If You Lose Power, This Hack Will Help Tell You If Your Freezer Food is Bad

With so much bad weather and so many power outages, here's a trick that will give you some piece of mind.

One of the lessons you learn early on is that you can't thaw and refreeze food. There are a couple of reasons why. First and foremost, food has alot of water in it, and if you freeze say hamburger, that water when frozen expands, then when defrosted melts. If you refreeze and rethaw, your food can become mushy. Ick.

Second reason, and the one that always gets me to make sure food is only defrosted once, is that ol' bacteria. When food is frozen, it stops the bacteria process - but there is some there. But when it thaws, bacteria grows. There's bacteria in everything, but most of it is at a level that our bodies can handle with no problem. According to Bon Apetite, refreezing just rolls the dice on that bacteria count. Why chance it if you don't have to.

Which brings us to loosing power and the freezer stops freezing. Sometimes you may be out of your home, or alseep when the power is off, or at a friends house for heat. What if the power was out all day and then came back on? Did your stuff thaw and then get refrozen? How could you tell? With this cool hack from a few years back making the rounds just in time.

If you find the quarter in the middle, you're probably okay. On the bottom, nope. But with all food questions, when in doubt - throw it out!