freezer bracketology

Freezer Food Bracketology

You may think of March as a month for enjoying green beer and spring weather, but it's also a month dedicated to the celebration of frozen food. Although President Ronald Reagan designated March 6 Frozen Food Day1 in 1984, the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association has extended its time in the spotlight by anointing March as National Frozen Food Month. Since this observance coincides with America's favorite college basketball tournament, we pitted your favorite foods against each other to see which ingredient has the longest freezer life.

Freezers Don't Stop the Clock

Before we break down the bracket, let's bust a few myths about how freezing food actually works. While your freezer isn't a magical capsule where time stops and food emerges unchanged, it is meant to safely hold food for extended periods of time without allowing bacteria to grow and contaminate it. Rather than being used to determine food safety, freezer life is used to designate something like a "Best By" date.

You can use a food's estimated freezer life to answer the question, "is [insert item that you put in the freezer months ago and forgot about] still good to eat?" As long as you store food properly2 and your freezer consistently maintains an ideal temperature of 0 degrees Fahrenheit, your food should stay safe to eat, in theory, forever. However, if items remain in the freezer for too long, the quality of the food will deteriorate, resulting in changes to texture and taste.

Freezer Food Bracket

Breaking Down the Bracket

This bracket was made by compiling the recommended freezer life from several sources, and, unless stated otherwise, the freezer time is for uncooked food stored in an upright freezer.

The Meat Bracket

Bacon and sausage are popular components of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but their popularity doesn't change their relatively short recommended freezer lives of 1 to 2 months. Poultry, on the other hand, is reported to last an impressive 9 months to 1 year. When it comes to pork and ham, pork has the longer recommended freezer life at 4 to 6 months; ham, depending on the type, can only be kept 1 to 4 months. Pork's half-a-year recommendation wasn't quite enough to beat out poultry and advance in the bracket.

Freezer Food Bracket - Meat

Hot dogs are an American favorite, especially during the summer, but they have a recommended freezer life of just 1 to 2 months, while hamburgers, America's other favorite cookout food, last slightly longer at about 4 months. Fish and shellfish are recommended for 3 to 8 months, which is a wide range for an admittedly varied category that includes fatty and lean fish, shrimp, and other seafood. However, this freezer life didn't help it advance against steak. Steak also defeated hamburgers to face poultry in the final round of the meat bracket.

The recommended freezer life for steak varies from source to source; although some put it at 4 months and others gave it as long as 1 year, most times fell closer to 6 months. Because of that, we gave the meat bracket to poultry, which had the longest minimum recommendation of 9 months.

The Dairy Bracket

Stocking up on dairy when you find it on sale is a great idea, but you run the risk of not being able to use all of it before it expires. The good news is most dairy products can be frozen; the bad news is most will suffer changes in texture that make them best used as components in a dish. Eggs are neither dairy nor meat, but they do have a habit of hanging out with real dairy products in the grocery store and are commonly used alongside those ingredients in baking, so we decided to put them here.

Freezer Food Bracket - Dairy

Eggs didn't make it very far in the bracket because they don't do well when frozen in the shell, although the whites and yolks can be frozen. Freezing egg yolks requires some extra work, but egg whites can be frozen as-is for as long as a year. The recommended freezer life for butter varies from 4 months to 1 year, but it advances over eggs because it doesn't need any alterations to survive the frozen tundra.

Whether cheese should be frozen is the subject of an ongoing debate, but harder cheeses can be frozen for as long as 6 months, provided you plan to grate it or melt it rather than slice it up and serve it with crackers. Milk can also be frozen but should only be stored for 3 months or less and will experience a change in texture that some feel makes it unpleasant to drink. Cheese advanced over milk but couldn't make it past butter's versatility and longer freezer life.

Eggnog and ice cream are both popular desserts, but ice cream should only stay in your freezer for a couple of months; to enjoy the best possible taste and texture, eating it within a few weeks of opening is recommended. Eggnog, on the other hand, can be frozen for 6 months, which helped the holiday dessert advance over its more popular cousin.

Sour cream's recommended freezer life is 6 months, compared to yogurt's 4 to 6 months, but the unappetizing textural changes it undergoes after thawing made sour cream a weak competitor. Despite their similar life spans, yogurt's popularity as a component in smoothies helped it advance past sour cream and eggnog. Ultimately, butter's year-long freezer life couldn't be beaten, and it took a spot in the final four.

The Dessert Bracket

Whether you're planning a homemade holiday indulgence or enjoying a weeknight treat, you can use your freezer to store components prepared ahead of time or keep leftover desserts safe until a later date. Quick breads like banana and zucchini have a recommended freezer life of about 3 months and don't keep quite as long as traditional yeast breads, which are recommended for as long as 6 months.

Freezer Food Bracket - Dessert

Cookie dough is best if used in 3 months, which is a shorter freezer life than already baked cookies. Although many sources suggested eating them within 3 months, the USDA gives baked cookies a generous freezer life of 8 months. Because its recommended freezer life stayed consistent across sources at 6 months, yeast bread advanced over baked cookies.

Holidays and special events usually involve baking at least one pie or cake, but making some components ahead of time can make the baker's life easier. If you find yourself with too much cake batter, it can keep for as long as 3 months, while baked cake can also be stored for at least 3 months. Freezing unbaked pies works best with fruit pies, rather than custard or cream pies, but you can prepare these pies in advance and bake them 2 to 3 months later.

Pie crusts can also be prepared ahead of time and will keep in the freezer for 3 to 6 months, a span that put this component ahead of the finished product in the bracket. Pie crusts also knocked baked cakes out of contention but couldn't advance past yeast bread, which grabbed a spot in the final four.

The Miscellaneous Bracket

Much like that dinner you made last week to clean out the pantry, this bracket is where we put the leftover competitors that didn't quite fit anywhere else. This category also includes the produce round, where we stacked fruit up against greens such as lettuce, celery, and cabbage.

Freezer Food Bracket - Misc

While fruit has a recommended freezer life of 6 months to a year, those lettuce greens won't hold up in the freezer at all. Potatoes are also not recommended for the freezer – at least, not without major prep and alteration – and fell to tofu, which can be frozen for 6 months.

TV dinners, the original freezer warrior, easily defeated homemade baby food, which should be used within 1 to 3 months. Leftover pizza can be kept in the freezer for 2 months, but soup, recommended for a slightly longer 2 to 4 months, squeaked ahead. TV dinners have a suggested freezer life of 3 to 4 months, but their ease and popularity put them ahead of soup. Despite that, fruit's longer freezer life helped make it the champion of the miscellaneous bracket.

The Final Four

Yeast bread, butter, fruit, and poultry made up the Freezer Bracketology final four. Each item boasted a competitive freezer life of at least 6 months, but yeast bread couldn't defeat butter's usefulness or extended freezer life. Though fruit can keep in the freezer for as long as a year, poultry's floor of 9 months once again helped it outperform the competition, defeating fruit and butter to emerge victorious. The next time you see chicken on sale at the grocery store, don't worry about stocking up – just remember to date your bird before it gets relegated to the icy depths.

Tips for Post-Freezer Use

Although the internet is full of hungry strangers who've pulled frozen pizzas from the backs of their freezers after several years, cooked them, and confirmed they were still edible, it's recommended you use frozen food sooner rather than later. Here are a few other tips for using frozen food:

  • If you have a self-defrosting freezer, your freezer temperature will fluctuate, which can increase the chance your food will develop freezer burn. Freezing food that has been tightly sealed will help prevent freezer burn and extend the quality of the items.
  • Consider dating your packages to ensure you're using them before they reach the end of their freezer life.
  • To better ensure food safety, thaw and cook food properly to avoid any contamination after removing it from the freezer.3

Disclaimer: The information found in this article should not be used as a substitution for thoroughly researching food safety recommendations and best practices for preparing, storing, thawing, cooking, and consuming the ingredient or ingredients in question.

Resources

  1. Reagan's Unsung Legacy: Frozen Food Day. NPR The Salt. Accessed August 2022.
  2. Are You Storing Food Safely? U.S. FDA. Accessed August 2022.
  3. The Big Thaw — Safe Defrosting Methods. USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Accessed August 2022.