Can chicken soup be frozen twice?
I froze chicken soup right after making it, then defrosted it. Is it safe to freeze it again?
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I froze chicken soup right after making it, then defrosted it. Is it safe to freeze it again?
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Think about freezing as putting an item in suspended animation (because, with only very minor exceptions, that's exactly what freezing does). Bacteria grow slowly < 40F, not at all < 32F so safety is determined by total accumulated unfrozen time.
The general rule for leftovers is 4 days under refrigeration. It doesn't matter if that's 4 consecutive days or 1 day thawed, a week in the freezer followed by 1 day thawed, etc. The goal is to prevent a buildup of bacteria to the point where they could become an issue.
It's always a good idea to reheat leftovers, frozen or not, to 165F before consumption but it's not a necessary step, just a secondary precaution. For example, eating a cold 4-day-old piece of fried chicken or slice of pizza is perfectly safe. Reheating -- or, technically, re-pasteurizing -- has another advantage in that it resets the 4-day counter by destroying any active bacteria present. In theory, given proper times and temperatures, one could keep a freeze-thaw-reheat-freeze cycle going indefinitely.
Food quality is a different issue although a much more minor one than most of us have been led to believe. Freezing causes damage on a cellular level and repeated freezing will cause increasing damage due to moisture loss. But the damage is minor, on the order of 5% or so, which is all but undetectable in most foods. In this example, chicken soup, so much damage has already been done to the meat and vegetables by cooking that a few freezings shouldn't be a cause for concern.
Multiple freeze / thaw cycles are not a safety issue.