I made some awesome arroz con gris (beans and rice) that I froze after cooking it. The only animal product it contains would be lard. Otherwise, it’s just rice, beans, garlic, onions, green bell peppers, olives, and herbs. I don’t remember how long ago I made it, but it could be anywhere from 6-12 months ago. It stayed frozen the whole time. If I thaw it in a pool of room temp water and warm it up on the stove, is it safe to eat?
It’s been a hard day and my brain ran out of thinking fuel. I can’t even google this rn. I appreciate any helpful responses.
Edit: Based on responses and the American federal government, it should be safe. My freezer is set to 0*F, so we’re having dinner tonight! If you see me posting a lot in the next few days, it’s cause I got hospitalized, and you’re all gonna pay for it with my shitposts from the hospital bed! 😋
Frozen stuff should last essentially indefinitely, but you should be careful that the food you put is safe at the time that it freezes. Freezing large batches of food at a time, for instance, might not be a good idea, since the interior of the food takes longer to cool down. But unless you’re preparing restaurant-level quantities of food, I don’t think that’ll be an issue.
It should also go without saying, but if your food is already bad, then freezing it won’t make it any better
i’d say from experience on making restaurant quantities of food generally the cooling starts to become a issue one should think about when the thickness of the mass you are cooling is higher than about 7 cm(~3in), when under that everything should be fine if you put the food in fridge/freezer in 1.5-2hours from reaching a temp under 75°C, ideally dont stack the containers. The goal is to have the food cool down to <6°C in under 4h if you want to have restaurant quality but even for restaurants it’s ok to go a couple hours above that limit.