Can we eat it? Power Outage edition.

May 21, 2022 7:12 PM

I went grocery shopping this morning. Then our power went out for about 10 hours. Are my groceries still okay?

The groceries were in the fridge and the door was opened and closed a few times throughout the day. There is meat (steak, ground beef, chicken breasts) and dairy (milk, eggs, yogurt, hard cheeses) as well as fresh fruits and vegetables (I'm not too worried about the fruits and veggies) and miscellaneous condiments. Typical fridge stuff.

I've seen some places say that food should be okay for 12-24 hours and others say 4 hours. That's a pretty big range. I had a glass of water out of there and it was still cold, though obviously not as cold as it normally would have been had the power not been out.

It's a newish fridge (less than 5 years old), and the seal seems to be fine. Everything in the freezer still felt frozen solid, but it was not opened at any point after the power went out.

posted by synecdoche to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

Response by poster: Edit to add: all of the meat was in the packaging it came home from the store in, in case that matters.
posted by synecdoche at 7:13 PM on May 21, 2022

You'll be fine. Eat the ground beef first.
posted by mhoye at 7:16 PM on May 21, 2022

Totally fine. Perhaps the fridge was a few degrees above 4C for a few hours, leading to slightly faster spoilage (on the order of hours sooner than things might spoil otherwise). A fridge that isn't working is just a big cooler.
posted by ssg at 7:46 PM on May 21, 2022 [1 favorite]