Biggest cook ever coming up....
 

And it is because of a mistake.

I just found out that a freezer door failed to seal Tuesday night around midnight when I transferred a few chunks of meat to the fridge for a long, slow thaw.

Apparently everything in the freezer has thawed, now, and needs to be cooked if we have any hope of salvaging any of it.

I don't remember exactly what is in there, but I know I have the following:

2 - 6 lb pork butts
6 - ~1lb ribeyes
4-8 chicken breasts
Who knows how many pork chops
Numerous pounds of ground beef

Fortunately, some was kept in the freezer in the kitchen, so we haven't lost our entire backstock of meat. Frustrating.

Between work and having a 3 month old daughter, I can't do much other than fire up the grills and cook relatively quickly on them. Pork butts are likely a lost cause. Fortunately, they were $0.99/lb.

Pales in comparison to some of your cooks, but I'm none too thrilled about it.

Best of luck. Why are the butts a lost cause?

sounds like a great reason to throw a party!!

Think I can throw them in the fridge and cook them on Sunday? If so, then I'll have something.

Teach the dog how to monitor and adjust temps and do the butts tonight/tomorrow ;)

How thawed were the pork butts when you found them?

The wife found them, so I'm not sure. I think I will go home at lunch today and take an inventory on everything. See where we stand. I'm afraid they are all refreezing, though. Might just move everything to the refrigerator.

Wife didn't know what to do, so she just shut the freezer door and then let me know, but via e-mail, so I didn't have a chance to ask her any questions while she was in front of it.

I wouldn't hesitate to refreeze pork butts.

I had the same situation a month or 2 back but nothing got warmer than fridge temps and the 11 lb butt was still solid as a rock. Only some sausages thawed fully. I ate 'em...I lived ;)

Think I can refreeze the butts and save them for another couple of weeks or just enough to hold me over until Sunday?

Everything else is getting grilled tonight.

Regarding both the ability to refrigerate until the weekend or re-freeze, how close to expiration were they when frozen the first time? It is like starting the clock where you left off to some degree.

Also, give them the sniff test.

I'll check the expiration date when I get home for lunch, but I bought the pork butts right at a week ago and they went straight to the freezer. They were part of the Kroger $0.99/lb deal that was going on. I can't imagine that they are very old at all.

If there are ice cyrstals in the butts they can be safely refrozen.

The ones I got during that sale were a few weeks from expiration. You are probably safe to either refrigerate or refreeze.

You can make a Pork Butt soup. You need to cut the butt down to bite size chunks for the soup but it will be well worth the effort.

Pork butts were still pretty firm and felt like they didn't thaw much. They were in the back, so that makes sense. The "sell by" date isn't until the 19th, so I'm okay with refreezing those. There were two pounds of beef that were the same way. I feel good about keeping those in the freezer. The rest went over to the fridge to get grilled tonight.

12 chicken breasts
10 pork chops
2 ribeyes (guess we've been plowing through those, lately)
4 pounds of ground beef

The beef might just go inside and get cooked up for later use in tacos or spaghetti. The rest goes on the grill. It isn't an absurd amount, but it is quite a bit of food. I know we can freeze the cooked food, but I'm not excited about that. We have a few people coming over to help put a dent in it all and then will just freeze the rest.

Good news is, I get to REALLY experiment with some spicy seasonings/sauces. I have some bhut jolokia (ghost peppers) and some Trinidad moruga scorpion peppers just dying to make my life miserable :grin: