The Crucial Rule Of Thumb For Freezing Steak A Second Time

Nobody wants to refreeze their steak a second time. We all know it probably isn't ideal, but sometimes, life just gets in the way. If you thaw your steak in the fridge, it can take a long time, and if you didn't time things just right, your steak could still be frozen in the middle when you need it. Or maybe you thought you wanted it when you took it out of the freezer last night, but the winds of food desire are impossible to predict that far ahead of time, and your mind has changed.

So then you worry, is it safe to refreeze? What am I actually doing to my steak when I refreeze it? I don't want it to go to waste, but I don't want to get sick either. Thankfully, it's perfectly safe to refreeze your steak — you just need to be careful about how you store it in between.

Both raw and cooked food including steak is safe to be refrozen after being defrosted the first time if they were thawed in the refrigerator and kept chilled. However, if you let your steak sit out at room temperature for two hours or more, it should not be refrozen. You also shouldn't refreeze steak if it was defrosted using cold water or the microwave. Finally, only refreeze your steak if it was kept in the fridge for less than the three to five day window that is considered safe to store chilled meat.

The reason steak shouldn't be refrozen if it was defrosted or stored outside of the refrigerator has to do with how bacteria reacts to cold. Freezing food does not actually kill bacteria, it just stops its growth. That means food that was safe before will stay safe, but any food where too much bacteria has grown won't suddenly become safe through freezing.

Bacteria can begin to grow in the food "danger zone" of temperatures above 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so any steak that has been defrosted using methods that expose the meat to higher temperatures than that run the risk of bacterial expansion. A gentle thaw using cold water can be safe by these measures, but the only way to be sure is defrosting in a fridge that is set below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Even if it's safe to refreeze safely thawed steak, the quality is going to suffer. Freezing food expands the water in its cells, which breaks them, and this process is going to make your steak's texture mushier and less pleasant with each subsequent refreeze. If you bought a steak that was flash frozen, it can avoid this fate, but even if you know how to properly freeze meat, your home freezer is going to damage the meat. Refreezing is better than wasting steak entirely, but with that impact, it will be best suited to cooking methods where the texture is softer anyway, like stews and braises.