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Old 08-23-2015, 05:21 AM   #1
rikun
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Join Date: 01-11-12
Location: Tampere, Finland
Default Crash cooling in commercial deep freezer?

Hi,

I sometimes need to crash cool whole briskets and butts, and have used a commercial deep freezer for that. It doesn't contain any food, it's designated for this purpose. But it's not really a blast cooler, just a freezer with lots of power.

Since whole butts are very large in diameter, it's really hard to crash cool the internal temp low & fast enough without freezing the outside.

Are there any food safety implications if the outside gets frozen a bit? The meat won't be frozen at any point after crash cooling, they just go into the fridge and after a day or two get reheated, pulled, and served while hot. I really prefer to pull and serve, I don't think the quality is there if I pull before chilling.

How about from quality standpoint? I've eaten butts that were crash cooled this way and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. I guess there are some structural changes when it gets frozen a bit.

I monitor the surface temps by IR thermometer and they were 14F on the surface when the inside was crash cooled to 42F.
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