Simple Hack Shows If Food Needs To Be Tossed After Power Failure

A cup and a coin. It's that simple.

Make sure that you have those the next time that we lose power and you won't have to go through the back and forth debate over whether the food in your freezer is still good or not.

When tropical storm Isaias put thousands of us in the dark earlier this month, some for days, plenty of us went through the pain of throwing out hundreds of dollars worth of food from fridges and freezers that lost their cool.

If your power is out for days, it's not easy to have to toss all of your food, but it's pretty clear that it has to be done.

But what about when your power is only out for a few hours?

The conventional wisdom for refrigerators is that an unopened fridge can safely keep food cold for 4 hours.

After that, though, you'll have to start tossing things like meat, eggs, and poultry.

But what about freezers?

Especially if your power comes back on while you're away and everything is frozen again when you get back, how do you know if it thawed to the point of being unsafe?

Thanks to a clever tip that's been making the rounds for some time, this is where the coin and the cup come in.

I'll let this Facebook post explain:

In a nutshell, a cup of frozen water with a coin on top will tell you if your freezer stayed frozen, if it partially thawed and refroze, or if it thawed altogether (although the puddle of melted ice cream will probably tell you that right away).

It's a great lifehack to keep in mind, especially now that we're in the middle of hurricane season.