Processing wild game twice

[sacountry]

My question came from my wife tonight. We were cleaning out the freezer and found a vac sealed bag of chunked up elk. We thawed it, ground it, ate some for dinner and froze the rest. She wondered if eating meat that had been frozen, thawed, frozen, and then thawed before eating can be unsafe due to extra exposure to airborne bacteria. I blew it off as a silly question, but figured I'd seek the opinion of this seasoned audience.

Admittedly, prior to getting married, it was my standard practice to wet age vacuum sealed meat for upto 14 days in the fridge, process a portion and freeze most of it so I could eventually get it processed over several days or weeks.....life as a bachelor. Point being I've never had an issue with unfreezing meat to process it and freeze it again.

Thoughts?

 

[Gellar]

Your good.

Is It Safe to Refreeze Raw Meat and Poultry that Has Thawed?

The U. S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) advises: Once food is thawed in the refrigerator, it is safe to refreeze it without cooking, although there may be a loss of quality due to the moisture lost through thawing. After cooking raw foods which were previously frozen, it is safe to freeze the...

food.unl.edu

 

[rjthehunter]

I've done it several times. Never had an issue!

 

[dan.kirkpatrick]

im working on my nevada bull elk by this method now,,have done it several other times with success in the past,though its not perfect,it seems to work when you have limited butchering time and need to spread it out to do it all.

 

[Lilhowie83]

I cut all my grind into chunks, freeze it and then thaw it and grind it as I have time. Nobody in my family has died of food borne illness yet.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Totally safe, caveat depends on how you thaw it... on the counter possibly a problem.

 

[Redman]

I donit all the time. I prefer to grind mine when it is not 100% thawed seems to grind better in my opinion.

 

[TOGIE]

yeah i do it all the time. freeze grind piles, thaw, grind, re freeze.

realize i thawed too much for dinner sometime down the road, re freeze a pack, thaw again some other time, eat.

never been sick.

 

[TwistedSage]

When I do that I only thaw about 50% of the way through or just enough to cut off what I want to use. If you do fully thaw I'd just do it in the fridge over a few days than on the counter keep it under 43 and you shouldn't have any issues.

 

[TOGIE]

i did read some scientific reasoning as to why not to refreeze thawed meat and it makes sense. i think it was in hank shaws book. something to do with bursting cell structures from freezing that release fluids or dissolved solids that raise the freezing temperature within cells leading to cell interiors that never refreeze or something potentially causing food safety problems. i dunno, can't remember exactly.

but in the paraphrased words of steven rinella on a podcast: "yeah ive heard people say you can't do that. but you can, you just can. i've literally done it thousands of times and i'm fine."

 

[Lilhowie83]

i did read some scientific reasoning as to why not to refreeze thawed meat and it makes sense. i think it was in hank shaws book. something to do with bursting cell structures from freezing that release fluids or dissolved solids that raise the freezing temperature within cells leading to cell interiors that never refreeze or something potentially causing food safety problems. i dunno, can't remember exactly.

but in the paraphrased words of steven rinella on a podcast: "yeah ive heard people say you can't do that. but you can, you just can. i've literally done it thousands of times and i'm fine."

Hanks reasoning is that the bursting cells from freezing and thawing causes you to lose moisture from the meat, so it was a food quality issue not a food saftey issue.

 

[HuntTalk Freak]

That’s pretty much how I do it now. I’ll trim the backstraps and tenderloins, debone the quarters, separate into roasts and trim, vacuum seal and freeze. Later in the year I’ll thaw and process as needed then freeze.

 

[thomas89]

Do this all the time. No issues.

Imagine if you shot a deer on a late season hunt and couldn’t recover it til the next morning, temps below zero over night. Meat frozen when you get to it.

You pitching it or thawing it out and cutting it up?

 

[Dinkshooter]

I always freeze my stuff to grind, thaw, grind then freeze. My wife use to freak about it to. That was almost 20 years ago now. No one has died from that.

I always laugh when I hear other wise and think of the times its froze, thawed and froze again by the time I even get it out woods.