SUPER-COUPONING: Long-term food freezer storage tips

I’ve owned freezers for many years; I use them for venison, fish, ice, and meats that I buy on sale. In 40 years, I’ve only had two large freezers. I read your article on freezer storage, and I was a little surprised — but not totally — that you did not mention the advantages of manual defrost freezers. For example:

1. They can outlast two or three frost-free freezers. When frost-free freezers go through the defrost cycle, it shortens their lifespan.

2. They are less expensive upfront.

3. Food keeps longer.

I know people like the convenience of a frost-free freezer, but defrosting a freezer is not a big deal. I prefer an upright over a chest because food can be better organized, and I can store more on top. Uprights also take up less room. A chest is a little better at holding cold air, but the frequent opening creates more frost. I plan and move food to the kitchen freezer that I think I will use in the next few weeks. I currently have a Montgomery Ward upright that is 25 years old and still maintains sub-zero temperatures even in the garage in Texas summers.

Bill P.”

I’m always happy to discuss longer-term food storage. As I discussed in a previous column, I’m a huge fan of having an extra freezer to stock up on multiple meals’ worth of meats, poultry, seafood, vegetables, and anything else that freezes well! If you’re interested in adding a separate freezer to your food-storage arsenal, you need to choose between an automatic defrost or a frost-free model.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each kind. Automatic defrost freezers, of course, mean that you never have to defrost them. While this is convenient, you end up trading both higher operating costs and less duration of long-term food storage. These freezers remain frost-free by circulating warmer air inside the freezer periodically, and it can nearly double the electricity consumption of the freezer annually. This warming-and-cooling cycle is responsible both for ice crystals forming inside your ice cream cartons (a phenomenon that I believe we’re all familiar with) and eventual freezer burn on foods stored long-term.

Manual defrost freezers are more suitable for long-term food storage because they do not circulate warm air throughout the unit. The cold air maintains a more consistent temperature and keeps your food in a constantly frozen state. They are less expensive to operate, and the risk of freezer burn is nearly nonexistent.

That said, occasionally, you need to defrost. This involves unplugging the freezer, removing all of the food, and gently scraping the frost off. My chest freezer, a manual defrost, even came with a plastic scraper to facilitate this process. I have found that the fuller I keep the freezer, the fewer frost forms in it, too. I’ve gone up to two years without needing to defrost it.

Whichever kind of defrost you choose, you also need to select a style: upright or chest. Upright freezers resemble refrigerators with swinging doors and make it easier to find and organize food. Chest freezers are more efficient with the cold temperatures settled into the base of the freezer, but they are not as easy to organize—especially when foods are buried deeply.

Both styles of freezers typically have some shelves or baskets to help organize what’s inside, but chest freezers usually have a large open space where things can become “lost.” I suggest using reusable shopping bags to sort items into groups inside the chest freezer. Keep the handles pointed to the top of the freezer for ease of access. This way, you can lift the entire bag out to sort through it. You could also color-code your bags to identify what’s inside—for example, green for vegetables and red for meats—or write the categories of foods on the handles of the bags.

Reusable bags take up hardly any room in a chest freezer, but it’s amazing how effective they are at organizing what could otherwise be a deep, dark, and random space.