Freezer Food Storage Times
September 11, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
The most popular food preserving method is freezing. Except for the risk of power loss and the resultant spoilage (if more than ~24 hours), freezing food is simple, easy and convenient. A common question about freezing food is how long will foods last in the freezer?
First, be sure that your freezer is at least 0 degrees F (-18°C), preferably -5 degrees F (-21°C). Check this by getting yourself a freezer thermometer for this purpose (available at your grocery store or most other general merchandise shops), and leave it in your freezer for several hours before measuring.
Even though food will freeze below 32 degrees F, you must (or better said… you ‘really should’) keep your freezer at 0°F or less. The reason is that low temperature microbes will still develop below 32°F, but are very much stalled at 0°F or below. I have read that the life of your food is cut in half when comparing 0°F to 20°F !
Another tip is to keep your freezer fairly full. This will serve a number of positive factors. You will have more food (duh). It takes lots less energy to keep foods at freezing temperatures than it does keeping air at freezing temperatures. If your power goes out, the frozen foods will help maintain freezing temperatures for a time (an air filled freezer will warm rapidly).
Foods will eventually spoil in the freezer. Some microbes will still grow at low temperatures, albeit very slowly (the colder it is, the slower they reproduce).
Most freezer food charts that I have seen are related to food quality and/or nutrition. Most recommendations generally consensus that freezer foods should be consumed within a year. This is a good rule of thumb. Most foods frozen beyond one year will have lost much of their quality, and although they may not be entirely spoiled, the nutritional value and taste may be quite less than appealing.
Freezer Storage Times For Good Quality
| Meat (ground) | 3 to 4 months |
| Meat (fresh, steaks, roasts) | 6 to 12 months |
| Pork | 6 to 8 months |
| Poultry (chicken, turkey, etc.) | 12 months |
| Hot dogs | 1 to 2 months |
| Lunch meat | 1 to 2 months |
| Bacon and Sausage | 1 to 2 months |
| Leftovers (cooked meat) | 2 to 6 months |
| Butter | 5 to 6 months |
| Cheese (hard) | 6 to 12 months |
| Cheese (soft, shredded) | 4 months |
| Eggs (removed from shell) | 12 months |
| Milk | 1 month |
| Fruits | 12 months |
| Vegetables (cooked) | 1 month |
| Vegetables (uncooked) | 12 months |
| Onions (uncooked) | 3 to 6 months |
| Baked (cakes, bread, pies, biscuits) | 6 months |
(data source: foodsafety.gov, Encyclopedia of Country Living)
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To those that have the money there are freezers that will keep food at 40 or 50 degrees below zero and I was told once that food kept that cold is good for many years. I do not know anything about this other than what someone that worked at an appliance store told me about these super freezers. Maybe Ken can find out more on this because it would really extend the life of food big time for those that can afford such a freezer.
One sure fire trick is to use one of those vacuum sealers (Seal-a-Meal) units. this will also extend your frozen shelf life times by quite a bit, per their charts.
I have a question. After freezing rice/beans for long-term storage in 5 gal buckets, can you safely seal them using oxygen absorbers and not including a mylar bag. If so, how many 500 cc absorbers per bucket do you recommend? Any other tips on this?
Thanks for any help anyone can offer on this!
@Fawncatcher00062; If you are freezing them to kill bugs but not storing them in freezing temps and not using mylar bags I wouldn’t waste money on oxy absorbers. Just fill them as close to the top as you can and still get a good seal on the lid. That will displace most of the air in the bucket anyway. This needs to be done on a VERY dry day. If you are keeping them frozen I, personally, would not use the absorbers with out a mylar bag as the vacuum may cause the bucket’s integrity (the sides will cave in some) to fail at low temps. I realize that the bags are expensive, and last I checked they were $2-3 apiece for 5-6 gallon buckets, but not using them is “penny wise and pound foolish”. They are cheap insurance for a product that you want to be edible when you need it. So, either frozen or not I pack all my stuff in mylar bags and put 2 small absorbers in the bag and seal it. Here is my procedure. I sprinkle food grade diatomaceous earth in the buckets, put a mylar bag in and fill it with product, then put 2 small absorbers in and quickly seal it, and sprinkle DE on top of the sealed mylar bags and seal the lid. Oh, the DE is in case bugs get into the bucket. I store mine in my insulated shop on shelves, never on the floor. Now I’m storing “some years worth” of buckets, so a freezer is out of the question. If you wanted to freeze “a bucket or two” I would pack them the same way. The mylar will have no air in it and it will keep condensation from forming in your food when it is thawed out. The mylar will be what is vacuum sealed and the bucket is added protection. Enjoy.
Thanks for the info. I have just a few more questions. I’m freezing them to kill buggies. They will be thawed, and put in 5 gal buckets @ room temp for storage. I was gonna put in each 5 gal bucket, 20# rice, 8# pintos (both in orig. packaging from store). If I use Mylar bags, is it necessary to remove the orig packaging? I also have several smaller bags of a variety of beans/pasta. Can I store them together in a 5 gal bucket the same way?
What about those pre-packaged flavored oatmeals? Do they really need Mylar, and absorbers, or can I just fill the bucket up, and tap the lid on?
I’m new at this, any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks.
@FawnCatcher00062; I apologize in advance if I sound like a smartass. I’ve been prepping buckets since 97 and the tendency to be a smartass kind of comes naturally. Okay, I see that you are trying to round out each bucket to have balanced resources in it. This is a very good idea. Yes, you can pack them in their original packaging to keep them separate. If they are stored at room temp you don’t have to use mylar bags, but because they will not pack down like, nothing but beans or nothing but rice, you may have to use more/larger absorbers (3 500cc, or 2 1000cc) and would have to experiment to see what worked best. And obviously hollow pastas will require more absorbers. Just note that air is 22% O2, so there will only be slight vacuum. If the buckets are sealed properly, you know you have the proper amount of absorbers in it if the sides are just “slightly”, but visually observable, sucked in, in about 45-60 minutes. This would be at room temp. In a couple of days the buckets should still be “slightly” concave on the outside. If you are going to do this this way, I would still sprinkle diatomaceous earth in the bucket and on/and around the original packaging. It looks like powdered milk and is only harmful to bugs, about 1/4 cup/bucket evenly distributed throughout. This is just in case the bucket seal fails, years from now. The original packaging will NOT protect the product from bugs if they get in, the DE will. If any DE gets on the actual product blow it off or rinse it off. I actually pack loose beans in buckets with DE sprinkled all through them and rinse them before cooking. Hope this helps.
One more thing that might be relevant to my question above is that the rice/beans are in bags ranging from 8-20 lbs.
I always wondered about the length of time you could store things in freezers as my experience is quite different from the official point of view. From an eating point of view and a 43 year experience of eating out of home freezers I have found that while meat is not as good after 12 months it is still OK. I did find that after about 18 months I could really tell the difference, especially if I had some fresh meat to compare it to. We used to kill a beef beast every year/18 months so would expect the meat to last through to the next kill. We used to have a couple of freezers, including one large one which took a small beef beast plus a pig and a few chickens.
I also stopped worrying about refreezing meat after I heard that missionary friends used to eat meat that had been thawed and refrozen up to 18 times – it used to be flown in to them in a remote area, being left to thaw on each hop of the plane. They, and subsequently I, used the smell/sight/touch test. If it smelled, looked and felt OK I would eat it. (Especially in their case as good friends were going to huge efforts flying in special cuts of meat they couldn’t get where they were) Never had any problems. But it might be different if you couldn’t be reasonably sure about the cleanliness of your abattoirs/killing sheds or the health of the animals. Not that I would refreeze 18 times, but if the power went down and the food thawed I wouldn’t/don’t panic and throw it all out automatically.