Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with freezer

Reversing refrigerator doors

mudpuppie — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:14:15 -0800

I've volunteered to reverse the doors on the office fridge (i.e., change them so that they open from the right, instead of from the left). I know the basics of how to do this, but I don't want to look like an idiot in front of coworkers. Any tips, tricks, or things I should know before starting to loosen the screws?

Why isn't my frozen food frozen?

werty — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:39:26 -0800

FridgeFilter: I recently overstuffed my freezer and blocked the cold airflow, which partially defrosted some of the food in the far corner, away from the air. I have since restored the freezer temperature, but after several days, the thawed food isn't re-freezing. Why? Details, should they be useful:

- Along with the overstuffed freezer, I noticed the temperature gauge had recently been turned to a warmer-than-usual level, which I also righted.

- I suspected my freezer was just plumb broke, but I picked up a thermometer that declares temperatures between 12 and 16 degrees.

- The food in question is a tub of slow-churned light ice cream (I kind of get how I may have permanently altered the molecular structure there) and a slice of pizza (no clue).

- Top-freezer refrigerator, GE Profile if it helps, 2001 model, in-freezer ice maker, no outside dispenser.

Get in mah belly, belly

chalbe — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:58:03 -0800

Safe to eat raw refrozen meats that've been defrosted several times? I bought a slab of vacuum sealed raw pork belly and tried to turn this specimen into delicious BACON, but due to scheduling problems, etc. never got around to actually cooking it.

I'd defrost the meat in the fridge in the morning, only to find out later that night that I couldn't cook and 3 days later end up throwing it back into the freezer. The slab's gone through about 3 of these cycles of defrosting and refreezing.

Is it still safe to eat?

Why doesn't food in a freezer last forever?

Phcyso — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:50:49 -0800

Why doesn't food in a freezer last forever? Frozen food i buy from a super market and even the user guide that came with my freezer both say that food can be stored from 3-12 months.

What would it take for food to be permanently cold stored?
i am thinking that storage containers that are totally air and moisture proof would be needed and likely a freezer that is a lot colder then a general household one would be required?

The reason i ask is that some of the home cooked meals in my freezer are nearing the point of no return. they are getting freezer burn despite being in what i thought where well sealed tupperware.
i would like to maximize the time i can get from the food in my freezer to enable a greater variety of ready to heat meals

My lack of freezer knowlege gives me the chills.

boots77 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:13:42 -0800

Buying a freezer. Any advice? Seems like there is more to freezers than I thought. Frostless or Not. Upright or not. Different sizes. Different brands. Pros and cons of any and all of these choices. I am looking for any and all advice regarding freezers before I make the plunge. Thanks!

Will I blow more money on a repairperson or by screwing things up myself?

Shepherd — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:30:57 -0800

When is it worth trying to fix your own appliances (an Amana ARB1917 bottom-freezer fridge in my case)? I've fixed a few little things around the house before -- replaced the thermal fuse on a coffee roaster, the gaskets etc. on an espresso machine, the headshell on a record player -- but I've never done any Appliance Repair per se. I can't read those funky diagrams with the squiggly lines, etc.

My Amana bottom-freezer fridge is dying, though, and I THINK I might know what the problem is after a lot of time doing research on various parts and repair sites: the back wall is frosting over and the fridge is not cooling, which by most indications means the defrost timer needs replacing. We're on our third "defrost" -- a 30-hour turn-off of the fridge last time -- and the problem keeps recurring faster and faster and faster.

Here's the thing: I'm 75% sure that's what's wrong, thanks to identical symptoms being posted, and solutions being prescribed, on various Internet forums. But I'm not 100% sure. It might be the defrost heater, it might be the thermostat control.

And these parts are -- for a broke guy trying to make ends meet with his new wife -- expensive. $60 for the defrost timer (I'm in Canada), $30 or so for the heater, plus shipping, etc.

So the spectre of getting something wrong, either in breaking the fridge even worse by mucking around, or just screwing up the part, or not having the right problem identified in the first place, makes me think the probable $100+ or so for a repairperson to come and know what exactly to do might be a worthwhile investment.

Then again, that's another $100+ I don't have.

So I'm really quite torn, and I'm hoping somebody with more DIY and appliance repair expertise than me will be able to offer some advice: how likely is it that a modestly skilled newbie will be able to open, disassemble, and reassemble a fridge without incident?

Is it worth trying to fix myself, given the expense of the parts, or should I just bite the bullet and pay a repairman?

Save the meat.

whatisish — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:05:22 -0800

Chest freezer and GFCI outlets. What's the solution? I just bought a chest type freezer and noticed the mfg recommends not plugging it into a GFCI outlet. My garage, of course, only has a GFCI outlet - although it doesn't appear to share a circuit with any other outlets.

Its my understanding that here in Arizona the electrical code prohibits anything but GFCI outlets in the garage. Houses here (mine included) are mostly built on slabs with no basement. Having no other practical place to put a freezer but in the garage, there must be a solution. I'd like to avoid having the freezer trip the GFCI and thus defrost the contents.

Two questions then...

A) What is the likelihood the freezer will trip the outlet with nothing else on the circuit?

B) Are there other code compliant solutions that would enable the freezer to stay in the garage but without the GFCI protected outlet.

Little person who lives in the freezer

snarfois — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:32:18 -0800

Please help me help a friend find a children's book. It involves a little person who lives in the freezer compartment in the supermarket. I don't know this book personally, but my friend has been trying in vain to track it down for ages. When the protagonist goes with her mother to the supermarket, she discovers a tiny little girl who lives in the freezer compartment. They become friends, and every time she goes to the supermarket, she takes the little girl something, like a bed made out of a matchbox, or a little blanket she knitted. At one point in the book (my friend thinks this is what she remembers vaguely) they play tennis with a pea and a couple of icecream sticks.

Ring any bells?

Is my freezer malfunctioning?

JFitzpatrick — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:28:00 -0800

What does it mean if my freezer can free meat solid but ice cream remains soft? I have a 15 cubic foot chest freezer. If you put a steak or a turkey in it, the meat freezes rock hard. If you put ice cream in it, the ice cream remains relatively soft. It won't melt and it is still definitely ice cream, but it's soft enough to scoop without bending a spoon doing it.

I'm confused by the disparity, it would seem that if it's cold enough to freeze a 20 pound turkey it's cold enough to turn ice cream rock hard. Is it just that ice cream is fatty and doesn't freeze as solid as meat? Do I need to service my unit?

Should we get a chest or stand-up freezer?

sirsteven — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 15:56:37 -0800

Looking at getting a freezer for a loft. What are the benefits of getting a chest freezer or stand-up freezer in a situation like this? How much of an issue are things like cost, floor space, counter space, efficiency?

Please help us find a mini freezer

k8t — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:05:51 -0800

Mini freezer shopping help. We want to buy a mini freezer (4-6 cubic feet or so) because our current fridge/freezer is vertical and can't hold frozen pizzas, tubs of ice cream or other useful frozen food. Baby is coming very soon and we figure that we'll need the extra space anyway.

I would really prefer an upright freezer because I sense that a chest freezer will become completely disorganized and won't have shelves for baby food ice cube trays or baggies of breast milk. (Notions to the contrary are welcome!)

I also don't want to spend more than $200-250 (including shipping) on an appliance that we will likely not take with us when we move in 2 years.

We've looked at Costco, Sears, Best Buy, Circuit City, Target and Amazon both online and in-store when we can. Craigslist has had nothing, BTW.

This is sort of what I want, but it is too expensive.

Any recommendations would be great!

BTW, We are USians, Californians, and this freezer will live in our garage.

Frozen Coconut Oil Turned Green

An Infinity Of Monkeys — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:47:12 -0800

We had some coconut oil in containers in our freezer (we use the oil for popping popcorn - we buy it in bulk and then freeze it for later) and for some reason this latest batch has all turned green. It's been in sealed Tupperware-like containers, the same ones we have always used, and it's always stayed a nice golden color before. We just now went to take one out and noticed the green color through the plastic, and upon checking saw they had all turned the same color. Opened one up, and it smells funny too. We're going to throw it all out, containers and all, but were just wondering what might have happened so we can avoid it happening again (35 lbs. of coconut oil is expensive).

Fear of Pyrex shrapnel

A Terrible Llama — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:36:06 -0800

Am I going to be killed in a lasagna-related accident? The Pyrex FAQ on this matter is down and the rest of the info I've found seems anecdotal. But not quality anecdotal like Metafilter-anecdotal. Anecdotal like Yahoo Answers anecdotal.

I have lasagna frozen in a Pyrex casserole dish. Can I just throw it directly into the preheated oven? This is what I've heard, but it just seems so wrong. Has anyone actually done this?

My freezer is not cold enough

UbuRoivas — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:52:33 -0800

My freezer is not cold enough. Any tips on how to diagnose or fix this? I have a reasonably new (6 months old) regular, upright fridge / freezer. For the past couple of days, the freezer has been operating at about the exact same temperature as the fridge (I have a little fridge/freezer thermometer to confirm this).

Before I arse around trying to get a techo out for warranty repair, are there any quick-fix tests I can try? eg defrosting, checking that the fridge is level, smashing it with a hammer, etc?

I've already tried the temperature dial on all settings, and shifted the no-longer-quite-frozen food around the freezer. The manual is completely useless, by the way.

Chest freezer usage and buying tips please!

Joh — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:57:32 -0800

Contemplating a chest freezer purchase. Questions about power usage, backup power, defrosting it, and choosing the right model. I am considering buying a small chest freezer, around 5 cu ft size. I have very limited space in my house and frankly I don't need anything much bigger than that anyway. It will have to live in the garage, as there really isn't space in the house itself. So, here's some questions for you chest freezer owners.

1. I live in the San Fernando Valley, and my garage is not insulated, so the garage interior temperature reaches 90-100F during the day in summer. Is this going to make the freezer use insane amounts of electricity, or is it within normal operating range?

2. I can't find any figures in order to calculate the power draw of a small chest freezer, but in the event of a power outage, is it worth having the freezer plugged into a UPS? How long would it last? If its 5 minutes then obviously no point, but if it was a few hours...

3. Defrosting it. I won't be buying a frost-free version for food quality reasons, and I am OK with the idea that I will have to defrost it myself every so often. How often do you defrost yours? How do you go about it? Do you try and eat everything in the freezer leading up to defrost day, or do you pack the contents into coolers during defrosting? How long does it take to defrost? Any defrosting tips?

4. I am not having much luck finding a buying guide online, that lets me select the features I am looking for - 5 cu ft or around that size, NOT frost free, temperature alarm preferred, drain at the bottom for defrosting. Not sure if there are any other features I should be looking for, suggestions? Shopping tips? Personal recommendations?

Thanks!

Mmm, garlic-flavored mojito...

arianell — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:03:51 -0800

How can I improve the taste of the ice cubes in my freezer? I do a lot of my cooking in bulk, making enough food for several meals and then freezing whatever I don't eat immediately. Right now I have a lot of heavily-seasoned savory foods stored in the freezer, and their scent is permeating my ice cubes and giving the ice a really unpleasant aftertaste. As much as I love french onion soup, I'd rather not taste it in my strawberry lemonade.

All of my frozen foods are pretty well wrapped/insulated , I think - the solid foods are wrapped in aluminum foil and then sealed in plastic freezer bags, and the soups/stews are in small plastic Tupperware-like containers within freezer bags of their own.

So, is there any way to keep the flavors of my frozen food out of my ice completely as the summer months approach?

My frostless freezer isn't so frostless.

GilloD — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:32:24 -0800

An aging upright freezer keeps icing over. It claims to be frostless, but you coulda fooled me! Easy repair or big bucks? More inside. My parents purchased a Kenmore Frostless 19 upright freezer probably 12 years ago. The thing served us well for probably 5 years and then it started to ice up around the door, making it difficult to open. A repairman came and took a look, said it was the gasket and replaced it. Almost immediately the problem returned and it looked like the door gasket wasn't really flush with the frame.

It sat unused for maybe 7 years and I recently took it upon myself to get it into working shape again. After some pulling, I got the door open and the problem is the same as it ever was- Ice rings the portions of the freezer where the door meets the inside the freezer, essentially freezing it shut. The lock has also frozen in place. It closes fine, but if I don't open it every few days to get rid of the ice, it becomes almost impossible to open.

Is this just a gasket issue? Is this a simple fix or are we looking at a bigger problem? Thanks!

Whyfore the pleasant odor of refrigerators?

Quidam — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:20:16 -0800

I really like the smell of the inside of refrigerators and freezers. Why on earth is this? This is a weird question, but isn't that (at least partly) what AskMeFi is for?

Ever since I was little I can remember liking the way that the inside of freezers (and to a lesser degree, refrigerators) smell. It's most obvious in industrial-sized, walk-in coolers and freezers (I guess because there's more, um, freezer-air in there), but sometimes I can pick it up in any old household fridge/freezer too. I cannot describe the smell as anything other than... the inside of a freezer. It's not the same as, say, outdoors on a snowy day. It's distinctive to appliances. It has nothing to do with what's actually inside the freezer, and it's not a chemical smell, and if there's a fan in the freezer (like at the top in a walk-in one, or at the bottom in an upright one) it's usually strongest in that area.

I know I'm not totally insane because in high school, when I worked in an ice cream store where we had a large walk-in cooler, I remember one other kid saying once something like "I love the way it smells in here", but other than that I've never heard of anyone else acknowledging this.

So, I mean, I recognize that this is rather vague and totally off-the-wall, but does anyone know what the heck I'm talking about? And if you do, what is it that gives it that smell? Am I crazy?

Can I equip my lab with consumer refrigerators?

mr_roboto — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:57:39 -0800

Buying refrigerators for the lab: is there a good reason not to go with consumer models? I'm in the process of equipping my lab, and I need some fridges/freezers (4 ºC and -20 ºC) for general-purpose storage. I do not need explosion-proof units. Doing some shopping (VWR, Fisher) for a compact unit, it looks like the professional laboratory fridges (again, not explosion-proof) cost about 5-7 times as much as consumer models of comparable size and temperature range. Is there any good reason not to just buy something from Best Buy?

I don't need precise temperature control, I just need it to stay below the set point. And how much of an issue could durability be? I've seen home refrigerators last easily in excess of 20 years. And at this price differential, I could replace the thing 5 times before I'm in the red.

once a month freezer cooking carnivore diet on the go for cheap

Furious Fitness — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:27:54 -0800

I want to great a food plan/way of eating with the following requirements: Paleo/carnivore (animals--esp. cow and pig, high fat in animal fat, fish, leafy greens) Once a month cooking (or twice) Cheap in NYC apartment (i.e. no deep freezer to buy whole animals) On the go (on average, four days out of week I only eat breakfast at home) For cheapness, thankfully the fatty cuts of meat are often cheapest, so going with less than $2/lb cuts. Other ideas, for instance, are meat markets cheaper? Cheap way to get butter and leafy veggies and fish other than random sales?
For once a month freezer cooking--can make big bone broth, a few different chilis, what else makes big patches?
Then key sticking point for me is having the food with me--thermos to keep meat in? (This also relates to how to best store frozen food in serving sizes.)
Fatty meats that don't need to be cold other than pemmican [cheap source of pemmican?] and canned fish?

Fixing a freezer.

topynate — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:22:40 -0800

I just broke my landlady's fridge-freezer. I was scraping ice out of the icy part, and I nicked the cooling device, letting out all the magic gas. Can I fix it? Can my engineer buddies fix it? The model is the LG GR-151SSF, a piece of crap by all accounts. The part I broke seems to be called the evaporative assembly - it looks like this and it costs £50 including for a new one, but I have a feeling that that will be less of a problem than replacing the coolant, which I have only a vague idea of how to do. Some guy on the internet said you can epoxy the line closed and hire the necessary bits to refill it from a mechanic's, is that true?

The icebox shrinketh

lullabyofbirdland — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:36:24 -0800

Thoughts on mini-fridge freezers? I moved into an apartment with a mini fridge about 2.5 feet high. The door to the freezer compartment (about 4 inches tall) is missing and lots of ice keeps building up inside, to the extent that I'll need to defrost the fridge pretty regularly if I want to use the freezer.

The landlord claims that's normal and that fixing the door won't make any difference. If so then that's fine, but if not I'd like him to fix it. So -- if you have a mini, how go things with your freezer? Is defrosting something one does every few weeks?

Freezer meal ideas

acoutu — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:50:23 -0800

What are your favourite "don't cook before freezing" freezer meal recipes? I'm expecting a (second) baby in 2 months. For our first baby, we stocked the freezer with tons of pre-cooked meals. By the end of the first 2 weeks, I was often resorting to take out or delivery, because I couldn't stand another hamburger dish or another reheated meal.

This time around, I'd like to have a good selection of frozen meals that have NOT been previously cooked. I honestly don't like reheated meals. I'd rather have things that are prepared raw and frozen, then cooked once before serving. (I don't mind having leftovers.)

I'm trying to avoid hamburger recipes, as I can think of a million of those on my own. I don't eat a ton of processed foods, so please go easy on the canned soups and sauces -- although I will accept some. (I will not eat stuff like processed cheese, though.) Our toddler has not yet been introduced to nuts and shellfish. Kid-friendly meals are a plus, but our little guy likes Thai, Mexican, Indian and other foods, since he's a Vancouver kid. Not all meals need have meat, although my husband would probably prefer that they did. Recipes for side dishes are also welcome. Any meal of day is fine -- breakfast, lunch, dinner. Healthier dishes preferred, but I'll only be so fussy once I'm sleep deprived.

So, what are your favourite "don't cook before freezing" freezer meals? Thanks!

Why does my fridge create a pond inside ?

iamabot — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:16:07 -0800

Why does water constantly collect in our fridge? So here's the deal, we bought our home over a year ago, about 9 months in to it, 3 months ago, our fridge started producing about a cup of water a day that collects in the very bottom of the fridge (inside) under the crisper drawers and along the lower shelf. This often ices up. the Freezer is just fine, no excess moisture there, it's a frostless, so that's a good thing.

I've checked the seals around the doors, tweaked the temperature up and down to no avail. I'm at the point of pulling the sucker our and checking the condenser coils and rear of the fridge for obstructions.

The fridge and freezer cools just fine, it just makes quite a bit of water/etc and is getting to the point where it's ruining the food.

The moisture appears to be coming from the upper part of the fridge near the back where the cooled air enters the fridge cabin space. The Fridge is a Whirlpool ET21PKXWF00. Freezer on top, Fridge on the bottom. any hints/etc you guys have is much appreciated, I really don't want to replace the sucker as it is otherwise in good working order.

Can I salvage my freezer-burned chicken?

chrisamiller — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:34:39 -0800

Can severely freezer-burned chicken be "rescued"? I understand the basics of how freezer burn works, and realize that the outside of my chicken breasts are now dried out. I also know from experience that if I grill them up, they'll be tough, dry, and generally not worth eating.

What if I cooked them in a crock pot with lots of broth? Would that rehydrate the chicken and make it good to eat again? What about in a stew? Or should I just cut my losses and pick up another bag 'o chicken?

Does anyone have experience with this or easy recipes they can recommend? (The easier to make, the better!)