it’s not necessary to thaw it completely are missing the point.
Which was kind of the whole point of the comment–suggesting a way to separate the pieces of chicken without completely thawing them.
I have always found that a good hammer mostly eliminates the need for any thawing prior to separation.
I read it as the store is selling 10# bags of frozen bird. Like every store around me does when they do the bulk meat sales. I can’t imagine a good sized store having time or space to purposely thaw a ton or two of chicken in previously bulked 10# bags. Especially if they only sell 1/2 ton this week.