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The original was posted on /r/homesteading by /u/throwaysally on 2025-06-28 13:54:28+00:00.

So my family has a deep freezer where we stock up meat and all the extra fruit and veggies we don’t eat or can. Whelp, someone accidentally unplugged it, and the temp inside made it to 48 F and everything completely defrosted. It’s a full chest freezer and well insulated, so I don’t know how long it took to slowly creep up to that temp. It sounds like it got unplugged earlier this week and would have been set to sub zero before that.

I know if I were a restaurant the health inspector would say toss it regardless of how it looks or smells out of an abundance of caution, but this is so much hard work and money. Everything smelled fine when I caught it and immediately plugged it back in but I know spoilage is a function of time, and it would eventually have to defrost again to get cooked.

Anyone have advice on if this is salvageable? I put so much work into growing everything and will be devastated if we can’t save it, but don’t want to get my family sick either.

Thank you all in advance.

UPDATE: thank you Reddit family for all the good advice! I come back bearing some good news. The chest style deep freezer was densely packed and full. After pulling out a layer or two on top, I was very surprised the rest was still frozen. Thank goodness!

I went through everything not frozen with a meat thermometer to see how far it was from “safe” temps. Had to throw away some seafood, but we are immediately cooking a bunch of meat packages that look and smell fine to re-freeze for easy dinners. Will be making tons of strawberry jelly too apparently. None of the packages leaked any liquid, so that was a huge relief too.