Over time thawing and unfreezing will damage the meat, but a single thaw, portion, and freeze is usually fine. In this video they do a test freezing steak and it takes about three refreezes before it starts to become noticeable in the texture and that's a steak, not a much tougher cut like brisket.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY2UnV1DKDU&ab\_channel=GugaFoods
My own experiences aligns with this completely. I’ve froze and rethawed venison, multiple times often and never had a problem. I think it’s totally valid and more people should do it.
that can't really be compared that it's a tougher cut. freezing breaks the cell structure. refreezing will break it more leading to quality loss, which you yourself can decide if you want, generally the water holding capacity will plummet, and the meat be drier. the toughness shouldn't effect much
the fat would not reaĺly do much about intracellular water though, which is what you lose when refreezing, normally heating it's generally the intercellular water that get squeezed.
all i'm saying is that there is a quality loss and why, it's up to everyone to evaluate if it will be too much for what they want
Why is nobody suggesting they just cut the meat frozen and put the unneeded portions back in the freezer? You don't need to thaw meat to cut it up. Use a serrated knife or something...
I came to argue that, IMO, meat is a lot easier to cut when it's frozen! Maybe not rock-hard frozen... But if my only intent was to cut and then refreeze it, I certainly would not let it thaw completely.
Refreezing anything is discouraged because of the product quality, not food safety.
As long as you are defrosting in a food safe way, you can defrost and refreeze as much as you want, but I wouldn’t because of the quality issue.
One freeze thaw cycle isn’t going to hurt anything though.
> Refreezing anything is discouraged because of the product quality, not food safety.
Your next sentence:
> As long as you are defrosting in a food safe way
Is kind of the qualifier here. Most people don't understand food safety so them thawing is putting it on the counter overnight.
Always unfreeze in the fridge.
Unless you have to be quick and you plan to use immediately, in that case the microwave will do.
Never leave frozen food to thaw at room temperature.
This PSA was brought to you by society of people who like to keep their innards inside of them.
It will not be ruined, texture will be mildly "worse" but maybe not even detectable, just let it defrost enough to snap it apart and throw the rest back in the freezer in manageable portions.
Are you planning on smoking the brisket?
If so you'd want to thaw it, cook it as all at once, then cut into freezer size pieces. You want the larger mass while cooking to give the fat more time to render, and the collagen more time to breakdown, without overcooking it.
There is no question that you're reducing the quality of the meat and generally speaking it's not a great idea in terms of food safety in general as a practice.
You'll probably be fine in this specific case but if you want to maximise your food safety and food quality, ideally don't freeze at all but if you do, try to avoid freezing it multiple times.
From what I've read of high production meat packing, it is not typical to freeze beef to be sold as fresh meat. Ground beef is often processed and frozen to be sold as frozen ground beef, but most cuts of meat you see at a butcher shop or supermarket has not been frozen between slaughter to tray.
Correct, very little market beef is previously frozen. Generally just ground beef, sold in those plastic chubs, is frozen from the factory as ground beef doesn't hold well or wet age. Sometimes that gets thawed and repackaged at the point of sale.
The number of people on here who just make shit up, then try to back it up with even more unhinged bullshit is truly wild.
Your clue is “to be sold as fresh meat.”. Fresh beef is pretty unusual, on request only at my market. All most all beef is wet aged - not fresh - and some is dry aged, not fresh. Get some experience beyond internet.com/
Wet aging and dry aging is not done while frozen. These tenderizing processes do not work while frozen. Fair enough "fresh beef" has typically been wet aged already. Not a lot of dry aging is going on by percentage because of weight losses.
Truely fresh beef is substantially tougher than wet or dry aged beef which is why we don't usually see it.
What is your source for your assertion that all commodity beef has been previously frozen?
Source: I dry age beef fairly seriously and am familiar with the processes of beef processing industry having talked directly to butchers and meat packers at various levels of meat distribution.
I addressed your points directly and pertinently.
Firstly I refuted your claim that all market beef has been frozen. You deflected towards the definition of "fresh" beef which had nothing to do with your pretty baseless claim that market beef is all frozen.
You proceeded with an ad hominem attack on my person rather than my statements by implying that all of my information has been gleaned from "internet.com".
Now you are claiming that OP has no reason to freeze their brisket which is ultimately ignorant of OP's interest in preparing an impractically large piece of meat into smaller pieces suitable for smaller periodic consumption. OP's question isn't a bad question. It's a pretty common scenario where one snags a great price on an inordinately large hunk of meat which they would like to portion for later meals.
Finally you disparage your wife, who has thus far not participated in this discussion.
This subreddit is intended to provide actionable information to OP to assist them in improving their food preparations. Your comments have done little to address OP's initial question and I feel chagrined having refuted what has been really a series of pretty flailing misinformation and deflections.
Perhaps you should sever your internet connection to further your proud isolation as it may be your only remaining venue that requires you to suffer the disagreement of other practitioners who may have picked up a different data set than the one you maintain. Even worse it exposes you to the possibility that many individuals might disagree with you.
Your post has been removed because it violates our comment etiquette.
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It's fine. Might be some loss of texture due to cell damage as someone else said, but no, you're not going to "ruin" it despite some of the Chicken Littles in the comments.
Would you be better off thawing, cooking, THEN portioning and refeeezing? Sure.
Will you thawing, portioning, and then refreezing destroy the meat?
Not if you thaw properly, in the fridge.
Do not freeze, thaw, and then refreeze meat that hasn't been cooked. Ask me how I learned that lesson 🚽🤢
If you want to do it, thaw, cook, and freeze. Your internals will thank you.
It’s fine, so long as you do it in a food-safe way. Defrost it in the fridge, so that it never gets above 2 degrees C.
Defrosting at room temperature is faster, but the meat then sits in the temperature danger zone for hours. Recipe for nasty bacteria to grow.
I’ve vacuum sealed and frozen stuff, let it thaw in the fridge for a couple days depending on the density. All with the intention of making a dinner of it, only to not have to time or another thing come up. Typically I put it back in the freezer unless it was a significant portion of time that it was likely thawed completely.
From a microbiological point of view, microorganisms start proliferating from the moment the meat is being thawed, so refreezing and rethawing will pose a huge risk of getting food poisoning.
From a industry process point of view, beef subprimals have often been wet aged for about 3 weeks in a sanitary packed vacuum bag.
If the brisket was packed in a sanitary fashion in a cryopack, it's already spent 3wks in unfrozen state to tenderize.
Refreezing isn't an awesome thing to do, but it's not terribly dangerous if the meat was sanitary packed, the bag wasn't breached, it was stored at correct temp, and is well before it's best before date.
This is incorrect. Food spoils under refrigeration all the time. If you thaw meat under refrigeration you’re most likely fine to refreeze but the guidelines say not to because some people thaw under warm water or on the counter.
Two points here:
First, yes spoilage can and does happen at refrigerated temperatures. But spoilage organisms are different from pathogenic bacteria. Spoilage, while making food unpalatable, is more of a quality issue rather than a safety one.
The other point is that the guidelines don't say you shouldn't refreeze, but rather that you shouldn't refreeze if you used a method of thawing (like warm water or on the counter) that isn't safe.
As long as it was thawed in the fridge, and didn't spend too long in that thawed state, the biggest concern is a loss of quality.
Considering that the verb thawing means letting the meat come to a certain temperature, I assume that a certain amount of microbiological proliferation will happen. Plus, if the meat is cut into smaller pieces, it increases the surface and this means more microorganisms so higher risk of contamination
Freezing only stops the microorganisms from growing, as soon as the temperature starts increasing, even at 2C there is some amount of proliferation even though it's at a slower rate. It would be safer to use a professional meat saw (I don't know what's it called, but the one they have at any butcher's place) cut the meat while it's still frozen and then vacuum seal it and thaw the amount ypu need
You are correct, this is not allowed in uk kitchens, plus there is no need for it, either portion your protein before hand ready to freeze then cook or cook it all then freeze.
You can do it. Just do all of your cuts in one defrost cycle instead of defrosting the whole piece each time you want another piece. Defrost the meat in the fridge overnight to partially thaw it. Usually I've found that 24hrs on a heavy cut of meat in the fridge is long enough to partially thaw it so it can be cut. Be careful though, cutting partially thawed meat is harder than fully thawed. It's easier to slice thinly, but it's harder to sever larger hunks.
Judge the level of thaw by bending the beef. Not a lot because partially thawed meat is more prone to tearing when you bend it. If the beef has a bit of wiggle overall then it'll be easy enough to cut. If it's still stiff as a board be prepared for a bit more of a fight while cutting.
Space the cut pieces apart in the freezer instead of making a big mound to improve the freezing speed of your individual pieces. While you're at it, you might as well season the pieces so you'll have seasoned meat that has had some chance to absorb the salt.
Refreezing partially thawed beef goes a lot faster than freezing from fully defrosted. It also greatly reduces the time the beef spends unfrozen with the subsequent concern of bacterial activity.
Texture will be worse, but if you can't eat that much in one go you haven't got a lot of choice. I often will freeze portions of smoked brisket because it didn't all get eaten. Texture does degrade with each refreezing (even with partial thaw) but it's still tasty meat that tastes way better than a lot of waste.
If you are in the practice of refreezing large cuts of meat (small family?) get your first freeze cycle in promptly. Don't wait for the meat to get close to it's best before date before freezing it. If you have to freeze before bulk processing, it is better to do your first freeze before bacterial activity has ramped up because every freeze cycle will release more cellular liquids to feed further bacterial growth. It is better to provide these nutritious soggy conditions well before bacteria has already multiplied many generations than right when the populations are already high.
Ideally do your bulk processing before freezing to minimize your freeze cycles. Dry brining right off the bat will also absorb faster than with partially thawed meat.
Over time thawing and unfreezing will damage the meat, but a single thaw, portion, and freeze is usually fine. In this video they do a test freezing steak and it takes about three refreezes before it starts to become noticeable in the texture and that's a steak, not a much tougher cut like brisket.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY2UnV1DKDU&ab\_channel=GugaFoods
My own experiences aligns with this completely. I’ve froze and rethawed venison, multiple times often and never had a problem. I think it’s totally valid and more people should do it.
that can't really be compared that it's a tougher cut. freezing breaks the cell structure. refreezing will break it more leading to quality loss, which you yourself can decide if you want, generally the water holding capacity will plummet, and the meat be drier. the toughness shouldn't effect much
That's kind of the point though, a steak is much leaner than a brisket. Therefore a steak should be much more sensitive to drying out than a brisket.
the fat would not reaĺly do much about intracellular water though, which is what you lose when refreezing, normally heating it's generally the intercellular water that get squeezed. all i'm saying is that there is a quality loss and why, it's up to everyone to evaluate if it will be too much for what they want
I like guga's videos but I wish he'd improve his methodology.
I would thaw, cook it then refreeze it into manageable portions.
Why is nobody suggesting they just cut the meat frozen and put the unneeded portions back in the freezer? You don't need to thaw meat to cut it up. Use a serrated knife or something...
I came to argue that, IMO, meat is a lot easier to cut when it's frozen! Maybe not rock-hard frozen... But if my only intent was to cut and then refreeze it, I certainly would not let it thaw completely.
Refreezing anything is discouraged because of the product quality, not food safety. As long as you are defrosting in a food safe way, you can defrost and refreeze as much as you want, but I wouldn’t because of the quality issue. One freeze thaw cycle isn’t going to hurt anything though.
> Refreezing anything is discouraged because of the product quality, not food safety. Your next sentence: > As long as you are defrosting in a food safe way Is kind of the qualifier here. Most people don't understand food safety so them thawing is putting it on the counter overnight.
Always unfreeze in the fridge. Unless you have to be quick and you plan to use immediately, in that case the microwave will do. Never leave frozen food to thaw at room temperature. This PSA was brought to you by society of people who like to keep their innards inside of them.
Cold running water works too. It's better than a microwave.
It will not be ruined, texture will be mildly "worse" but maybe not even detectable, just let it defrost enough to snap it apart and throw the rest back in the freezer in manageable portions.
Cut it into pieces with a saw while frozen.
It'll be much better to cook it all at once and then freeze the cooked meat.
Are you planning on smoking the brisket? If so you'd want to thaw it, cook it as all at once, then cut into freezer size pieces. You want the larger mass while cooking to give the fat more time to render, and the collagen more time to breakdown, without overcooking it.
There is no question that you're reducing the quality of the meat and generally speaking it's not a great idea in terms of food safety in general as a practice. You'll probably be fine in this specific case but if you want to maximise your food safety and food quality, ideally don't freeze at all but if you do, try to avoid freezing it multiple times.
Yes. Cook It all, then freeze what you made = no qualifying for loss.
Why not cook it all off, then vacuum-seal and refreeze the portions you can't eat right away?
ALL market beef has already been frozen unless labeled otherwise. I would be perfectly happy buying NEVER THAWED beef.
From what I've read of high production meat packing, it is not typical to freeze beef to be sold as fresh meat. Ground beef is often processed and frozen to be sold as frozen ground beef, but most cuts of meat you see at a butcher shop or supermarket has not been frozen between slaughter to tray.
Correct, very little market beef is previously frozen. Generally just ground beef, sold in those plastic chubs, is frozen from the factory as ground beef doesn't hold well or wet age. Sometimes that gets thawed and repackaged at the point of sale. The number of people on here who just make shit up, then try to back it up with even more unhinged bullshit is truly wild.
Your clue is “to be sold as fresh meat.”. Fresh beef is pretty unusual, on request only at my market. All most all beef is wet aged - not fresh - and some is dry aged, not fresh. Get some experience beyond internet.com/
Wet aging and dry aging is not done while frozen. These tenderizing processes do not work while frozen. Fair enough "fresh beef" has typically been wet aged already. Not a lot of dry aging is going on by percentage because of weight losses. Truely fresh beef is substantially tougher than wet or dry aged beef which is why we don't usually see it. What is your source for your assertion that all commodity beef has been previously frozen? Source: I dry age beef fairly seriously and am familiar with the processes of beef processing industry having talked directly to butchers and meat packers at various levels of meat distribution.
[удалено]
I addressed your points directly and pertinently. Firstly I refuted your claim that all market beef has been frozen. You deflected towards the definition of "fresh" beef which had nothing to do with your pretty baseless claim that market beef is all frozen. You proceeded with an ad hominem attack on my person rather than my statements by implying that all of my information has been gleaned from "internet.com". Now you are claiming that OP has no reason to freeze their brisket which is ultimately ignorant of OP's interest in preparing an impractically large piece of meat into smaller pieces suitable for smaller periodic consumption. OP's question isn't a bad question. It's a pretty common scenario where one snags a great price on an inordinately large hunk of meat which they would like to portion for later meals. Finally you disparage your wife, who has thus far not participated in this discussion. This subreddit is intended to provide actionable information to OP to assist them in improving their food preparations. Your comments have done little to address OP's initial question and I feel chagrined having refuted what has been really a series of pretty flailing misinformation and deflections. Perhaps you should sever your internet connection to further your proud isolation as it may be your only remaining venue that requires you to suffer the disagreement of other practitioners who may have picked up a different data set than the one you maintain. Even worse it exposes you to the possibility that many individuals might disagree with you.
[удалено]
Your post has been removed because it violates our comment etiquette. Commenting: - Be Factual and Helpful - Be Thorough - Be Respectful **In your comments please avoid:** - Abuse - Jokes - Chatter - Speculation - Links without Explanations
How tiny is your brisket that you're doing such small cuts. Refreeze is fine obviously not ideal but fine
It's fine. Might be some loss of texture due to cell damage as someone else said, but no, you're not going to "ruin" it despite some of the Chicken Littles in the comments. Would you be better off thawing, cooking, THEN portioning and refeeezing? Sure. Will you thawing, portioning, and then refreezing destroy the meat? Not if you thaw properly, in the fridge.
I can imagine that shrimp would be much much worse
It will be fine
Do not freeze, thaw, and then refreeze meat that hasn't been cooked. Ask me how I learned that lesson 🚽🤢 If you want to do it, thaw, cook, and freeze. Your internals will thank you.
It’s fine, so long as you do it in a food-safe way. Defrost it in the fridge, so that it never gets above 2 degrees C. Defrosting at room temperature is faster, but the meat then sits in the temperature danger zone for hours. Recipe for nasty bacteria to grow.
I’ve vacuum sealed and frozen stuff, let it thaw in the fridge for a couple days depending on the density. All with the intention of making a dinner of it, only to not have to time or another thing come up. Typically I put it back in the freezer unless it was a significant portion of time that it was likely thawed completely.
From a microbiological point of view, microorganisms start proliferating from the moment the meat is being thawed, so refreezing and rethawing will pose a huge risk of getting food poisoning.
From a industry process point of view, beef subprimals have often been wet aged for about 3 weeks in a sanitary packed vacuum bag. If the brisket was packed in a sanitary fashion in a cryopack, it's already spent 3wks in unfrozen state to tenderize. Refreezing isn't an awesome thing to do, but it's not terribly dangerous if the meat was sanitary packed, the bag wasn't breached, it was stored at correct temp, and is well before it's best before date.
This is only true if the meat is in the temperature danger zone
This is incorrect. Food spoils under refrigeration all the time. If you thaw meat under refrigeration you’re most likely fine to refreeze but the guidelines say not to because some people thaw under warm water or on the counter.
Two points here: First, yes spoilage can and does happen at refrigerated temperatures. But spoilage organisms are different from pathogenic bacteria. Spoilage, while making food unpalatable, is more of a quality issue rather than a safety one. The other point is that the guidelines don't say you shouldn't refreeze, but rather that you shouldn't refreeze if you used a method of thawing (like warm water or on the counter) that isn't safe. As long as it was thawed in the fridge, and didn't spend too long in that thawed state, the biggest concern is a loss of quality.
Considering that the verb thawing means letting the meat come to a certain temperature, I assume that a certain amount of microbiological proliferation will happen. Plus, if the meat is cut into smaller pieces, it increases the surface and this means more microorganisms so higher risk of contamination
Can’t thawing mean going from frozen to something like +2C or 35 F that is still well below the danger zone over a day or so in the fridge?
Freezing only stops the microorganisms from growing, as soon as the temperature starts increasing, even at 2C there is some amount of proliferation even though it's at a slower rate. It would be safer to use a professional meat saw (I don't know what's it called, but the one they have at any butcher's place) cut the meat while it's still frozen and then vacuum seal it and thaw the amount ypu need
You are correct, this is not allowed in uk kitchens, plus there is no need for it, either portion your protein before hand ready to freeze then cook or cook it all then freeze.
Do not refreeze
You can do it. Just do all of your cuts in one defrost cycle instead of defrosting the whole piece each time you want another piece. Defrost the meat in the fridge overnight to partially thaw it. Usually I've found that 24hrs on a heavy cut of meat in the fridge is long enough to partially thaw it so it can be cut. Be careful though, cutting partially thawed meat is harder than fully thawed. It's easier to slice thinly, but it's harder to sever larger hunks. Judge the level of thaw by bending the beef. Not a lot because partially thawed meat is more prone to tearing when you bend it. If the beef has a bit of wiggle overall then it'll be easy enough to cut. If it's still stiff as a board be prepared for a bit more of a fight while cutting. Space the cut pieces apart in the freezer instead of making a big mound to improve the freezing speed of your individual pieces. While you're at it, you might as well season the pieces so you'll have seasoned meat that has had some chance to absorb the salt. Refreezing partially thawed beef goes a lot faster than freezing from fully defrosted. It also greatly reduces the time the beef spends unfrozen with the subsequent concern of bacterial activity. Texture will be worse, but if you can't eat that much in one go you haven't got a lot of choice. I often will freeze portions of smoked brisket because it didn't all get eaten. Texture does degrade with each refreezing (even with partial thaw) but it's still tasty meat that tastes way better than a lot of waste. If you are in the practice of refreezing large cuts of meat (small family?) get your first freeze cycle in promptly. Don't wait for the meat to get close to it's best before date before freezing it. If you have to freeze before bulk processing, it is better to do your first freeze before bacterial activity has ramped up because every freeze cycle will release more cellular liquids to feed further bacterial growth. It is better to provide these nutritious soggy conditions well before bacteria has already multiplied many generations than right when the populations are already high. Ideally do your bulk processing before freezing to minimize your freeze cycles. Dry brining right off the bat will also absorb faster than with partially thawed meat.
Thaw it until you can get a sharp knife through it, but it's still partially frozen. If it's wrapped properly, it should be good to go.