You label and date everything as it goes into the freezer, adhere to "use-by" dates and rotate stock so that the oldest items are always up front or on top, but one package of smoked sausages got overlooked. While the two-year-old date has you wondering if it's safe to eat, it looks just like all the other sausage in your freezer, with a few more ice crystals. Several factors determine whether you should take a chance and eat it.
Freezer Temperature
If you use a freezer thermometer to regularly calibrate your freezer's temperature, and your freezer stays below 0 degrees F all the time, the sausages may be safe to eat. In 1951, members of the Explorers Club, a group of people who had made lifetime contributions to scientific knowledge through exploration, served mammoth -- frozen for 10,000 years or more -- at their annual membership dinner with no reported ill effects, according to a 2008 article on the website Matador BNT. Indeed, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service states that continuously-frozen foods are safe indefinitely. The key term, "continuously frozen," means that the food stayed at a consistent temperature from initial freezing until its removal from the freezer.
Handling
Commercially-packaged smoked sausages that have undergone USDA inspection during processing are a safer bet than sausages made from wild game. Slaughterhouses that process wild game often use meat from multiple animals, increasing the chance of contamination.
While home processing ensures that the meat from a single animal goes into a single batch of sausage, starting and stopping during the butchering process sometimes leaves the meat exposed to temperatures above 70 degrees F for more than the two-hour limit. Cross-contamination due to dropping a knife or chunk of meat on the floor, rinsing it and using it could contaminate an entire batch of sausage. Mistakes in the correct amount of salt, herbs and spices, or the correct temperature and time the sausages smoke could also affect the safety of homemade smoked sausages.
Flavor and Overall Quality
Sausage can experience freezer burn. Freezer burn results when poor wrapping and slow freezing allow ice crystals to form in the meat and allow air to brown the surface of the meat, reducing moisture content and affecting flavor and texture.
Both fresh and ready-to-eat sausages may be smoked. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service advises keeping fresh, hard or dry and summer sausages for just one to two months, and keeping cooked sausage for up to three months for best flavor and texture.
When in Doubt
Ultimately, you must make the final decision. The most you lose when you toss the sausages in the trash is $3 to $5, while a trip to the emergency room could cost several hundred dollars or more. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service advises that if there is any doubt about the sausages, throw them out. This applies any time the packaging is not intact, the food has an off color or smell, if you had a power outage that caused the sausages to thaw and refreeze, or if the meat used to make the sausage sat out for more than one hour at 90 degrees F.
References
- Matador BNT; The Explorers Club: Travel's Most Secret Society Revealed; Ross Lee Tabak; July 2008
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service: Freezing and Food Safety
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service: Sausages and Food Safety
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service: 7 Food Safety Steps for Successful Community Meals
