The Popular Freezing Method That Sabotages The Quality Of Meat

The worst part of grocery shopping is getting home and putting everything away. Whether you like to wash, prep, and portion your groceries as soon as you get home or you're more prone to tossing everything right into the fridge or freezer, it's important to follow food safety procedures. Ensuring that fresh ingredients like meat, seafood, and produce are stored properly can prolong the shelf life of your food and keep everything at peak quality, especially when freezing a lot of meat.

It may seem logical and easy to take your meat straight from the grocery bag to the freezer, but doing so can initiate and even speed up the degradation in quality that naturally occurs when freezing for prolonged periods. Many meats come on plastic trays, covered in plastic film or wrap and while this keeps food safe and fresh temporarily, it is often still permeable to air and shouldn't be relied on as long-term storage. When meat is exposed to air while frozen, the natural juices and moisture are slowly lost, resulting in gray, bland, grainy, and just all-around off-tasting protein. Most grocery-store meat packaging is not intended for long-term freezer storage and is likely to make your meat susceptible to freezer burn or other loss in quality when throwing it in the freezer. One exception is vacuum-sealed meats, which the USDA states can be frozen as-is.

If you don't want to completely repackage your grocery store meat into fully airtight packaging before freezing, you can try a method called overwrapping. The USDA recommends overwrapping grocery-store packages with a thick, heavy-duty foil and folding or sealing all edges so that it is airtight before freezing. This method is recommended for any meats you plan on leaving in the freezer for more than a month or two. Anything getting used earlier than that should be fine in its original grocery packaging, but the more layers between your food and the freezer air, the better.

Safe thawing is equally as important as safe storage. The refrigerator method is the best and easiest way to thaw frozen meat. Simply place your protein in its packaging on a baking sheet or tray with enough of a lip to catch any leaking juices, protecting the rest of your fridge's contents from contamination. This method takes several hours, so you'll want to transfer any meats from the freezer to the fridge the afternoon or evening before you plan on cooking them. All of this knowledge is especially useful if you like to buy meat in bulk, and can help you budget your precious money and time when it comes to food prepping at home. After properly overwrapping, storing, and thawing your meat, you'll be able to enjoy delicious, high-quality protein months after buying it at the store.