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It's happened to the best of us: You take some chicken out of the freezer in the morning, thinking you'll make it for dinner that night. But then your day goes off the rails, you come home late and exhausted, and you can't even deal with that chicken right now. So you scramble some eggs and binge-watch Game of Thrones instead.
The chicken, meanwhile, is still in the fridge. Can it be tossed in the freezer again?
To answer that question, we went straight to the government. According to the USDA, as long as the food has been kept below 40° F (and if the chicken has been in the refrigerator this whole time, it almost certainly has been) it hasn't developed dangerous bacteria and is considered safe to refreeze.
But this isn't just a matter of safety. It's a matter of taste. "Even if it may be considered safe, defrosting and then refreezing any food is going to change its integrity," says Epi's food editor, Rhoda Boone. Thawing and refreezing meat can affect its texture, because every time meat is defrosted, it loses some juice. And that's not just moisture you're losing—it's flavor. "There's a lot of juice that comes out that’s not blood, but collagen or other substances," says Deborah Krasner, author of Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat. "So you need to compensate for that. I would marinate the meat in an easy marinade to add more flavor and to add more juice."
As for fish? The same rules apply: It's safe to freeze and refreeze, but you lose a little moisture and flavor each time. Krasner's solution here is to "cook the fish very, very slow at a low temperature, until it's just cooked." Which is actually a great way to cook fish, whether it's been frozen-and-thawed (and frozen-and-thawed again) or not.
