Water can be frozen, thawed, and refrozen in an infinite Groundhog Day loop without changing. But food isn’t pure water; it’s a soggy landscape of proteins, carbs, fats, and other tasty bits. When we freeze, thaw, and refreeze our food, microscopic glaciers and rivers can completely reshape the terrain of taste, texture, aroma, and appearance. How many times a food can be refrozen—without food safety concerns or loss of quality—depends on the type of food, how it’s been handled, and what you’re planning to do with it.
Is it safe to thaw and refreeze food?
The reason we started freezing food in the first place was to preserve it. The water in frozen food is locked away in an icy vault, safe from bacterial and fungal burglars striving to steal your dinner. But as soon as the food thaws, microbes will pick up where they left off.
There is nothing inherently unsafe about thawing and refreezing food as long as the item is handled correctly. The USDA recommends thawing food at refrigerated temperatures below 40°F, either in the fridge or a bath of cold water—not parked on your counter at room temperature. Food thaws from the outside in. As soon as the surface layer of something like a steak thaws, it’s open season for bacterial growth, even if the core is still frozen solid.
Food that was raw when frozen is still raw when thawed. Thawing in the fridge guarantees foods never hit the temperature danger zone above 40°F where spoilage microbes and pathogens like Salmonella thrive. Cooking foods straight from frozen is a safe option for liquid foods (like tomato soup or frozen bone broth) and most small pieces of solid food (like a bag of frozen peas or chicken tenders ). But cooking a massive roast or whole turkey straight from frozen can get complicated, as the exterior is likely to burn or dry out before the center hits target doneness.
Properly handled food may be safe to refreeze, but that doesn’t mean doing so will lead to deliciousness. At room temperature or in the refrigerator, the water in our food is a wriggling mosh pit of molecules. When frozen, that unruly mass forms meticulously organized, crystalline rows. A quirk in the chemistry of water makes those crystals take up more space than liquid water. This expansion can cause massive changes in the quality of some foods while leaving others relatively unbothered.
Like the Incredible Hulk busting out of whatever sensible flannel Bruce Banner is wearing, expanding ice can burst any vessel that tries to contain it. Zoom in on a piece of raw meat and you’ll see a network of plump muscle cells full of juice. When meat is frozen, the sharp edges of growing ice crystals pierce and rupture those cells. When meat is thawed, the juice leaks out of those punctured cells.
Freezing and thawing a piece of meat multiple times increases the damage, so cuts of meat that rely on…well, juiciness—like steaks, pork chops, and chicken breasts—can suffer, becoming progressively drier with each round. Cuts of meat intended for stews, braises, or ground meat applications don’t rely as heavily on intact juice cells, so they can withstand more abuse from repeated refreezing. These rules apply to both raw and cooked meat.
For all types of food, freezing faster is better. Water molecules take time to organize themselves into large ice crystals, and rapid freezing keeps ice crystals as small as possible. Individually quick-frozen (IQF) shrimp purchased from the grocery store have been quickly frozen with liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide to ensure more graceful thawing. When freezing food at home, it’s best practice to prechill that food in the fridge. Next, freeze it in a single layer so it hardens quickly, and to avoid partially thawing anything already in the freezer. These steps will help ensure your food remains as faithful to its original quality as possible.
In general, if a plant is delicate or juicy, it can change dramatically when frozen and thawed. Squishy fruits like berries and tomatoes and leafy vegetables like lettuces and herbs can turn to mush if frozen and thawed even once. Refreezing and thawing multiple times can practically purée delicate produce from the inside out. But that isn’t always a bad thing. Thawed frozen fruits may not be the best fit for garnishing a cheese board, but they can yield tastier results for juicing, puréeing, or turning into syrup or freezer jam thanks to thousands of ice crystal sous-chefs who got a head start on the prep work for you.
Starchier produce and grains like apples, bananas, root vegetables, squashes, and rice tend to suffer less from freezing because they contain slightly less water and have more structural support. They can be frozen and thawed multiple times and still used for many of the same purposes, though cooked applications better mask the slight differences in texture. You could even freeze apples prepped for a pie, transfer them to a pie shell when ready to bake, then freeze the cooled pie until showtime (thaw the pie in the refrigerator overnight, then bake at 375°F for 10 to 15 minutes to refresh the pastry).
Freezers are a baker’s best friend. Cookie dough contains far less ice-crystal-forming water than meat or fresh produce, and the lack of intact cells means there is less vulnerable infrastructure. Most doughs and fully baked items (like breads, cookies, cakes, and pies) survive freezing, thawing, and refreezing spectacularly well. While water is mostly locked in place during freezing, it can escape slowly over time, causing freezer burn. Keep all frozen foods in airtight containers, resealable freezer bags, or vacuum sealed bags (the best option, if you have the means) to prevent drying out during extended frozen storage.
Most liquid foods like juices, purées, and soups can be thawed and refrozen multiple times without any significant impact on quality because most structures that could be compromised by ice crystals have already been obliterated by juicing, puréeing, and simmering.
However, high-fat emulsions (like mayonnaise and coconut milk), starch-thickened sauces (such as gravy), and gelatin-based mixtures (like Jell-O or panna cotta) rely on delicately balanced interactions between water, fat, carbs, and proteins. These foods don’t have delicate cells like fresh meat and produce, but they do contain fragile microscopic networks that can be damaged by ice crystals, so it’s best to avoid freezing them in the first place.
In most home freezers, your food is never completely frozen. Even at 0°F, some of the water in your food remains unfrozen, in the form of highly concentrated slushes of sugar and minerals. This semi-frozen water moves around like an invisible river, slowly altering substances that appear rock-hard. This applies to all frozen foods, but the effects on frozen desserts are especially noticeable. Smooth, silky ice cream will become gritty and icy over time as mobile, liquid water joins ice crystals and slowly grows them from imperceptible snowflakes to jagged icebergs large enough for our tongues to detect.
These effects are reversible, but unless you have an appetite for re-churning your ice cream, never let ice cream thaw and refreeze. If you want to be a real ice cream sicko, get a stand-alone chest freezer with no auto defrost cycle and open it as infrequently as possible.
Food with very little water can actually benefit from time in a freezer. Everything slows down at frozen temperatures, including chemical reactions. Dried fruits, potato chips or crackers, whole grain flour, nuts and seeds, and anything else that might be prone to becoming rancid from oxidation will last much longer if stored in the freezer instead of in the pantry. The fact that these foods have less potential for forming destructive ice crystals means you can take them in and out of the freezer as often as you like.
Future you wants freezer-friendly baked ziti, tomato soup, cookie dough, and more.
