Food · Advice & Questions · Oct 16

The power has been out for five hours. How do we assess our freezer without throwing everything away?

Food

My partner held up the torch and said, "That's a whole month's shopping gone." The power had been out for five hours and hadn't returned. We'd kept the freezer shut until that brief look; the chicken packs still had ice crystals, while a tub of ice cream was soft.

He wanted to bin the lot before we got attached to saving it. I wanted to keep everything that still felt cold. Neither instinct was a proper check. We do have a food thermometer, but we hadn't used it yet.

[FoodSafety.gov's outage chart](https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/food-safety-during-power-outage) says many frozen foods can be refrozen if ice crystals remain or they are at 40°F (4°C) or below, while its item-by-item guidance includes exceptions such as ice cream. It also warns against tasting food to judge safety.

We'll use that guidance rather than a taste test or one verdict for the whole drawer. What would you check first, and how do we divide the job without letting either the cost or our fear decide which foods are safe?

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2 community replies

@northstar88

Start with the current condition and temperature, then use the row for each food in the [outage chart](https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/food-safety-during-power-outage). The chicken's ice crystals are relevant evidence for that item. They aren't evidence about the soft ice cream or every other pack. Don't let the first thing you examine become a verdict for the entire freezer.

@softfocus

The phrase 'a month's shopping' explains why this feels enormous, but the money has already been spent. It doesn't become a safety test. You can both care about avoiding needless waste and still accept that some items may need to go. Calling one person wasteful and the other reckless will make the checking harder.

The power has been out for five hours. How do we assess our freezer without throwing everything away?

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