Life is unpredictable, and household routines can be disrupted without warning. Power outages, severe weather, or forgotten maintenance can interrupt your freezer, causing food to partially or fully thaw before refreezing. This is risky, especially for meat, seafood, and dairy, because bacteria can multiply rapidly at unsafe temperatures.
Often, thawed and refrozen food looks normal, making it hard to judge safety by appearance alone. This is where the coin in a cup method proves surprisingly useful. If you’re away from home, a short outage may go unnoticed, but a longer one can thaw and refreeze frozen food. The coin in a cup method offers a simple way to know whether your freezer contents stayed solid.