I made some awesome arroz con gris (beans and rice) that I froze after cooking it. The only animal product it contains would be lard. Otherwise, it’s just rice, beans, garlic, onions, green bell peppers, olives, and herbs. I don’t remember how long ago I made it, but it could be anywhere from 6-12 months ago. It stayed frozen the whole time. If I thaw it in a pool of room temp water and warm it up on the stove, is it safe to eat?
It’s been a hard day and my brain ran out of thinking fuel. I can’t even google this rn. I appreciate any helpful responses.
Edit: Based on responses and the American federal government, it should be safe. My freezer is set to 0*F, so we’re having dinner tonight! If you see me posting a lot in the next few days, it’s cause I got hospitalized, and you’re all gonna pay for it with my shitposts from the hospital bed! 😋
The guidelines for freezer storage are for quality only—frozen foods stored continuously at 0°F (-18°C) or below can be kept indefinitely.
They will be safe to eat indefinitely, but may not be palatable, depending on how it’s stored.
At worst it’ll just taste like Applebees
Only if they microwave after thawing.
Recently thawed and ate a whole chicken that had been in the freezer for 18+ months in original packaging. No issues with taste/texture.
Unless it defrosted and refroze multiple times it should be fine to eat.
It might have freezer burn, which means the water content went to the outside of the food, so the inside could be dry and the outside could be wet. I would say for beans and rice, just mix it up.
assuming the food was cooled properly it should be safe to eat for years but taste/texture might deteriorate, especially if not in airless containers some fats react with oxygen that affects the taste.
Also often the preferable way to defrost would be to just throw it in oven/pan/microwave.
After that long, taste and texture might start deteriorating, but as long as you’re sure it has remained completely frozen (the recommended tempretures are 0F and -18C) it should be safe effectively forever.
If I thaw it in a pool of room temp water and warm it up on the stove, is it safe to eat?
Don’t thaw with warm water. Gives bacteria a nice environment to grow. Use cold water. It’s just as effective and safer.
When my grandmother moved, she sent over two dozen tupperwares of beans and rice she’d made ten years ago and forgotten in the bottom of her chest freezer. The rice didn’t reheat well, it ended up getting soggy, so we turned it into fried rice, and it was just fine, nobody ever got food poisoning.
Frozen stuff should last essentially indefinitely, but you should be careful that the food you put is safe at the time that it freezes. Freezing large batches of food at a time, for instance, might not be a good idea, since the interior of the food takes longer to cool down. But unless you’re preparing restaurant-level quantities of food, I don’t think that’ll be an issue.
It should also go without saying, but if your food is already bad, then freezing it won’t make it any better
i’d say from experience on making restaurant quantities of food generally the cooling starts to become a issue one should think about when the thickness of the mass you are cooling is higher than about 7 cm(~3in), when under that everything should be fine if you put the food in fridge/freezer in 1.5-2hours from reaching a temp under 75°C, ideally dont stack the containers. The goal is to have the food cool down to <6°C in under 4h if you want to have restaurant quality but even for restaurants it’s ok to go a couple hours above that limit.
I’ve eaten year old frozen meat.
Rice however doesn’t seem to freeze well. Not sure why.
Rice doesn’t freeze/re-cook well because when you cook it it fills with water. When you freeze it you trap that moisture in it and there’s really no way to reheat it without all that moisture escaping. It’s the same reason rice gets hard if you leave it out too long - the water evaporates.
Well I ate it cold and it still wasn’t good. Only frozen one night.
So you froze rice and then ate it cold? Like frozen cold? If you ate it frozen, it wasn’t good because it was still frozen. If you ate it “room temperature” cold it wasn’t good because it dried out as it thawed! It also probably dried out a little before you froze it.
Out of curiosity why can’t you just make fresh rice for the reheated dish? Is it all too mixed together?
Sigh no I obviously did not eat it frozen. It was frozen in and thawed in a glass sealed Tupperware container so no it didn’t dry out before, during, or after. Thawed to room temperature not reheated. There is just something weird about rice that it doesn’t freeze well in my experience.
Since it’s a plant, my guess would be the expansion of the water becoming ice probably ruptures many of the cell walls. Even if the melting water stays where it was, the structure is broken. It had no room to stretch because it had already doubled when it absorbed the water in cooking.
The water still escapes the rice in an air tight container it just stays in the container as condensation. It won’t soak back into the rice without heat, and even then the texture of the rice will not be the same. It won’t be fluffy and soft like fresh rice is. If you aren’t worried about adding extra calories, you could try pan frying the rice before freezing or after thawing. The texture will change but it should be very flavorful thanks to the oil and added moisture.
It’s because of retrogradation, basically the two forms of starch arrange themselves in a new way when it cools.
That’s supposed to happen if you refrigerate rice (ie leftovers)which I do all the time and eat no problem. It’s the freezing that doesn’t work.
Freezer burn would eventually start to make it awful, but as long as it’s really kept frozen it should be safe to eat. you can stave off freezer burn by freezing on a tray or icecube mold, and then moving it to a vacuumbag, but no matter what happens, it’ll set in.
fun fact. meat turns into a gelatinous goo eventually. you wouldn’t want to eat arctic woolly mammoth meat. (but the stuff being cloned? oh, absolutely. Them and cloned dodo.)
This is going to depend a bit on your freezer. A frost free freezer is going to have thaw cycles that will increase the risk of freezer burn. If you have a chest freezer without a frost free setting then it could easily last 6 months without an issue.
If you’re concerned then thaw in the fridge, and heat to over 65C for 5 minutes before eating.
Thanks!
you’re welcome!
It’s safe. I’d heat it up on a pan though, with some lard; it might help with the freezer burn.
This is the best idea but not bothering with the slow defrost. Just low heat with lard in a pan, stirring until it defrosts then heat until it is at the desired temperature.
I have no advise but would love your recipe if you’re willing to share!
