On this page:

• Why is my freezer frosting up?
• When should I defrost my freezer?
• What things do I need to defrost my freezer?
• How to defrost a freezer manually

Thankfully defrosting your fridge and freezer is a chore largely confined to the annals of history, because with one or two notable exceptions, modern fridges are all frost free. But if you happen to have a chest freezer, you’ll need to periodically pull everything out of it to deal with the icy build-up that’s slowly robbing you of valuable storage space.

We outline the steps you need to take to deal with an overly frosty freezer without spoiling your food and making a mess in your kitchen.

Why is my freezer frosting up?

If humid air from your kitchen finds its way into the freezer, the moisture can stick to the freezer’s walls and contents and form frost. This happens whenever you open your freezer, but more insidiously if your freezer isn’t sealing properly when you shut the door. 

Make sure the seals are clean and free from obstructions, and that they’re in good condition, and wipe up any grime or food particles with a soft, damp cloth. Frost-causing moisture can also come from your food if it hasn’t been properly wrapped, which can cause freezer burn. 

Modern freezers have defrost heaters in them, which periodically warm the walls of the freezer to melt any frost that’s forming. But if your door seals aren’t sealing properly, or if you’ve got an old-school non-frost-free fridge or chest freezer, you may still find a frosty build-up to deal with.

Frost isn’t harmful in and of itself, but if allowed to build up over time, it can leave you with precious little space for food, and more concerningly, frost build-up can obstruct vents and sensors, playing havoc with your freezer’s operation, potentially driving up running costs and reducing its effectiveness.

When should I defrost my freezer?

Cleaning and maintaining your freezer is essential to get the most out of it. If your frost-free upright freezer is working well, it shouldn’t ever need defrosting, but if it’s not, or if you’ve got a chest freezer, then you need to take action once the frost has reached half a centimetre thick.

While it might seem that a sweltering summer’s day will speed the defrost process along, aim to defrost your freezer on a cold day, not a warm one. It will make it much easier to keep your food at a safely chilled temperature while you do it.

When it comes to storing your food, it’s a good idea to start running down your supplies in the lead-up to defrost day. If you have access to another fridge at home, in the office, or at a friend or neighbour’s place, then storing your food there is your next best option.

Failing that, you can use a cooler, or even a big plastic tub – intersperse layers of food and ice when loading it to maintain even temperatures. Because ice melts, ensure your food is well wrapped so it won’t get soggy and waterlogged.

What things do I need to defrost my freezer?

The difference between things going smoothly and disaster befalling your kitchen is preparation, so gather the things you’ll need before you start.

• Something to keep your food cold – another freezer is ideal, but it could be a cooler and a bag of ice, or anything capable of keeping your food frozen for the duration of the process.
• Old towels – to catch any spills and dry everything after the ice has melted.
• A plastic drop sheet – to catch any spills that the towels miss.
• A receptacle for meltwater – such as a low-sided baking tray, bowl or bucket to catch the runoff from melting ice.
• A hose or tube – to direct the meltwater if your freezer has a drain plug.

Optional:

• Pedestal fan
• Bowls of hot water
• Denatured alcohol in a spray bottle
• Plastic spatula

How to defrost a freezer manually

Once you’ve safely stored your food it’s time to get started. Unplug your freezer (you can do this before taking the food out if you prefer, which means the door alarm won’t annoy you but you also won’t have the benefit of the freezer light to see what you’re doing, and you’ll need to work fast). 

If you’re dealing with a small chest freezer, or one that’s readily mobile, then take it outside to avoid leaving a mess in the house.

If you can’t move your freezer outside, then put plastic drop sheets and towels on the floor in front of your freezer, and towels on the lower shelves to help absorb moisture.

Now just leave the door open and wait for the ice to melt. This is the simplest way to defrost your freezer, but it’s also the slowest. 

To speed up the process, place a bowl or container of hot water inside the freezer. The steam and heat will melt the frost much faster, but be careful not to use anything too hot – you can potentially damage the inner surfaces if you’re using a scalding hot pan. Put it on a pot rest to be safe, or better yet, more towels, which will help mop up the water.

If you don’t like the bowl of hot water approach, you can use a pedestal fan to blow room temperature air into your freezer, expediting the thaw, though it’s best not to combine the two methods – the fan will blow the extra heat energy away so they’ll cancel each other out. 

Also remember that water and electricity don’t mix, so if you’re using your pedestal fan, be mindful of where the cord goes. You should never use a hair dryer for this reason either.

If you’re in a real hurry, you can also take a more extreme approach and spray the ice down with a spray bottle of methylated spirits or denatured alcohol – this will rapidly soften the ice, expediting its removal. 

Depending on your approach and the size of your freezer (as well as how much ice you have built up), defrosting your freezer might take as little as an hour, but you should allow half a day. Be sure to keep regular tabs on progress, mopping up water as the ice melts, and even removing large chunks of ice to the sink as it softens and separates from the cavity. 

You can use a plastic spatula to encourage the ice away from the walls, but be gentle, and definitely don’t use anything sharp or metal – the last thing you want to do is put a hole in the soft plastic lining of your freezer.

Once the ice has fully melted, you have a once in a lifetime (OK, once a year) opportunity to give your now empty freezer a thorough clean. Mop up any residual moisture, then give the walls, shelves and door bins a good scrub with bicarbonate of soda and hot water, wipe up the residue with a damp cloth and make sure your freezer’s thoroughly dry.

Congratulations! You’ve now successfully defrosted your freezer and can turn it on again. You may be tempted to put your food back in it straight away, but provided your cooler is still cool enough, leave it where it is until the freezer pulls down to operating temperature. It may be several hours before it’s at a safe food storage temperature again.

What makes a frost-free freezer frost free?

In the bad old days, periodically defrosting your freezer was just part and parcel of owning one. That was until the advent of frost-free technology, arguably the greatest advance in domestic refrigeration since the advent of the freezer itself. Frost-free freezers freed us all from arguably the most inconvenient aspect of owning a freezer, virtually overnight.

So what makes a frost-free freezer frost free? Something you wouldn’t expect to find in a freezer – a heater. At predefined intervals this heater kicks in to warm the walls of your freezer compartment for a short period, melting any frost that may be forming (this is called the defrost cycle). 

The temperature rise is only slight, and it’s brief enough to not affect the food stored within. We can see this in the lab because we’ll notice a spike in energy consumption, but other than the absence of frost in your freezer, you’ll never notice it at home.

These days, pretty much every upright freezer will have a defrost heater, but unfortunately chest freezers still don’t. The omission of a defrost cycle in a chest freezer helps keep temperatures as even and stable as possible, which is really important for long-term food storage. 

Also because of their design, chest freezers tend not to build up much frost anyway – the top opening door and the fact that cold air is denser and sinks means very little humid room temperature air will enter your freezer when you open it.

The post How to defrost your freezer appeared first on ÌÇÐÄVlog.

On this page:

• Our expert testers
• How does ÌÇÐÄVlog choose which freezers to test?
• How often does ÌÇÐÄVlog test freezers?
• How does ÌÇÐÄVlog test freezers?
• Test criteria explained
• Our test lab

What happens inside your freezer when you live in a cold area, or a hot area? What happens when you put your leftovers in? Does it mean they suddenly drop into an unsafe temperature zone for hours at a time? What happens when your compressor switches on? Does it mean there’s a sudden spike in temperature?

When you start to look closely at freezers, they really are about keeping us safe from food poisoning (never a fun experience). And when your freezer doesn’t work well, it means you can’t trust your food. We test rigorously to make sure that freezers do well in every aspect of their performance. It’s a long test, but it’s a safety test so it’s worth putting in the time to get it right.

Our expert testers

With more than 30 years’ combined experience in our thermal laboratory, our expert testers are an asset we’re very proud of. They’ve seen all types of features and freezers come through the labs, but one thing never changes – a freezer needs to keep your food cold and safe!

We test many elements of a freezer, but our focus on these basics means that when it’s time to buy, you can be sure the freezer you bring home does its job well.

On top of this, many of our testers sit on Standards committees – both national and international – so we keep up to date with how labs and manufacturers are changing the standards and to give consumers a voice in this forum, where sometimes only government and industry are represented.

How does ÌÇÐÄVlog choose which freezers to test?

Why do we choose one freezer over another to test? There are a number of reasons, but our priority is to test what you’ll see in stores. That means we generally focus on the big brand models so you can at least see the freezer before you buy it to make sure you’re happy with it. We also need to cover both upright and chest freezers, which roughly divide the market share between them.

How do we know what’s in retailers? We check current market figures to see what’s selling well – typically this means Westinghouse, Fisher & Paykel, Haier and Hisense. We’ll also include models that you’ve requested – if a lot of members want it, we’re going to test it.

Our buyers then go out and use your member fees to buy the freezers from a variety of retailers and bring them in as-is – this means we get what you’d get, so we can be sure the results are exactly what you’ll find in shops, rather than being based on models sent to us by manufacturers.

How often does ÌÇÐÄVlog test freezers?

Along with fridges, the freezers test is one of the longest tests ÌÇÐÄVlog performs. Though it’s such a simple device (we just want it to freeze things!), the thermal properties take time to measure. We tend to test every year or so, and do these in batches of six freezers at a time.

We’re always looking for ways to improve testing and send out surveys to our members to find out what’s important to them on a regular basis. Unsurprisingly, most people just want a freezer to keep food safe; the other major question they have is “Should I get an upright or chest freezer?”

How does ÌÇÐÄVlog test freezers?

Setting up freezers for testing is a long and arduous process. We use platinum resistance thermocouples and set lots of them consistently throughout each freezer in a variety of areas, so we measure not just one area inside your freezer, but each compartment and shelf so you know where your freezer is warmer and cooler than normal.

We replicate these areas according to the Australian Standard AS/NZS 4474.2. Why? Because if you want to compare freezers fairly, you have to use the same conditions for all of them.

We put each of the freezers into a large thermal room so we can drop the temperature down to 5°C, or move it up to 45°C if we need to. The thermal rooms are sealed and the freezers run for up to four weeks to test a variety of elements that you tell us are important to you.

This is all to minimise the amount of variables so you can see which freezer comes out best when comparing them. Where we can, we use the Australian Standard, and then add further tests to meet real-world needs.

Energy efficiency testing explained

We test the manufacturer energy usage claim to the Australia Standard. This test assesses the comparative energy consumption – that’s the number on the energy label on the front of the freezer – and gives an indication of the amount of electricity used over one year of normal operation.

Where the manufacturer claim is not met, we mark this with a fail, or a pass if it meets its claim or uses less than it claims. Where a freezer doesn’t meet its claim, we don’t recommend it, regardless of the performance.

We base the running costs off the claimed energy usage. The running cost is calculated from the energy used over 10 years, using a rate of 40 cents per kilowatt hour. Why 40 cents? Each year we survey each energy retailer for their average prices to get a national average. A 10-year period provides a useful indication of the long-term differences between high and low energy usage.

Test criteria explained

The ÌÇÐÄVlog Expert Rating, our overall score that determines which products we recommend, is made up of:

• temperature performance score (55%)
• warm-up score (30%)
• cool-down score (15%).

Weightings are listed in brackets.

Temperature performance

Response to outside temperature (40%)

We measure the effect on the freezer temperature when the external temperature changes, such as from summer to winter. The higher the score, the more stable the freezer temperature is maintained.

Temperature stability (30%)

We assess the amount the temperatures swing as the compressor stops and starts (because even temperature is an important factor in maintaining food quality). The higher the score, the less the temperature swing.

Temperature evenness (15%)

We measure how uniform the temperature is throughout each compartment. The higher the score, the more uniform it is, and the less fluctuation there is throughout compartments.

Heat load processing (10%)

We measure how efficiently the freezer cools a warm (32°C) load placed inside, the mass of which is determined by the size of the freezer as defined by the Australian Standard.

Recommended setting (5%)

Many readers tell us they only change the temperature setting once, so we assess the temperatures on this setting. If no recommendation is given, we assess the factory or mid-setting. A poor score for this means you should use a fridge/freezer thermometer to get optimum temperatures – but we recommend you do this for any freezer.

Warm-up

This is a test of the freezer’s insulation, giving an indication of how it would perform in a power failure. They’re switched off in an ambient temperature of 32°C. The test starts when the freezer temperature is -15°C and ends at -5°C – the longer it takes, the better the insulation. It’s a comparative test and the actual times will be longer with food in the freezer.

Cool down

This looks at how long it takes to cool the air in an empty freezer, from switching on to -13°C in a very warm ambient temperature-controlled room. This is a comparative rating indicating which freezers have more ‘oomph’. The actual times taken don’t directly relate to real-life food cool-down times when there are already frozen items in the freezer.

Other criteria – not scored

Noise levels

Freezers, particularly frost-free ones, make a combination of noises that some people may find annoying. More noise is produced when the compressor starts up and also during the defrost cycle.

Some models have an external fan system to help keep the compressor cool, which can add to the noise level. Also, plastics inside the freezer can make loud noises as they expand and contract with temperature changes. The layout of your house and the freezer’s location will affect what you’ll hear.

Our test tells you which models are noisier during normal running, but some of these more unusual noises can be more noticeable with models that are quieter during normal running. We don’t score noise because it’s such a subjective experience based on your environment.

Our test lab

We maintain a NATA-accredited thermal lab that’s up to date with the latest reference machines and calibrated measurement tools so that we can bring you results you can count on.

The post How we test freezers appeared first on ÌÇÐÄVlog.

On this page:

• How a freezer can save you money
• What you can and can't freeze
• Our expert tips for batch cooking and freezing food

But once you’ve cooked all those meals, where can you store them? Standard fridge freezers don’t always have enough space to accommodate a batch cooking frenzy, and there’s no point putting in all that effort (and money) if the food spoils. 

Enter the standalone freezer: the ultimate companion to help reduce your food spend. It’ll give you space to house multiple batches of meals, plus it’ll enable you to buy some foods in bulk, which can often work out cheaper than buying smaller amounts. 

Chest and upright freezers are also a boon to big families and entertainers who need to store large amounts of food at any given time, and they can help extend the life of some foods, which will minimise waste. 

We’ll show you how to make the most of your freezer to save dollars at the till. 

How a freezer can save you money

Standalone freezers aren’t just for stashing indecent amounts of ice cream – they can also be a big help when it comes to organising your household’s meal planning. And smart planning can save you money, so your household budget will stretch further. 

Here’s how a freezer can help save you money:

• They’ll give you the space to store lots of batch-cooked meals, some of which are serious budget extenders. For example, slow cooked meals are perfect for batch cooking and freezing and you can use cheaper cuts of meat and pad them out with legumes. 
• If you have a freezer full of ready-made meals or ingredients, it’ll make life easier on those nights when you can’t be bothered to cook. Just defrost something you prepared earlier and you’re all set. Plus it’ll help curb your takeaway expenditure since you’ll have dinner ready in no time. 
• Buying in bulk can be far cheaper in the long run. But where will you store those 3kg of sausages you bought on super special, or the five loaves of bread you picked up for a dollar apiece? In your standalone freezer, of course!
• You can stock up on seasonal fruit and veg when it’s cheap so you don’t have to pay more later in the year when it’s scarce and expensive.
• You’ll waste less food if you’re savvy with how you use your freezer. Turn bread that’s past its prime into breadcrumbs and put them on ice; slice up overripe fruit and freeze for smoothies; steam and freeze veggies like beans, broccoli, carrots and corn that you won’t use up in time; pop ingredients like stock, wine, citrus juice or coconut milk into ice cube trays and pull them out as needed; keep nuts from going rancid by storing them in the freezer; and whizz up limp herbs with olive oil and keep them in the freezer ready to liven up dishes. 

ÌÇÐÄVlog tip: Check the running costs before buying a standalone freezer. Some can be more expensive to run than others, and you don’t want to negate the savings you’ve made on food by having to pay higher energy bills. 

What you can and can’t freeze

Not sure whether that sad-looking cauliflower can be resurrected after a stint in the freezer? Wondering if shredded cheese will lose its zing after being on ice?

Here’s a rundown of what to put in the freezer and how best to do it. 

Our expert tips for batch cooking and freezing food

If you’re using your freezer to cut your food costs down, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing it right: there’s no point spending money buying in bulk if the food falls flat after freezing.

Choose the right dishes and recipes

Some dishes freeze and reheat much better than others. When you’re selecting recipes, think saucy, easily re-heatable dishes such as lasagnes, curries, bolognese, chilli, dahl, soups, saucy pasta dishes, pies and stews. Cream-based soups and sauces don’t always freeze well, and neither do some noodle-based dishes. For some dishes, you may just like to freeze the sauce and add to freshly cooked pasta, rice or noodles.

Use airtight containers or freezer bags

Store food in airtight containers, either glass or plastic. Aluminium trays with lids from supermarkets or variety stores are a good option too. Fiona also suggests storing portions of stews or casseroles in plastic or reusable freezer bags to save on space.

“If you store food in a plastic container, place a piece of baking paper or freezer separator sheets on top of the food so it stops any air between the food and the lid of the container, as this is how freezer burn can occur (those frosty ice crystals that form on your food, which can affect the colour, taste and texture of your dish when it’s reheated),” says Fiona.

Label everything

Make a note of what the dish is and when you made it. This will make it easier to identify things when you have a freezer full of food and you need to rotate stock to avoid waste. 

Defrost and reheat meals properly

Some frozen meals can be put straight in the oven for cooking, but some you’ll have to defrost before reheating. The best way is to thaw foods is overnight in the fridge until they are fully defrosted. Leaving food out on the counter could be unsafe. If you’re defrosting in the microwave, ensure the container is microwave-proof and always use the defrost setting.

Use your food processor or blender 

These handy appliances can make food prep for big-batch cooking easier. If you’re chopping up more than a couple of onions or a few bunches of herbs, it’s worth getting the food processor out.

Freeze in portions or servings

Got leftover sauces? Portion them out into individual serves in ziplock bags, then lie them down flat to freeze – once they’re frozen, you can stand them up like a file-card system, and you’ve got quick pasta sauce ready to go when you need it. 

Rotate your supplies

While food in your freezer is technically safe to be stored forever, it’s good practice to rotate your containers, putting new things at the back and taking the old ones out to use first. This will ensure you’re eating everything when it’s at its best – food that’s been frozen for a long time can really lose its flavour and appeal.

Don’t overfill the freezer

A full freezer is more efficient than an empty one, but you should still leave room for air to circulate for effective operation. And the easier it is to find and organise your supplies, the better it will be. 

Put your freezer in the right place

Your freezer will have to work harder (and will cost you more in power bills) if it’s in an area that experiences significant temperature fluctuations, such as the garage. If you can, find a spot in your house that has a steady temperature. If you’d prefer to have your freezer in the kitchen, you could opt for a ‘pigeon pair’ – a matching fridge and freezer. 

ÌÇÐÄVlog tip: Put a coin on top of a cup or container of frozen water in your freezer. If you’re worried there’s been a blackout or your freezer has died, check the cup. If the coin’s still on top of the water, your freezer stayed frozen even without power. If the coin is at the bottom, the freezer didn’t stay cold enough to keep its contents frozen.  

The post How your freezer can help save you money appeared first on ÌÇÐÄVlog.