Can meat be re-frozen?

[mdrob214]

Your order is wrong.

She cooked the meat, froze it, thawed it and then make pasta sauce. She can't refreeze the sauce or the meat.

If she froze the meat raw, thawed it, cooked it and make pasta sauce then she could have froze the sauce and cooked meat.

You can re-freeze cooked items, you can't refreeze meat that has not been cooked. It won't hurt.

 

[bpesch]

Since you've cooked the meat in a pasta sauce there is absolutely no problem with refreezing it.

 

[Free4Life11]

I'm confused...someone please explain why you can't "re-freeze" thawed meat. Unless you are not cooking to the right temperature, what is the issue?

 

[timmac]

I'm confused...someone please explain why you can't "re-freeze" thawed meat. Unless you are not cooking to the right temperature, what is the issue?

In general, assuming you're going to cook it sufficiently once you do finally cook it, there technically isn't a reason why you can't do this.

*however* you may have issues with quality of the meat from doing the thaw and refreezing cycle.

 

[hugabearjo]

I do this all the time..... we are alive and well..... Hope this helps......

 

[TaraPA]

I've done all scenarios mentioned on this thread & have never had any issues.

 

[hygienejean]

I do it all the time... It should be just fine.

 

[Eeyore98]

There is no food safety risk to freezing the sauce you made with the previously cooked and frozen meat. The only problem might be one of texture, but since it is cooked ground beef, that shouldn't be an issue. The texture won't change much.

Agree with this completely.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

This is funny. I was always taught to never re-freeze food. When we explained this to our kids, they asked why & we really didn't have an answer except that mom-mom said so.

 

[seashoreCM]

You should NEVER freeze partially cooked meat in a regular home freezer. If you had a commercial flash freezer that is different, but the average home freezer is not capable of freezing meat fast enough to stall bacteria growth and inhibit it from 'invading'.:

The same would be true of meat that happened to attain room temperature at any time since you bought it even if not partially cooked.

The alternative to freezing is putting it in the "regular fridge". Even though a home freezer can[t freeze the meat fast enough, it is still faster than the "regular fridge".

The meat should be eaten quite promptly such as in the next day or two and in that case it is not worth losing quality going through freezing.

 

[tinkermom23]

I was taught that I could safely freeze things 1x in each form.

SO, if I buy RAW, FROZEN meat, it's been frozen in the raw form and I will need to keep it frozen or cook it. I cannot thaw raw meat, then refreeze again raw.

If I thaw that meat and cook it, I can then freeze it because it hasn't been frozen in it's cooked form.

If I cook it, freeze it (plain, w/ sauce,or in hotdish) then I thaw it, I cannot refreeze it since the meat has already been frozen at one point in it's cooked form.

Not sure if it's correct, just what we do and we're all fine....