A power outage lasting for days is fortunately relatively rare, but it can happen naturally. Mostly Fuse blown out and the power is only gone for a short time. If the power outage lasts longer than a few minutes, most people rightly worry about the Food in your freezer. What to keep in mind regarding the shelf life of meat, fish and ice cream? How many hours it will take for the food to defrost?
Power failure at the freezer – it depends on the duration
Whether you can still enjoy your food depends on the Duration of the power failure from. Modern refrigerators are well insulated, so a power outage that lasts only a few hours is usually not a problem. As a rule of thumb, freezers can be left without power for up to 5 hours without anything happening. Check the temperature inside the freezer. If it is below +3°C, there is no danger. Because frozen food does not thaw that quickly, only when the Temperature in the plus range for hours lies, it can become problematic.
For some foods, defrosting is naturally faster than for others. When in doubt, check whether the food in question is already significantly thawed or not. If the surface still feels hard, there is no reason to worry, either In the case of sensitive foodstuffs such as poultry or fish.
If the food is already thawed
If the power failure lasts longer, the frozen food will inevitably defrost. But even now it only a few foods may be problematic.
When food is thawed and then refrozen, suffers the taste and consistency can change. However, the whole thing only becomes dangerous with quickly perishable foods such as raw meat, fish, poultry, minced meat, ice cream or foods containing raw eggs. These should not be refrozen if possible.
Tip! Allow thawed perishable food to thaw completely in the refrigerator and prepare the appropriate food preferably within the next 24 hours. Be sure to heat the food thoroughly to kill any germs that may be present.
If the Power failure not noticed, it can of course happen that the food is completely defrosted and has already reached room temperature. In this case, perishable food must actually be discarded, especially if you do not know when exactly the power outage occurred.
However, this only applies to raw products, you can still eat cooked food even after 12 hours without electricity. However, as a precaution, heat the food well through.
- can be frozen again
- Do not refreeze
- if possible, process within one day and cook well
Advantages and disadvantages of food in the freezer in case of power failure
- Most foods can withstand a short power failure
- easy to check if food is still edible
- in case of a long power failure it could become problematic
What food can I freeze again after a power failure?
- Fruits and vegetables
- bread and other bakery products
are not so susceptible to bacteria. You can theoretically refreeze such products if they were defrosted in the freezer due to a power outage. It is possible that taste and consistency may suffer somewhat, as the cell walls are damaged by the ice crystals and there may be a loss of water. From a health point of view freezing these foods again is not problematic.