Frozen food should we ditch after 4 months?

[jeffleft]

I like my food too much and it does not stay in my freezer anywhere near four months, but once I get myself sorted I'm on the lookout for a second freezer and I am curious how long can I safely keep food frozen and how food is affected by freezer burn?

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... or-dinner/

[grenfell]

Growing up my mother had a big chest freezer. On several occasions i can remember her pulling out a joint of meat or something that she had forgotten about and which could have been in there a year or two . I tried to get her to make a simple chart to record what goes in and what came out but , well , you know how mothers are. Nonetheless nothing was inedible . Some soft fruits didn't seem to fare wellfor long periods and turned to mush when defrosted but were ok for pies or whatever.
Can't help thinking the mammoth story is a good one but there must be an element of conjecture as to how it has been frozen for thousands of years . Rot may have set in before it was totallyfrozen or it may have thawed partially at some point plus of course freezing only slows down the aging process not stops it entirely . But then there's a big difference between four months and ten thousand years . Stab i the dark it's probably somewhere in between.
One thing i did try that was a definate failure was snowballs. Yes actual snow off the ground in the winter placed in the freezer till the summer. Come the summer they weren't snow just hard lumps of ice.

[Arzosah]

I don't quite trust my fridge freezer - the fridge is too cold, the freezer isn't cold enough. I use the freezer to store vegetables, nuts, seeds and flour, but anything that will go rotten, such as frozen veg, I only keep in there a couple of weeks max.

[Arwen Thebard]

We have four freezers (Yes I do a freezer fetish???) all are old, pre-owned, so we do keep thermometers inside to check they are cold enough. From our experiences we have used meats older than 12 months without any noticeable problems, but perhaps some degradation in the vegetables. Four months is nothing IMO

[jeffleft]

Thanks Grenfell I'm glad, I don't like throwing good food out. I remember when I lived with my parents they would clean the freezer out (usually if my brother had come in drunk and not closed the freezer door, of course!!! I was aaaaa good!!! boy and always made sure it was shut!! ) they would find a few fish fingers or a couple of pork chops with freezer burn which would be chucked out. I suppose even if its something that does not look too appetizing it could be used for a Curry or Chilli!

I think a lot of people are too fussy, but I should not complain if they were not so fussy I would not get bread and veg for less than 10p.

Thank you Arzosah and Arwen Thebard (My own fetish is anything with a mains plug and LED's )
I will keep an eye on the freezer temps (I will get a temp gauge) with this other freezer its not an old one sadly, I'm reading negative reports about modern freezer life cycles, ironically the EU are trying to bring a law in that would force companies to repair fridges/freezers even after the warranty period!

Anyway I'm rabbiting on , thanks again

[jansman]

Provided that the temperature of the freezer is a constant <18 c or colder,then food will last a lot longer than 4 months.Back in the 1980's we had to sell a proportion of the EU beef 'mountain.'They had the pick of the crop before it went into storage,and after 8 years ,it was still some of the best beef we ever handled!

[grenfell]

I'm not sure how old you are jeffleft but i was at school in he 70's . At that time my father was working at a council incinerator come tip. It was also the period that we had frequent and sometimes long power cuts and a co-op with a freezer section . On several occasions i can remember when the powercut caused the freezers to start thawing and they would send the food to the tip as it couldn't really be refrozen . Father would come home with a boot full of thawing food and for the next few days we'd have fish fingers and burgers with chips followed by gateaux . Every cloud and all that...

[Arwen Thebard]

I wonder if our modern lifestyles have made us more [susceptible / intolerant] to food type bugs we might have been able to deal with 30 or 40 years ago?

[jeffleft]

Thanks, I'm off to empty Aldi!

[Panther]

slightly off topic but does anyone have experience freezing shop bought cake especially bakewell tart and battenberg.

Oh wow, battenberg; I love battenberg Thanks for mentioning it jeffleft, I must add it to my special "Brexit food treats" shopping list immediately