Thank you, Cowgirl. Very informative link! And thank you all for all the helpful comments. I'm having people over this weekend to celebrate the end of the rain here in SoCal and I'd hate to serve them anything sub-par. It's been at the very bottom of the chest freezer so I'm sure it hasn't been subjected to too much temperature differences for the past 17 months under all that other frozen meat. I didn't see any scratches in the cryo packaging and it didn't seem to have any freezer burn. I moved it to the kitchen refrigerator for a slow thaw until Friday night. If it passes the sniff test I'll pan fry a piece and give it a taste when it's fully defrosted in a couple days. It's only a $15 boneless shoulder, but I hate wasting food. Worse case scenario, friends will get mean portions of loinbacks. They're used to my cheapness by now anyway. :mrgreen:
