Freezer without power how to tell if chicken is still good

Question

So long story short my freezer was without power from Wednesday 5pm till Saturday 11am it's a Big chest freezer probably 5ft by 3ft or more. We recently butcher our chickens and cut up into breast legs ect.. and 5 whole brids (15 all together) smaller stuff in basket big stuff in bottom and we had 6 big ice bags in there. Other than that it was empty so probably 1/4 to half full

So I opened it up Saturday most the stuff still had crystal some was still completely froze other little squishy. Tenderloin was the most thawed but still a little frozen in center. I put thermometer in and checked after minute or two was 52 checked again in another couple minutes was 40 checked another couple minutes and was 35 but freezer was running at this point.

Ice was not melted but there was some water in the very bottom of freezer do you think it's safe to refreeze and eat??

Answer 1

For a big freezer like this, with the food inside properly cooled down and frozen, if it looses power (and stays closed) the food inside will stay fine for quite a while if it stays frozen. The freezer has pretty good isolation so even without power the food inside will warm up only very slowly.

Unfortunately in your case, several food items became unfrozen. The freezer was without power so long that the temperature inside increased to above freezing and food started to unfreeze (which takes extra energy, so the temperature will stay at 0 for a while). As the food you are talking about it raw meat, I would play it safe and discard it. Definitely throw away everything that become unfrozen. If some pieces where still frozen solid these could be okay.

Answer 2

I unfortunately came home after a week away to this sort of situation. My general rule of thumb is to try to take a thermometer to stuff, but you have to do it immediately, not an hour after you’ve reset the power and the freezer has started to cook back down.

If it’s still under 40°F (about 4.5°C), then it’s at least still at fridge temperatures, so fully cook it and then you can potentially re-freeze it.

If it’s over 40°F, and you can’t say with any certainty that it’s only been at that temperature for less than 4 hours, I would recommend that most people throw it out.

Any packages that are puffy need to be thrown out, no matter what temperature they’re currently at.

If you’re not risk-adverse, and you have a pressure cooker, you can possibly cook food that’s slightly above 40°F, but the issue is that if microbes had a chance to multiply, the products that they create may not be denatured by simple boiling.

Many things in that people keep in their fridges are actually shelf-stable even after opening. Soy sauce, ketchup, and many other condiments are likely still fine even if they’ve spent an extended time in a warm fridge. Check any labels to see if it has any statements about needing to refrigeration after opening.

And when in doubt, throw it out. It sucks to lose lots of food, but food poisoning is much more expensive when you consider hospital bills and lost work hours.