Cooling times in the fridge

[DaveD]

Hey folks, yesterday I cooked another pair of Butterball turkey breast roasts on the SnS kettle for eventual slicing as lunchmeat, as I do every month or so. These roasts are oblong, roughly the shape of a small (American style) football. My SOP for these is to cook them 2-zone until IT hits 160/70, then pull them, put 'em in a pyrex dish, cover with Saran wrap, and immediately into the fridge. Next day, I vac seal them whole and into the fridge until I cook my other usual pieces (SVQ pork loin, and either a chuck roast or eye round), and then in due course I have an all-day slice & vac seal a-thon.

As usual, I used two different rubs, this time they were Hickman's Fat Boy and Big Cock Ranch No Shit, both salt-free since the roasts are packaged brine-injected.






Just for grins, I left the temp probes in the roasts this time to see how long it takes to cool to food-safe temps. I was surprised by the result.


They had gotten only to 42/5.5 even after 28 hours in our fridge, which sits at 34/1.1. Just a datum for your consideration.

And there is something poetic about the graph's legend reading "No shit fat boy."

[fzxdoc]

That's a long time in the food "danger zone", since the meat took way more than the recommended max of 4 hours between the temperatures of 140° to 40° as it cooled.

Since you already pull the turkey meat before putting it into the fridge, get some gel freezer packs and sandwich (pun intended) each container between the two. It keeps the refrigerator from heating up and cools down the meat (or whatever) in your storage containers much faster.

For chilling down whole briskets, pastrami, casseroles, etc, I use these big guys:



Or these Smaller guys: (this is the handiest size for me)


And the littlest guys:


Kathryn

[Panhead John]

What a great idea Kathryn! I’ve got a couple of freezer pacs, not those, but similar without the indentations. I’m constantly putting pots of leftover food in my garage fridge so I don’t have to deal with cleaning and storage till the next day. Putting one of these frozen pacs underneath my pot would help with cooling it down much quicker. Thanks for the tip!

[DaveD]

Outstanding idea. Put some thermal mass in the fridge - elegant. I'm on it! And yeah, I was very surprised how long it was in the danger zone. Looks like more data are needed... stay tuned!

[TomfromtheSoo]

They will also cool faster uncovered in the fridge. Not permanently uncovered, but uncover to cool.

[Panhead John]

I do this all the time……👍

[Donw]

An issue that has always concerned me. For larger chunks of meats I usually drop them in a 2 gallon freezer bag and then into a ice bath I’ve prepared in a small kitchen island sink.

[SheilaAnn]

2 hours to get to 70°F and 4 hours to get to 41°F. Various jobs we had chilling wands for liquids. I actually have a few “homemade ones”.

We also put stock pots in the sink and surround with ice. Don’t cover hot food, all you are doing is trapping the heat.

[SheilaAnn]

Looks like a few of us were posting at the same time.

[surfdog]

Homemade wands? I have a few San Jamar wands…but their lifespan is shortened once they’ve been dropped on their head. Derp

[SheilaAnn]

surfdog sanitized water bottles.

[DaveD]

I will be sure to do the same thing with uncovered meat next time, at a minimum, and probably try out some of those freeze packs too. More data are needed!

[fuzzydaddy]

I often use the power of my freezer to get the temp down quickly. I keep a few water bottles frozen to separate what I’m chilling from the already frozen items.

for flat packs of meat, my stone countertops do a great job of starting the cooldown. In 5 minutes or so I flip the pack to another area.

[realdocBBQ]

If your fridge is not full, it will struggle to maintain temps when there is a thermal load applied. I learned this through my home monitoring project where I developed my own monitoring and graphing system.

Now, my meat fridge, if empty-ish, is mostly filled with jugs of water. This helps a LOT to keep temp swings down and adds thermal mass to offset anything I throw in there.

Might help a little bit, I don't know. Just my $0.02.

[DaveD]

Our fridge is more spacious than what we had in Virginia, that's for sure. But it's usually pretty full, and one thing we always have in there are three 2L pitchers of decaf iced tea, in rotation - it's our go-to drink during the day. So there is that thermal mass in there most of the time. But this thread has brought the whole thermal mass notion to front of mind, I hadn't been thinking along those lines, but the proverbial penny has dropped.

[realdocBBQ]

Our fridge is more spacious than what we had in Virginia, that's for sure. But it's usually pretty full, and one thing we always have in there are three 2L pitchers of decaf iced tea, in rotation - it's our go-to drink during the day. So there is that thermal mass in there most of the time. But this thread has brought the whole thermal mass notion to front of mind, I hadn't been thinking along those lines, but the proverbial penny has dropped.

Made a YUUUUGE difference for my garage fridge. It would cycle back and forth CONSTANTLY - down to like 24F, then up to 42F. When I added about 20-30 gallons of filled jugs and containers with water in them, the swings changed from 27-37 and MUCH less frequent. It is cool to have a graph to watch it and see what it is doing, how it is handling keeping those temps.

https://realdocbbq.grafana.net/public-dashboards/7035f75f5db342628128d0e147ad3ed4

Looks like right now my meat fridge is cycling 27-39, but I've pulled some stuff out, so it isn't quite as stable. But when it's loaded down, those cycles last about 50% longer than I'm seeing there, and easily 3-4x as long as when it is mostly empty. Easily.

[Jerod Broussard]

I never go into the fridge with a roast or any sizeable food product that was once heated and is NOT under 40-F.

Freezer once it hits 135-F ish, then the fridge once under 40.

You also have products in the fridge that can warm-up and go bad.

[Mosca]

This is good data. Thanks.

[fzxdoc]

The thing about leaving a container full of hot stuff, uncovered, to cool down in the fridge is the condensation that can quickly form on the underside of the shelf above the hot container and drip back into the food. Yuck.

So I usually crinkle a piece of aluminum foil and straighten it out just a bit and loosely tent it over the hot food, making sure the edges of the tent are on the outside of the hot food container. That way heat can escape while the tent blocks any condensation drips from the shelf above.

In the wintertime, condensation is not as much a problem since I use my deck as an outside fridge for the few hours needed to chill a container of food so it's cold enough to go in the fridge without causing condensation to form. Even when cooling food on the deck tables, I still use a gel pack underneath to hurry the cooldown period along.

Kathryn

[Mosca]

Careful putting that foil over lasagna in a steel pan!

[fzxdoc]

Mosca , the foil never touches the food. It's literally a 2 sided tent perched over the pan, supported by the edges of the pan. I crinkle then roughly smooth the foil to give it structural strength. If I just make a fold in the foil, it's too floppy.

Kathryn

[Michael_in_TX]

This is a really fascinating thread. I want to start doing some experiments of my own. (Read: One can never own too many wireless thermometers?)

[surfdog]

I have similar “ice packs” like fzxdoc for “dry” foods and a handful of wands like these https://www.amazon.com/San-Jamar-Rap...9hdGY&psc=1for liquids. They come in various shapes & sizes…and probably other brands, but this is the one that I’m most familiar with using.