Fun with refrigerators

This may sound like a mundane, uninteresting topic, but I’ve been learning a lot about what’s safe – and what’s not! – when it comes to keeping food under refrigeration.

It started when I sold my appliances with my house last month. The rented accommodation to which I’ve moved for the short term has a fridge with a separate freezer compartment, but I had to buy another freezer to replace the chest unit I left in my old house. I was fortunate to find a 19 cu. ft. upright model (used) for almost the same price as a 7 cu. ft. chest model, and bought it. It’s been reconditioned (allegedly including a new compressor), but has had some trouble getting down to the right temperature, and doesn’t want to switch off when it gets there – the motor runs all the time. I’ve got service people checking it out now.

The fun part has come with buying fridge/freezer thermometers, and reading up about desired temperatures on the Internet, and checking out how long foods may safely be refrigerated or frozen before use. I’ve found that many of the numeric-range settings on a fridge control (say, a wheel graduated between ‘1’ and ‘9’) bear little or no relation to the actual temperatures involved with those numbers, and the temperature progression between numbers may not bear much relation to the actual rise or fall as measured by an internal thermometer. To go from ‘3’ to ‘6’ might suggest halving the internal temperature (i.e. ‘doubling the cold’), but in practice it doesn’t work that way. Only by using a fridge/freezer thermometer have I been able to find out the actual temperatures concerned.

(Perhaps the most useful overall Web site I’ve found in this regard is that of the University of Nebraska’s Co-Operative Extension. Worthwhile reading. There are many more – do an Internet search on key words like ‘safe refrigeration period’ or ‘freezing food’ and you’ll find them.)

Another worrying thing is the ‘use by’ date stamped on much fresh food. One finds a meat dish, for example, stamped to be ‘best by’ or ‘best used or frozen by’ a date three to four weeks into the future. However, that same dish might be listed in the experts’ writings as safe for no more than three to four days under refrigeration. If one wants to keep it longer than that, one should freeze it – but there’s no such recommendation on the box. Why is this? How can a food company be satisfied that its food will remain untainted and edible for four weeks in a refrigerated – not frozen – environment, when the experts who write about such things for a living say it can’t?

I’ve certainly learned a lot, and I’ll continue to look into the matter. Do any readers have expertise in this area? If so, can you recommend worthwhile resources (particularly Web sites) that can teach neophytes like me what to look for, and what to do or not to do? I’d be grateful for your advice in Comments.

Peter