Frozen Meat Storage & Handling

A lot of people think that "fresh" meat out of a grocery store display case is the freshest way to buy meat. We'd like you to think again :)

When you buy "fresh" meat at the grocery store, you have no idea how long it has been sitting in that display case. However long it is, I can assure you that it has been sitting there a LOT longer than our meat did before it was vacuum sealed cryogenically and flash frozen to preserve the meat at it's absolute peak of freshness.

We freeze our meat immediately after our butcher cuts it. It doesn't sit in a display cooler for a few days before going into the freezer. We vacuum seal it in small portions that freeze really quickly in our commercial freezer before ice crystals can form. It is then stored at -18°C or colder in the dark. This combination of packing in an oxygen free environment and dark, cold storage ensures that our meat will keep at it's peak of freshness for at least two years. If we are storing meat for more than a month or so, we store it at Bradner Cold Storage where they have a state of the art cold storage facility.

Freezing not only preserves freshness, but it is much safer too. There are so many things that can go wrong with unfrozen meat sitting in a display case with any number of other meats of unknown origin/age/whathaveyou being handled over and over again during the course of a regular day in a retail store.

Meat that has been deprived of oxygen will become darker. It can also have a funny smell when the package is first opened. This smell is in no way an indication that there is a problem with the meat. It is known as "confinement odour" and is a result of the vacuum sealing process. After a few minutes, the smell will disappear and the colour will return to normal.

Now we know that sometimes it can be a pain when you want to eat something NOW and it is frozen solid. But the vast majority of our meats are packaged in small portions that are quick and easy to defrost with cold running water and will certainly be ready for dinner tonight if you pop it in the fridge in the morning.

Now your freezer will not store meat as long as our freezers do. For more information about how to safety store meat at home, please visit this Canadian Government web site. Please keep in mind that most of these web sites assume that your meat is NOT vacuum sealed. Vaccum sealed meat can be stored longer.