Fresh Meats

Fresh meat is the most valuable thing in the house with the shortest clock. In the fridge it's days; in the freezer it's months; pressure-canned or cured it is years. A freezer full of meat is also the single biggest thing a long outage threatens, which is why the end of this page is about getting it out of the freezer and into jars before it thaws.

Whole cuts over ground: a roast keeps 3 to 5 days where ground beef keeps 1 to 2, because grinding spreads surface bacteria through the whole batch. For the freezer, buy in bulk when the price is right and repackage into meal-size portions. Vacuum-sealed cuts from the butcher keep longest frozen. A quarter or half animal from a local farm comes already cut, wrapped and frozen and is the cheapest way to fill a chest freezer.

Fresh meat goes on the bottom shelf of the fridge, in a tray, so nothing drips on food below it. For the freezer, wrap it tight: a vacuum sealer is the best tool a meat freezer can have, and freezer paper over plastic wrap is the next best. Label with the cut and the date. Frozen at 0°F, meat is safe indefinitely; the months in the table are how long it stays at full quality before freezer burn dries the surface. A chest freezer holds cold far longer than an upright, and a full one longer than a half-empty one; fill the gaps with jugs of water.

Fresh meat should be firm, moist and clean smelling. A sticky or slimy surface, a gray or greenish tint, and a sour or rotten smell mean it's done, and no amount of cooking fixes it. Brown on the surface of beef that still smells clean is oxidation, not spoilage. Freezer burn, the dry white patches on frozen meat, is a quality loss: cut it off and the rest is fine.

The home freezer is the short-term store. For the long term, the meat has to leave the freezer: pressure canning (never water bath, never for meat) puts it in jars that keep for years on a shelf; the jerky and cured meat pages are the dry and salt routes. Thaw in the fridge, a day per 4 to 5 pounds, or in cold water changed every half hour; never on the counter. Cook ground meat to 160°F, poultry to 165°F, whole cuts of beef and pork to 145°F with a rest.

A full freezer stays frozen about 48 hours with the door shut, a half-full one about 24. Do not open it to look. If the outage will run longer, the order is: eat the fridge meat first, then cook or can the thawing freezer meat while it still has ice crystals, because meat with ice crystals can be refrozen or canned safely. A pressure canner on a propane burner turns a freezer full of thawing meat into a shelf of jars in a long day. Meat that fully thawed and sat above 40°F for more than two hours is gone; do not taste it to decide.

Shelf-life figures are from the Survival Foods field guide; fridge, freezer and pantry times are from the USDA cold and pantry storage charts. Run the look, smell, taste check before eating anything past its date.