How To Keep Food Cold During A Power Outage? 5 Best Ways We Suggest

How To Keep Food Cold During A Power Outage? Refrigerator power outage emergencies can happen, especially with extreme weather conditions. You must have a strategy in place in case this occurs. This includes knowing the proper food safety precautions to take before, during, and after a power outage and being prepared to handle food and water safety in the event of a power outage. Read more articles below to get appropriate measures to know How To Keep Food Cold During A Power Outage.

How To Keep Food Cold During A Power Outage?

According to USDA – US Department of Agriculture and CDC – US Centers for Disease Control, refrigerated and frozen foods may no longer be safe after a power outage. we also provide some recommended steps for How To Keep Food Cold During A Power Outage:

Prepare before the power outage

How To Keep Food Cold During A Power Outage? If you know the duration of the power outage, there are a few things you can do to prepare:

1. Adjust the temperature to the lowest

This will make the coldness in the food lower to the lowest, thereby helping to prolong the preservation time and store the food longer.

2. Rearrange the food in the cupboard

Please rearrange the foods in the refrigerator into groups so that they are reasonable and scientific to limit the dispersion of cold air, ensuring all foods keep the freshness and best quality.

3. Put a few bottles of water in the fridge

The refrigerator will operate more efficiently and consume less electricity if you put a few bottles of water in the refrigerator, filling the space in the refrigerator. You wonder why you have to do that right? Because water is a substance with a very large heat capacity, it helps to increase the coldness in the refrigerator.

How To Keep Food Cold During A Power Outage?

1. Limit opening the refrigerator

Every time you open the refrigerator, a large amount of steam in the refrigerator escapes. Therefore, you should limit opening the refrigerator when the power is out to minimize the loss of cold air so that the food in the refrigerator is better preserved. Most refrigerators on the market today can keep food warm for at least a day when there is a power outage, some refrigerators have up to 2-3 days.

2. Use dry ice, ice bags

How To Keep Food Cold During A Power Outage? One way you can preserve food during a power outage is by using dry ice or ice packs in the refrigerator. This method can help you keep food cold for longer because according to the FDA, 22kg of dry ice can keep the freezer for 2 days.

3. Do not put more items in the refrigerator

You should not, it is best not to add new foods to the refrigerator during a power outage as this will cause the cold air in the refrigerator to gather this new food to cool. This will cause other foods to defrost faster because they are not cold enough.

4. Do not put hot food in the refrigerator

Just like not adding new food to the refrigerator, it is even more impossible to put hot food in the refrigerator even during a power outage or power outage. Because this will both make new food lose nutrients, and affect other foods and the life of the refrigerator.

5. Check and cook food

When you take food from the refrigerator without electricity, you need to carefully check and cook the food to ensure safety and limit the consumption of spoiled food that is harmful to health. Foods such as meat, milk, eggs, or fish are very perishable.

Factors affecting defrost speed for refrigerators

1. Amount of food in the refrigerator

Do you often think that the smaller the food, the slower the defrosting speed? If you are thinking like that, please change it because in fact, a refrigerator with a lot of food will keep it cold longer than a refrigerator with less food. Therefore, when the power goes out, don’t remove the food from the refrigerator, but arrange them neatly and neatly into several groups.

2. Food temperature

Of course, the colder the food, the slower the defrosting speed. Therefore, you should not put still hot food in the refrigerator during a power outage because it will cause the temperature in the refrigerator to rise and make the food available in the refrigerator lose its cold faster.

4. Insulation ability

The defrosting process of food depends a lot on the insulation of the refrigerator, the food will keep cold longer if the refrigerator has good insulation. On the market today, most refrigerators have this ability, but depending on the different models, the ability to keep heat will be different.

5. The capacity of the cabinet

The larger the refrigerator capacity, the slower the defrosting speed of food. You can freely choose a refrigerator with the capacity to suit your needs with diverse and rich models.

How to handle food after a power outage?

1. Fruit

If after the power outage, the flowers and fruits in the cabinet are still fresh, you can continue to store it at the appropriate temperature. In case the fruits show signs of spoilage, you need to take them out and handle them so as not to affect other foods in the refrigerator.

2. Processed food

As for processed foods, you should cook and eat them right away when they are still cold, but absolutely do not re-freeze them because it will change the nutritional structure of the food, which is harmful to health. Those that are no longer cold or have unusual signs, please discard them immediately!

3. Vegetable

Vegetables are the most difficult foods to preserve because they are very perishable. You should not continue to store vegetables when it has lost their coolness. You may not know that bacteria in vegetables grow very quickly and vegetables can go bad before they have a strange smell. Therefore, remember to double-check them after taking them out of the refrigerator during a power outage!

4. Kinds of meat

You should carefully check the meat after taking it from the refrigerator without power to avoid using stale meat, which is dangerous to health. If you find that meat has a strange smell or the temperature in the freezer exceeds 4-5 degrees Celsius for more than 2 hours, you should throw it away immediately.

Another note is that when you have defrosted the meat, you must use it immediately, not put it back in the refrigerator because doing so will change the nutrients of the meat.

5. Seafood

You absolutely should not put seafood back in the refrigerator when it has defrosted, unless the seafood still has ice crystals clinging to it. Seafood is also very perishable if not stored at the right temperature, and even when spoiled, it does not show any signs or odors. Therefore, you should remember to check them carefully before processing them.

6 Cream

With ice creams, they will surely melt more or less when the refrigerator is out of power. You can take them out and eat them and throw them away if they taste weird!

Conclusion:

Above are a few guidelines for storing food in the refrigerator during a power outage that we would like to share with you. Hope it helps you and your family. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below the article!