Safe To Eat?

In general, refrigerated items should be safe as long as the power is out no more than four hours.  But, with an outage as long as the one Ontario has just experienced, caution is the best advice. 

The following foods are often implicated with food-borne illness and should be discarded if stored above 4C for two hours or more:

  • Raw or cooked meat, poultry, seafood, luncheon meats
  • Casseroles, stews and soups
  • Eggs, milk and soft cheeses
  • Homemade mayonnaise or dressings
  • Cooked pasta, potatoes or rice
  • Salads made with any of these foods 

Also throw out  any food that has an unusual odor, color, or texture, or feels warm to the touch. But remember you can't rely on appearance or odor alone.  Never taste food to determine its safety.  Some foods may look and smell fine, but if they have been at room temperature too long, bacteria that cause foodborne illness can begin to grow very rapidly.  If you're in doubt about a food's safety, throw it out!  It's not worth the risk.

When a power outage lasts for more than a few hours or a day, you may lose the refrigerated food but hopefully you can still save the frozen items.  Dry ice is a possibility for the freezer (if you can find a source) but is not recommended for the refrigerator.  Instead, you may be able to buy some block ice or bags of ice at a convenience store or grocery if the power outage is not widespread.

In the future, keep an appliance thermometer in the refrigerator and freezer at all times.  This takes the guess work out of just how cold the unit is and will help you make better decisions about whether the food is still good or not.  The key to determining the safety of foods in the refrigerator and freezer is knowing how cold they are.  The refrigerator temperature should be 4 degrees celcius or below. 

A full free-standing freezer will stay at freezing temperatures about 2 days; a half-full freezer about one day.  Most freezers that are part of a refrigerator-freezer combination will keep food frozen for up to a day - IF the door stays closed.

In the future, if your freezer is not full, use jugs of water and/or other freezer safe containers to freeze water to take up the empty space. (Be sure to allow a couple of inches of head-space in each container for expansion.)  This will help your freezer run more efficiently and in the case of a power outage your food will stay frozen longer.  Freezer gels or packs may also be used.

The foods in your freezer that partially or completely thaw before power is restored may be safely refrozen if they still contain ice crystals or are 4 degrees celcius or below.  You will have to evaluate each item separately. Fish and shellfish should not be refrozen if they have completely thawed. Frozen dinners, desserts and ice cream should not be refrozen. When in doubt throw it out.