Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

If I start pulling meat out of the freezer thats any older than the stuff I had tonight, Im going to need a flux capacitor and 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to retrieve it.

I actually set a record this evening. According to the datestamp on the vacuum sealed package, tonights chunk o’ cow started its journey into cryonics in April of 2004. Thats right, tonight’’s steak was five and a half years old. Probably older than the cow was when the hammer hit its brainpan lo those many years ago at the stockyard.

And…it tasted just fine. To be fair, I won’t be 100% sure until ….:::looks at watch:::…oh, Id say noon tomorrow. But I figure it was just fine. Nutritionally it may have degraded a little but who cares? I almost never eat a meal because of its nutritional value, I eat a meal because Im in the mood for whatever tastes it offers.

The practical upshot here, assuming I’m still alive tomorrow, is that next time you pull well-packaged and well-preserved meat outta the freezer and wonder if its okay to eat after a year or two the answer seems to be a resounding ‘yes’. The usual caveats apply, of course: you sealed it up airtight, it was kept in a true freezer where it gets below zero…not the little box on top of your fridge, the temperature was maintained for all those years, etc, etc.

This is actually pretty useful information since on occasion we purchase some large quantities of meat and it can take a while to go through it all. I know for a fact theres some chicken down there thats about two years old and I think theres a humongous Butterball down there thats at least twice that.

On the flip side of the coin, while I wasnt too concerned about five year old frozen steak I might be a little leery of five year canned food. Usually the canned goods around here dont go more than a year or two before use, but you never know…might be an ancient can of something tucked ina forgotten corner of the cabinets.

Anyway, today’s experience (assuming Im alive tomorrow) shows that you can, under proper storage conditions, keep something like meat safe, edible, and tasty for at least half a decade.

Oh…the steak was seasoned with some Montreal steak seasoning and then broiled. Good stuff.