# Is frozen food as good as ice?



## Woodstockaz (Mar 4, 2015)

So tell me I'm wrong but, wouldn't a yeti packed solid with frozen food like steak , sausage, burgers, egg burritos etc be as cold as and last as long frozen as a cooler with half ice blocks and half frozen food?
In other words isn't frozen food as cold as ice and lasts cold as long??


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## MontanaLaz (Feb 15, 2018)

Somebody is bound to jump in here with a bunch of science to set us all straight, but I personally wouldn't try it.

I'm guessing the answer will be that there isn't nearly the water content in the frozen foods so it therefore doesn't have as much energy locked up in the ice crystals. IE: It doesn't last as long.

Just from experience, frozen burgers thaw out way faster sitting on a picnic table than a block of ice melts.

The real question is "to drain or not to drain."


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## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

Only if it's Swanson's TV Dinners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzlkO8LIWrs

No muss, no fuss, and your peas don't roll into the taters with the compartmental tray.


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## jonseim (May 27, 2006)

I keep wanting to find a walk in freezer where I can take my cooler.
I'd like to layer in the food in stages and take a few days.
Layer of food, cover with water, freeze.
Layer of food, cover with water, freeze.
Repeat until you're on the first few days and then fill it with food and cover with ice or let chill, etc.


I do it with water bottles to put in my cooler, put some in, freeze it, pour some on top, freeze. Gives me solid ice with no bulging bottles.


Anybody in the Erie, CO/front range area know of a good place to try it out. My chest freezer won't hold my 160 qt cooler or I'd be doing it already.


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## wack (Jul 7, 2015)

contact a local meat processor / taxidermist. They usually have large cooling facilities that aren't used much in the boating season.


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## jonseim (May 27, 2006)

Great idea, I'll see what I can find out and see if it can happen. I process my own meat, may need to visit one next year to start building a relationship.


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## Woodstockaz (Mar 4, 2015)

*Cooler packed full of frozen food with no ice.*

Will it stay as cold as one with ice?


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## Nubie Jon (Dec 19, 2017)

jonseim said:


> I keep wanting to find a walk in freezer where I can take my cooler.
> I'd like to layer in the food in stages and take a few days.
> Layer of food, cover with water, freeze.
> Layer of food, cover with water, freeze.
> ...



Do you have kids? Make friends with a teacher or admin.... Our group is all school admin and coolers spend a week in the schools walk in..... Its running and not being used.


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## Woodstockaz (Mar 4, 2015)

Hijacked. Lol. K pirates let's look at the topic.

Does a full cooler really need ice??


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## Will Amette (Jan 28, 2017)

*Don't just use steaks*

Ice works two ways to keep your stuff cold. Both processes absorb heat.

First, let's stay you start with very cold solid ice from a deep freeze -- between zero and -10 degrees F. Let's also say you were smart and stuck a few blocks in your cooler a few days before as sacrificial ice to pre-chill the interior of the cooler. That ice melts faster.... Once your cooler is packed, you head out into the wide world that's above freezing. Heat makes its way into the cooler. The ice absorbs that heat and the ice warms up, but doesn't melt. This makes sense, and yes, frozen food would do the same thing.

The next part is the magic. It involves phase change and latent heat. Once the ice warms to the melting point and is isothermal (all the same temperature), it continues to absorb heat, but it does not change temperature. The heat energy is needed for the phase change. As the ice was warming from -10 to 32 degrees, that was "sensible heat," so named because you can sense it. Latent heat doesn't change the temperature. Water is such an awesome chemical, I wish there were some way we could use it for recreation....

Once the ice is melted, it's still 32 degrees. It still can absorb more heat, and this is again sensible heat. You still have safe food until the temperature gets to 41 degrees, and that's when you enter the danger zone.

Here's a quiz: Can you use something else frozen that will work like water ice that isn't water? I use frozen BEER as part of my ice. It still goes through a phase change, but does so at a slightly lower temperature because it's a solution of sugar and alcohol in water. But it's still absorbing heat as it melts, so the water ice won't need to absorb as much.

I use frozen jugs of water to keep my food dry, so I don't drain. The real question is sodium hypochlorite, chlorine dioxide, or quaternary ammonium.


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## cupido76 (May 22, 2009)

^^^ this is a great physics example, but when your food freezes, it's the water in it that freezes.

Pure water works better since there are things that are not water in your food... So adding ice will help... I personally wouldn't do JUST frozen food.

Re: frozen beer... I don't know what you're doing that it doesn't explode when you freeze it... That's a big mess!


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## Will Amette (Jan 28, 2017)

cupido76 said:


> ^^^ this is a great physics example, but when your food freezes, it's the water in it that freezes.
> 
> Pure water works better since there are things that are not water in your food... So adding ice will help... I personally wouldn't do JUST frozen food.
> 
> Re: frozen beer... I don't know what you're doing that it doesn't explode when you freeze it... That's a big mess!



Not much phase change going on if it's just the water contained in a steak. Most of the steak remains solid.


To freeze beer, first leave it in the fridge a few days without moving it around much. The CO2 is more soluble in cold liquid than warm, so more of the gas dissolves in the beer. Carefully put it in the freezer. Leave it there a few days. I've experimented with many different kinds. Most to just fine. We had some Tecate that the cans expanded a little, but didn't break. A friend who put beer directly in the freezer had a rupture. I have had carbonated water rupture in the freezer - I think the cans are thinner. 



On my last trip, I took one can out of the freezer and it wasn't frozen after a week. It was shoved near the back where warm air gets dumped in to keep the freezer frost-free. The warm air defrosted my beer! That one didn't go in the bottom layer that's frozen.


Oh. Yeah. After the beer starts to thaw maybe day four or five, I drain them.


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## SherpaDave (Dec 28, 2017)

cupido76 said:


> ^^^ this is a great physics example, but when your food freezes, it's the water in it that freezes.
> 
> Pure water works better since there are things that are not water in your food... So adding ice will help... I personally wouldn't do JUST frozen food.


I guess you could freeze gallon jugs of chicken noodle soup. It wouldn’t give quite the same heat sink as water but it can serve as both dinner and rehydration. I will use my jugs as drinking water for later in the trip after they’ve melted.


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## Woodstockaz (Mar 4, 2015)

The main reason I'm considering this is because of volume constraints. All the food I need frozen fits perfectly into the yeti with no ice.


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## Dahlia (May 21, 2008)

We did this on a Grand trip. We had a bottom layer of ice (4-5 inches), which we drained as needed. We layered the food in order of first use to later use on the bottom. It worked great and we still had ice on day 21. Our trip leader talked to a local grocery store that let them deep freeze the coolers for a week before out trip.


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## k2andcannoli (Feb 28, 2012)

Many grocery stores will let you store your cooler in their freezer if you buy your food from them...just speak with a manager. I used to do it several times a year when running youth adventure travel programs.


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## newpc (Aug 3, 2009)

no it isnt as good as ice.


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## zbaird (Oct 11, 2003)

If your trip is less than a week you'll likely be fine assuming you practice very strict cooler management and you food is deep frozen not regular kitchen fridge frozen. I wouldn't try it for longer than that.


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## matt man (Dec 23, 2011)

My experiences are that it is not as good as ice. Cupido just did a good job of explaining why.

At least part of the trick to freezing beer, without an explosion, is to cool it slowly, first, then be gentle with it, until it is frozen. I did this on that January Grand trip, that Evercat was kind enough to invite me on, and it worked out great. I layered the bottom of my cooler with beer, then just left the dam thing outside in Tabernash, in December, best walk in freezer I ever used!!


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## cupido76 (May 22, 2009)

The best thing about this thread is I've learned how to freeze beer!


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## matt man (Dec 23, 2011)

Ya man! 25 days in the big ditch, with just a 14’er, and I didn’t run out, even had a few to share, was awesome!


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## raymo (Aug 10, 2008)

*Wow! Very funny.*



matt man said:


> Ya man! 25 days in the big ditch, with just a 14’er, and I didn’t run out, even had a few to share, was awesome!


You must drink really, really slow, because a 12'er would only last me 30 minutes, if that and 24'er a little under an hour. They must of really been frozen. Does the14'er come in a 6 pack or individual cans?


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## cupido76 (May 22, 2009)

raymo said:


> You must drink really, really slow, because a 12'er would only last me 30 minutes, if that and 24'er a little under an hour. They must of really been frozen. Does the14'er come in a 6 pack or individual cans?


My only trip down the ditch I was invited and not leader. We had 14' ers and the TR was adamant that there would be no drinking until we made camp.

Not how I would run my trip, but it wasn't my trip and I was very greatful for the opportunity and I still had a great time.

To me the bigger problem is that running the Grand in August in a 14'er is not enough boat, and all the beers in the world wouldn't change that!


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## matt man (Dec 23, 2011)

raymo said:


> You must drink really, really slow, because a 12'er would only last me 30 minutes, if that and 24'er a little under an hour. They must of really been frozen. Does the14'er come in a 6 pack or individual cans?


Haha! Not a 14 pack of beer, a 14 foot raft!
I had cases of beer to drink, and a little whiskey. I have run the GC now 3 times, all in winter, in my 14’. Felt pretty small the first time, it was running about 16750- 2950 then. Not as high the last couple of times, but after the first time, I kind of got used to being in a small boat in bigger water. 
No passenger on any of the trips, if I had one, I would have wanted more boat for sure!....


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## smhoeher (Jun 14, 2015)

The consensus is to use some ice. You could probably get away with it on a short trip. There are a lot choices of which or how you make the ice. 
I will not freeze my beer.


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## yesimapirate (Oct 18, 2010)

And where does the higher content alcohol come in to play here(rums, vodka, tequila, bag of wine, etc)? It obviously takes a lot colder freezing point, but would it melt or warm up faster than a block of ice? 

In the past we've tried the dry ice route, but we were never able to keep it 100% dry so it melted/dissipated faster than expected.


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## LJPurvis (Apr 12, 2017)

My two cents:

1. Frozen food will not stay frozen as long as ice. And, when thawed will not provide cold water to help keep the temperature down.

2. Before our last GC trip we contacted AmeriCold. They rent a pallet of space. We took 4 or 5 big Yetis in and filled them with a couple of inches of water a day. Some packed their food into the layers of ice; I did not. I filled my 160 with a solid block of ice to about 4 inches below the lid. I had premade my meals and vacuum packed them so they were flat. I then laid them on the block of ice and overlaid it with a pad. We did a 17 day trip; I ran out of ice on day 16. But then, I chipped away at the ice the whole trip for drink ice in the evenings; rum & coke.

3. For me, I did not require a cooler for my beer. The Colorado was plenty cold enough for me (average temperature 42 deg although it will climb into the 50's if they are flushing the river). I just filled a drag bag with beer, waters, and coke.


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## LSB (Mar 23, 2004)

HELL NO ITS NOT AS GOOD
You just cant put a frozen steak in your whiskey.


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## Eyedaho (Dec 6, 2017)

LSB said:


> HELL NO ITS NOT AS GOOD
> You just cant put a frozen steak in your whiskey.


Why not? Whiskey tartare sounds amazing.


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## raymo (Aug 10, 2008)

*No...*



Woodstockaz said:


> So tell me I'm wrong but, wouldn't a yeti packed solid with frozen food like steak , sausage, burgers, egg burritos etc be as cold as and last as long frozen as a cooler with half ice blocks and half frozen food?
> In other words isn't frozen food as cold as ice and lasts cold as long??


One time at my uncles farm I had a great idea, to pick up a dried out cow pie and take a bite out of it, to impress this girl. Well it did not work, she ended up marrying my best friend. We are still good friends and she tells everyone about that cow pie incident, still after all these years. Moral of the story is sometimes a good idea can turn around and kick you in the butt. Food poisoning is not very fun on the river or anywhere else, except in somebody else's bathroom.


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## SherpaDave (Dec 28, 2017)

Woodstockaz said:


> So tell me I'm wrong but, wouldn't a yeti packed solid with frozen food like steak , sausage, burgers, egg burritos etc be as cold as and last as long frozen as a cooler with half ice blocks and half frozen food?
> In other words isn't frozen food as cold as ice and lasts cold as long??




I guess the key word in the OP that we’ve all missed is that it’s a Yeti so it’d be totally defrosted in a couple days anyway


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## xileff (May 27, 2009)

No one has mentioned the surface area issue. Chip ice melts a lot faster than a big block. Your food is likely small chunks, so it will melt faster.


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## MikeG (Mar 6, 2004)

*Colligative Properties*

If you want to dive deeper into why anything but pure water ice will melt faster, you can google colligative properties. The gist is that any solute will decrease the temperature of melting and it comes down to the moles of stuff other than water rather than any particular molecule. It is why some put salt on ice to melt it- lower the temp at which it will melt. It is also why magnesium chloride works better than sodium chloride- it breaks apart into more particles when it dissolves.


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## MountainMedic (Apr 24, 2010)

We do it alot. Run a day cooler. Put today's lunch and dinner in there. Will keep your beer cold as it thaws.

Big cooler only gets opened once a day. Usually just run one frozen jug in there for 7 days.


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## bluegrassburke (Mar 3, 2015)

*More important is cooler maintenance/prep - IMO*

Good cooler(Canyon,Yeti, ect.) and maintenance is key for extended trips(grand 21 days, middle/main salmon 12 days). I run a Prospector 103 qt. on a 15 ft self-bailer and have never run out of ice with this technique. I'm a believer in layering systems and draining coolers. I always volunteer to be last cooler on the grand and make sure to follow these rules:

1. quality cooler 
2. no cooler beers, that's what drag bags are for
3. distilled water/ice 4-5 inches thick in bottom of cooler frozen in walk-in freezer, luckily I run a restaurant 
4. vacuum sealed food on top of ice and pour more distilled water just covering vac bags and continue to deep freeze entire cooler
5. foam sleeping pad cut to fit over everything frozen, minimal air inside cooler is key. i like using old synthetic jacket on top of foam pad, shitty jacket expands as ice melts and keep air to minimum 
6. cooler never sees sun and covered with wet towel and paco pad on top
7. drain daily!
8. never open cooler until day 15/16/17

Distilled water seems to last longer. I just bring water to a boil to remove as much air as possible and when pouring water in cooler make sure its not very hot and pour very slowly to reduce aeration. Not sure if this is distilled but results in denser ice IMO.

Hope this helps someone and welcome to improvements. What did I miss?


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## Roddy (Sep 8, 2011)

I have frozen food in vacuum packs, packed the cooler leaving just enough room for dry ice on the top, with little or no ice. 5 lbs of dry ice will disappear in a day with a shitty cooler in 100 degree temps. Works for a 3-5 day trip depending on weather and management.


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## [email protected] (Jun 1, 2010)

bluegrassburke said:


> Good cooler(Canyon,Yeti, ect.) and maintenance is key for extended trips(grand 21 days, middle/main salmon 12 days).
> 
> I agree with Bluegrassburke.
> 
> ...


 
For a GC trip we did a 140qt veggie cooler, a 140qt dairy and of course a 3 frozen food coolers day 1-6 100qt, 7-14 140qt, 15-22 160qt. The dairy and veggie both had one 7 gallon frozen jug in each, that lasted 24 days on a March/April trip maintaining a 42 degree or less for the trip. They were opened daily. Had a little Ice in veggie, dairy and day 15-22 frozen cooler at end of trip. It helped that we had 4 boats for 6 people, so about 112qts of cooler food/ice space per person. All our blocks of Ice were in square sealed containers so after a cooler was finished we had Ice cold drinking water.
Layered our frozen cooler meals so pulling out day one from top layer, day two 2nd layer and etc. All layers separated by reflective Mylar bubble wrap Always pull only once a day in the morning when coolest, pull dinner and next breakfast at same time. None of our lunches used frozen food. Duck taping around the lid and base seems to help and keeps the looky loos out and cool in.


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## SherpaDave (Dec 28, 2017)

bluegrassburke said:


> Distilled water seems to last longer. I just bring water to a boil to remove as much air as possible and when pouring water in cooler make sure its not very hot and pour very slowly to reduce aeration. Not sure if this is distilled but results in denser ice IMO.


While this is not distilled, it is probably of higher importance to get the absorbed air out of the ice. Distilled will evaporate the water, leaving the impurities behind. The impurities lower the latent heat of fusion (melts w/ less energy absorbed). The process of boiling allows the air that is absorbed in the water to escape which then minimizes the bubbles, which creates a dense block which will absorb more heat before melting. Another potential option is to freeze the water very slowly which will drive the air out. This can be done in your method by adding small layers of water at a time, which it sounds like you also do.

I wish I had a walk in freezer. That’s definitely the way to go.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

Will Amette said:


> Here's a quiz: Can you use something else frozen that will work like water ice that isn't water? I use frozen BEER as part of my ice. It still goes through a phase change, but does so at a slightly lower temperature because it's a solution of sugar and alcohol in water. But it's still absorbing heat as it melts, so the water ice won't need to absorb as much.





Will Amette said:


> To freeze beer, first leave it in the fridge a few days without moving it around much. The CO2 is more soluble in cold liquid than warm, so more of the gas dissolves in the beer. Carefully put it in the freezer. Leave it there a few days. I've experimented with many different kinds. Most to just fine. We had some Tecate that the cans expanded a little, but didn't break. A friend who put beer directly in the freezer had a rupture. I have had carbonated water rupture in the freezer - I think the cans are thinner.
> 
> On my last trip, I took one can out of the freezer and it wasn't frozen after a week. It was shoved near the back where warm air gets dumped in to keep the freezer frost-free. The warm air defrosted my beer! That one didn't go in the bottom layer that's frozen.
> 
> Oh. Yeah. After the beer starts to thaw maybe day four or five, I drain them.


Thanks for the advice. I froze (3) 6-packs before my recent Main trip. All were pre-chilled in the fridge for several days before freezing, and not a single burst.



Because beer turns back into a liquid at a lower temperature than water, it was all thawed by the time the ice around it had melted.

I'll do it again in the future, but will likely load it nearer the top of the cooler where I can retrieve it once thawed (or before it's thawed), rather than having to wait so long and not being able to use that frozen can in my day cooler.

I also froze (5) liters of tonic water, which was also consumed after thawing. I will definitely use tonic for ice jugs again.


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## Will Amette (Jan 28, 2017)

MT4Runner said:


> Thanks for the advice. I froze (3) 6-packs before my recent Main trip. All were pre-chilled in the fridge for several days before freezing, and not a single burst.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



If I have room, I put COLD but not frozen beer closer to the top. I like to line the entire bottom of the cooler with frozen things then cover with mylar bubble wrap, then refrigerated food on top. That keeps delicate things from being in direct contact with very cold ice (well below freezing). I hate frozen lettuce. This includes beer if there's room. If not - a few days of drag bag. Oh well. By the time the bottom beers are accessible, most or all of the refrigerated fresh food is gone, and we're working on the COLD lower layer. On our Middle Fork trip (June 13 launch), I still had water ice on day 7, and I still had cold through day 8. I did augment with some ice that another boat was carrying because he basically just had a cooler full of ice blocks. This was after two days driving across Oregon and Idaho in the heat and rig day, so nine good days of ice.


I was at a festival this weekend, and I had one of my one-gallon water ice jugs split open. It may have happened in the freezer (not enough empty space as the ice expanded), or maybe from bouncing around in the truck. I was wondering why there was a layer of water in the bottom of that cooler, and when I was unpacking I saw why. Probably the freezer as it was a long rip through the plastic. They are making those bottles thinner, so I'm looking for beefier plastic water jugs to freeze. Certainly this is less messy than a ruptured beer (or tonic), but messy enough if you have things on the bottom of the cooler you planned on staying dry. This was in a Coleman "Extreme" five-day cooler, and I had ice for all five days. One 12-pack of Sierra frozen and put into the bottom as a brick with two gallons of frozen water. Had ice cold beer on day five even in that worn out cooler (the insulation is showing through).


I have a friend that would gladly pump a pump all day long if she could generate enough pressure to run a compressor and make ice. She said they do solar powered ice at Burning Man, and it's a big hit. Hmmm.... solar powered river ice.....


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