I was thawing chicken thighs in the refrigerator and noticed the plastic wrap had torn some, probably when I dug it out of the deep freeze! Some of the chicken dried out. Is it still safe to fry?
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Possible duplicate of How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer?– CatijaMar 27, 2017 at 22:15
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This isn't exactly a storage life question, since it deals with the storage covering (plastic wrap) being torn.– EricaMar 27, 2017 at 22:43
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You might have better luck searching for "freezer burn" - for example cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/what-is-freezer-burn.– Cascabel ♦Mar 27, 2017 at 23:01
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@Erica true, but the question there does say that meat is safe in the freezer indefinitely... only quality degrades... which is the same thing here. With freezing (if it remains frozen), it's never a matter of safety, only quality.– CatijaMar 27, 2017 at 23:59
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@Catija It does cover it, but a bit indirectly, so it seems okay to have something specifically about freezer burn. (I'm surprised I didn't find a good dup though, might've missed something.)– Cascabel ♦Mar 28, 2017 at 1:15
2 Answers
Should be fine to eat, might be a little drier section of the meat if you go straight to cooking without like marinading.
It's happened to me before and I simply took sharp kitchen scissors and cut off the dried out part. It was easier to cut the uneven shape with scissors than a knife. My mom gave me some meat from her freezer as she's older and has trouble eating meat. Most had some freezer burn on it as she doesn't re-wrap her meat properly. I noticed that only the meat with a small amount of freezer burn was decent. I don't mean the rest was unsafe but it must've picked up some of the odors from the freezer and smelled old so was tossed out. Check that yours still smells good. Or as good as raw meat smells!