Can I freeze this again?

[Anonymous]

I had some frozen (cooked) shredded pork, taco beef and adobo chicken, all safely frozen in the past couple-ish months after hosting small dinners. This past Saturday, I took all that from the freezer and added it to fresh ground beef, chuck roast and ground sausage for a chili. I have some leftover and wondered if I can freeze it. If everything had been fresh, I'd freeze the chili, no questions asked, but I'm not sure if those first 3 meats I listed make it unsafe or gross to freeze again. Everything has always been cooked fresh, kept at safe temps, frozen double bagged freezer bags or containers and thawed safely. It was such GOOD chili, I hate to waste it, but after 2 weekends of chili cookoffs, we're chili'd out right now.

[Anonymous]

No. You can never re-freeze.

[Anonymous]

NO!!!!

[Anonymous]

Yes, I totally would. That’s like saying you never bought frozen meat, made a lasagna with it, and then froze portions of the lasagna. Maybe others don’t do that, but I certainly do.

[Anonymous]

It won’t be unsafe but it might lose a touch of flavor or have a slightly odd texture. I would do it though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It won’t be unsafe but it might lose a touch of flavor or have a slightly odd texture. I would do it though.

This. Safety is no concern. Just might not taste as good next time you thaw it out.

[Anonymous]

I think if you thaw it out to make a dish like chili you can certainly freeze the chili. I mean, I freeze meat as soon as I buy it so any dish that includes meat (soup/stew/chili/whatever) is made with previously thawed meat!

[Anonymous]

It's fine to re-freeze.

The convention about not re-freezing meat has two main points:

1. Safety - if the meat was originally left out for several days, then frozen, then thawed and left out a few more ... think of those days at thawed temp as additive. The clock doesn't necessarily start over when you freeze it. So add up all of the cumulative days that the meat spent in the refrigerator ... would you eat meat that was sitting in the fridge that long at one stretch? If so, it's fine. But if the meat spent 4 days in the fridge originally, 3 days after the first freeze/thaw, and has been sitting in the fridge for 4 days since then ... would you eat meat that's been in the fridge for 11 days? Probably not.

2. Quality - the texture of meat changes a bit with every freeze / thaw cycle. For a chunk of meat, this gets pretty gross after two freezes. If it's mixed into something like chili, I doubt you'll notice.