Cottage pie – I cooked the mince, cooled the mince and left it in the fridge overnight then the next day made some mash and oven cooked the whole lot. The little one didn’t get eaten so I cooled and froze it, so all done within ‘normal timescales’. If I defrost and then thoroughly cook it, will I die?

Nah it’ll be fine just make sure its nice and hot, i do this a fair bit

Although I am not a food scientist!

Eventually you will die but not of food poisoning/botulism.

As long as the mince wasn’t frozen initially; bad joo-joo to refreeze meat.

Thanks all – I’ll report back in due course, but if not please no ‘Rider/Diner Down’ threads.

Careful, you’ll have the pie police on you (“it’s not a pie).
We’ve just had a home made cheese and beetroot pie (fully encased). ’twas lovely.

Re-heat it up real good before re-eating…. would recommend 3 hours on 600 deg C…. 😉

I’m still here 24 hours after eating and running to the normal ‘schedule’. Thanks all – it was lovely with gravy, spinach and dab of brown sauce.

botulism test
Grad your tongue pull it out if it doesn’t go back in it’s too late

We do this all the time. I’m still here.

I have been buying mince, freezing it, defrosting to cook, then freezing the resulting meals for lunches to microwave at a later date for years and have not died so far.

mmm, tofu

Related to this,

I’m never quite sure whether I should be defrosting home-frozen meals. Logic would suggest that I should, but every frozen meal I’ve ever bought from a shop has said to cook directly from frozen.

What’s the collective STW wisdom here?

Never had a problem either.

Most extreme example would be regularly making curry from leftover roast that’s 4 days old, and freezing that. I figure if it’s edible when it goes in the freezer, and it’s ‘cooked’ when it comes out, it’s must be fine.

I just defrost from frozen in the microwave if it’s a ‘sauce’ type meal (curry, spag bol, etc). If it’s lasagne, cottage pie etc it needs to defrost otherwise you end up with some bits cooked and others still ice.

I always defrost home cooked before using. If using frozen stuff like burgers etc. and it says cook from frozen then I do. I assume there is a good reason for doing so.

As long as the mince wasn’t frozen initially; bad joo-joo to refreeze meat.

That is incorrect – you can freeze, defrost, cook, freeze and reheat. You are not meant to freeze, defrost, freeze and then cook it though.

Johndoh explains why I am not dead, good to know.

I tend to reheat from frozen, as the way I understand it the “bad stuff” happens while the food is within a certain temperature range, so after cooking there will be some time that the food is in this range while it cools and is then frozen, but then there is no need to hold it in that range again on the return journey from frozen to reheated.

I have a weird system for microwaving lasagne that’s a bit like those tile games where there is one piece “missing” and you can move all the others around to get them in the right order

Yeah I often cook a frozen cooked chilli straight from the freezer – just add a splash of water to get a bit of steam in the pan (with lid on) and reheat gently.

I’m pretty relaxed about the heat/freeze thing in general. So far so OK…!

Similar but different this morning:

Wife – how can I cool these chicken pieces quickly?
Me – put them in the fridge
Wife – won’t that cool them too quickly?
Me – well, errr, you, err…

Does she want a pirate memory game too?