Freezing Competition Meats in advance

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Qbert60

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Weird title I know.

Question: I don;t have the money to drop $500-$600 on a case of waygu briskets for the upcoming season. Has anyone maybe bought 1 once a month and froze them? I am scared that I am going to spend a chit-load of money and something is going to mess up. Any ideas?
 
I know of teams that buy all of their briskets in Jan/Feb for the whole competition season. They claim they are large and more fat content, because the cows are lazier in the winter months.
 
I thought a lot of the delivered to your door SRF come frozen. So if that's the case then there shouldn't be any issue with quality after being frozen. I see no issue with freezing.
 
fnbish said:
I thought a lot of the delivered to your door SRF come frozen. So if that's the case then there shouldn't be any issue with quality after being frozen. I see no issue with freezing.
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I agree with that, but I am not buying Snake River stuff. More than likely it will be Imperial. Local meat packing company sells that brand. I have used them several times with mostly good luck. They haven't been frozen. SO I would be freezing them. The kill date is normally 2 weeks prior to me getting them.
 
Qbert60 said:
I agree with that, but I am not buying Snake River stuff. More than likely it will be Imperial. Local meat packing company sells that brand. I have used them several times with mostly good luck. They haven't been frozen. SO I would be freezing them. The kill date is normally 2 weeks prior to me getting them.
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Gotcha, but my point was that folks are clearly doing it with SRF and also having great results. I've personally frozen all meats and saw no difference. I would think its safe to assume imperial would be no different. But then again I also assumed The Gilmore Girls would last forever........sigh..........
 
Qbert60 said:
I agree with that, but I am not buying Snake River stuff. More than likely it will be Imperial. Local meat packing company sells that brand. I have used them several times with mostly good luck. They haven't been frozen. SO I would be freezing them. The kill date is normally 2 weeks prior to me getting them.
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Just be sure you practice with frozen meats and a consistent defrosting approach
 
I did it this year and will next year, if you have the room, go for it.
 
This is interesting to me. The processors such as SRF and others who ship frozen beef make a big deal of flash freezing not doing the same damage as the way most of us would be dropping the brisket in our freezer and it taking a hour or two. It makes me wonder what the validity to that method is. As iQue said, the defrost method does have an effect on your finished product.
 
For the last 2 years I purchased my briskets in jan/feb and froze them. I would then age them and was pretty happy with them.
 
I've froze beef and pork but have not chicken. Have heard freezing chicken can affect it's texture. not sure if that is true or not.
 
Flash freezing vs Home Freezer......

The term flash freezing refers to speed of how fast the product freezes. The faster the freeze the smaller the ice crystals. Smaller ice crystals do less damage to cell walls.

Well..... that is the way I remember the way Alton Brown said it.
 
Skippy I know you saw my FB post last February when All my briskies arrived. If you want to age them just get them out of the freezer earlier. I usually put them in the fridge 6-7 days to thaw. Sometimes 3 weeks prior.
 
Fast to freeze, slow to thaw.

Almost stocked up on the last SRF 10% off sale. Thought I might be jumping the gun a little to fill the freezer for next year already.
 
tduffy said:
I've froze beef and pork but have not chicken. Have heard freezing chicken can affect it's texture. not sure if that is true or not.
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I have trimmed and frozen chicken for most every comp and haven't experienced any problems. Its the devil's meat, hard to screw it up!
Skippy, we have frozen brisket from time to time but don't cook waygu.
 
I found that freezing briskets in a standard home freezer was not good. I lost a lot of moisture out of the meat. I will never do it again. I'm sure SRF has a way to quickly freeze the meat and avoid the problem.
 
The SRF briskets I get are arrive frozen solid as a concrete block, so throwing them in the freezer is of no matter. Do some of you get them less than frozen hard? There is still a good sized hunk of dry ice in the cooler every time.

I follow the same school of thought on thawing. Into the fridge for 2 weeks prior to a contest or backyard shindig.
 
I had a few that were feeling a little soft in the flat this spring when they showed up. tossed in the freezer right away. no biggie.

Dont know with the new shipping methods. Odds of it unthawing are much lower in MN in the winter though :)
 
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