Precautions for frozen food

Quick-frozen food is a food that many people often choose, such as quick-frozen fish, shrimp, meatballs, dumplings or vegetables, etc. These foods are economical and convenient and are very popular with everyone.

1. When purchasing, you should look at the status of the product:
When choosing quick-frozen food, we should see whether the quick-frozen food is stored in a functioning freezer. We can check the packaging carefully, and the storage temperature of general quick-frozen food should be below 18 ℃. Therefore, look at the set temperature of the food and freezer when purchasing. In addition, for fresh quick-frozen food, the food in the bag should be uniform in texture, and each piece of food should be loose. There are no ice cubes and ice crystals in the bag. Only when the temperature is suddenly increased or decreased for storage ice crystals and ice cubes will form, and the food in the package will also stick.
Second, look at the shelf life of frozen food:

When buying frozen food, we look at the shelf life on the package. Food packaging often shows that -18°C can be stored for 3 months. First of all, although the freezer in many supermarkets is set below -18°C, the freezer is open, so the temperature will not reach -18°C; When we choose quick-frozen food, because the freezer is repeatedly opened, the freezer will not be kept at -18°C all the time; when we select the quick-frozen food to pay for the period and on the way home, its temperature will also increase; and after the quick-frozen food is brought home, the temperature of our refrigerator will increase due to a large amount of food placed in it. It's harder to get below -18 degrees Celsius. Due to temperature changes, its shelf life and loss of nutrients will change during this process. Food loses more nutrients when stored at -1 to -8°C.
Therefore, when we buy quick-frozen food, we should look at the shelf life of the food and try to choose the quick-frozen food that has just left the factory, preferably within one month. When buying food in the supermarket, you should buy quick-frozen food last to minimize the time for quick-frozen food to leave the freezer. Some quick-frozen foods are in bulk, such as fish balls or shrimp balls, etc., and should be avoided. Such quick-frozen foods have no packaging bags and are exposed for a long time, so their quality deteriorates greatly, making it difficult to ensure their ingestion safety.
3. Different quick-frozen foods should be stored separately:

Frozen food purchased for the home should be stored separately. Quick-frozen foods such as dumplings and glutinous rice balls should be stored separately from fish, meat, and poultry. The opened and unfinished ones should be sealed before being stored in the freezer and eaten as soon as possible.

Fourth, how to thaw quick-frozen food:
How to thaw quick-frozen food: You can move it from the freezer to the refrigerator a day or a few hours before you eat it; you can put the quick-frozen food into the microwave to heat and thaw it. If quick-frozen food is thawed or frozen many times, its nutrients will be lost in large quantities, and it is easy to breed bacteria, so do not freeze and thaw quick-frozen food many times.
5. Frozen food should be cooked at a high temperature before eating:
Some quick-frozen food packaging has a cooking method, which can be heated according to its method.

6. Is the quick-frozen food made by yourself safe?
For example, glutinous rice balls are placed in a refrigerator at -35°C after they are made. The glutinous rice balls will be frozen for ten minutes, and their nutrients will not be lost. And our refrigerators can't reach that low temperature. It is generally about -8°C, and it takes 4-8 hours to achieve the actual freezing, which cannot be called quick-frozen food. During the slow freezing process, many ice crystals will be precipitated in the food tissue cells, which will destroy the food cell structure when thawing, resulting in the loss of food moisture and nutrients. In addition, bacteria may also be produced during the freezing process. Therefore, it is recommended that if the dumplings are made by themselves, it is best to eat them within three days.

Precautions for frozen food PDF