FoodSafetyFilter: re: briefish power outage & raw meats
February 21, 2019 5:34 AM   Subscribe

The interwebs say if your fridge has been above 40°F for more than 4 hours, perishable things should be chucked out. What if you have a fridge starting at 32°, and then the power goes out for only a half hour or 40 minutes? Mostly I'm concerned with some raw meats, which have been packaged in plastic. Paranoid me says "frak, toss it" but I feel like I'm being overly cautious. Ambient room temp during outage was probably 65°F. The fridge is otherwise consistently cold, s'far as my thermometers in there show. Science?
posted by bitterkitten to Health & Fitness (12 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: If the fridge is at 32 and the power goes out for 40 minutes with the door closed, it's unlikely the temperature changed more than a degree or two, and certainly didn't reach 40 degrees, let alone for four hours.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:37 AM on February 21, 2019 [13 favorites]


Best answer: The feds say your unplugged fridge stays cold for four hours.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:39 AM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


That's basically the equivalent of putting the raw meat in a cooler with ice in the shade for the same time. It's fine.
posted by teremala at 5:40 AM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


Assuming you didn't open the door to check said thermometers after the power went out, staying cold for four hours is about right. Opening the door lets all the cold air out, and it would then depend on how full your fridge was, but even then, 40 minutes is fine. Even if it somehow got up above 40F instantly, once the power was back it promptly came back down, so your food would be fine.
posted by Grither at 6:00 AM on February 21, 2019


Yeah it's fine. This happens to us all the time and we never throw anything out for a power outage that brief.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 6:04 AM on February 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


Best answer: As long as you left the door closed, it is definitely fine. Unless you stood there with the door open for the whole 40 minutes, it's probably still fine. (This wouldn't faze me a bit, and I'm paranoid about food safety, so...)
posted by stormyteal at 6:07 AM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


Agree with all of the above. As long as the door is kept shut as much as possible, I'd go way past 4 hours before worrying. Having a thermometer in there helps to reassure.

Separately ... Your fridge is set for 32 degrees? That seems a little too cold.
posted by intermod at 6:11 AM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


Even if you opened the fridge, it's not the end of the world. Thanks to thermodynamics, the items in the fridge will bring the air temperature inside down pretty quickly, so everything should be fine for a few hours either way.
posted by pipeski at 6:23 AM on February 21, 2019


Response by poster: Gracias, all!

Nope, fridge door was never opened during outage.

intermod - Yes, my fridge is a bit colder than it needs to be, but I don't keep much produce or jars in there, and only things in the rear back corners of the fridge ever get near actual noticeable freezing that I can visually detect. Nothing on the door ever appears frozen or anywhere else in the compartment, so it's probably not uniformly 32.

I figure by keeping the temp set near 32 (if the fridge thermometers that usually hang out in the rear are correct) I'm guaranteeing the stuff throughout in the front is as cold as it should be. Yeah, maybe paranoid, yet seems better than aiming too high. ; )
posted by bitterkitten at 6:30 AM on February 21, 2019


We have had brief power outages like this and everything was fine. You will be ok eating what was in the fridge.
posted by mermayd at 6:33 AM on February 21, 2019


I sometimes take an hour to get home from the store with raw meat. Should be fine.
posted by bunderful at 7:05 AM on February 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


if your fridge has been above 40°F for more than 4 hours, perishable things should be chucked out.

What if you have a fridge starting at 32°, and then the power goes out for only a half hour or 40 minutes?


Even if your fridge and all of its contents instantly jumped in temperature from 32 to 40, which did not happen, they would only have been at that temperature for 40 minutes, which is significantly less than the four hours that the already-very-conservative guidelines for food safety use.
posted by gauche at 7:23 AM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


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