Thawed, refrozen fake meat

August 31, 2023 3:07 PM

I had problems with my freezer door gasket and ended up with things going through the thaw/refreeze cycle 2 or 3 times. I mostly have plant based meat in its original , unopened packaging, and also some cans of orange juice concentrate. Do I need to throw everything out before I clean the freezer/ fix the gasket? Or is anything safe to consume?
posted by mermaidcafe to Food & Drink (3 answers total)

I would eat all that without hesitation. It went from like fridge temps to frozen right?

That's never left the USDA danger zone, and is well within the fridge time limits. I happened to be looking up info on Quorn the other day and they specifically say it's fine to re-freeze and reheat their products. All that frozen plant meat stuff is pretty much the same from a food safety perspective.

Texture may be impaired but it should be as safe as it ever was.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:24 PM on August 31, 2023

Response by poster: Everything thawed and refroze 2-3 times. My cleaner was adamant that none of it was safe from salmonella/ botulism, including the orange juice concentrate . I haven’t found anything to support that.
posted by mermaidcafe at 5:35 PM on August 31, 2023

Best answer: Yeah, I think you need to be clear on what 'thawed' means. The USDA says thawed means 40 degrees F on the outside of the item. If the juice concentrate became liquid most of the way through the can-- that's thawed. If it lost the sheen of ice on the outside but stayed in a slushy texture? That's likely fine: Slurpees from 7-11 are about 30F when you drink them. I would treat the fake meat the same as real meat regarding thawing mostly because I have forgotten how to do meat safety after 20+ years as a vegetarian. But also from my experiences, beyond ground beef and impossible ground beef do not do well with freezing-->above freezing to pliable--> freezing again cycle, without losing some texture. Other beef products (not ground) and other fake meats (sausage, chicken, etc.) from any company don't seem to have this same issue. YMMV of course.
posted by holyrood at 6:35 PM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]