Meat – Started thawing but can’t finish cooking meat: Time Sensitive

food-safetyfreezingmeat

I took a large pack of ground beef out of the freezer and it has been in the fridge for no more than 10 hours. There are still ice crystals on the meat. I'm on call and turns out I won't have the opportunity to cook it until next week (the works in another city). I guess I have two options

  1. put the meat back in the freezer and refreeze
  2. thaw out the meat, quickly cook it, and put the left overs in the fridge.

Any advice?

Best Answer

I'll offer a third option :

  • Cook the meat, then freeze it.

Holding it in the fridge for a week can be questionable, although there are some things that you can do to reduce the risk (eg, sterilizing the containers first, and pouring the fat on top to form a seal over the meat).

You can hold cooked meat in casseroles for quite some time longer than meat on its own; I suspect it's the other added moisture which helps to prevent freezer burn.

As such, I'd brown it, then moisten it with a can or two of crushed tomatoes (as it's something that I have on hand, and it leaves the meat so it could be turned into chili, a pasta sauce, or other things), then portion it out to reasonable sizes based on possible uses, and freeze those.

It's better if you can let it cool off before freezing, but if it's in smaller containers, you don't have as much of a problem with the center staying hot for too long. I've frozen chili and soups by laying them in gallon zip-top bags on a sheet pan, and putting that in the fridge. (2 bags per 1/2 sheet ... but I had a larger freezer back then)

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