I’m wondering has anyone tried to blast freeze anything with a deep freezer (those can get to -30 if you set the thermostat right), maybe get it VERY cold then stick a fan inside (no idea how they’d work in the cold) blowing at your food for 15 minutes or so?
I really like to get some cabbages and other easier to freeze vegetables, blast freeze those when they’re cheap so I can have a ready supply of vegetables at home when they get expensive (usually in the summer).
I seen online instructions but they usually involve cooking them first, can you freeze it raw if you freezed it fast enough?
I’m hoping to try this on cabbages and enoki mushrooms.
Let me get this straight, you want to purchase a monstrously expensive blast freezer, big enough to store five-ish months worth of food, for thousands of US dollars, have it run at 1200-1500 W⋅h 24/7 for an entire year at Taiwan’s expensive hydro rates to freeze vegetables for four to six months simply because they’re slightly more expensive in the summer.
Never said I wanted to buy an expensive blast freezer, but rather if I let a deep freezer get to very cold temperature, will that achieve similar effect if I got a small fan blowing such cold air at it for an hour?
I’m not going to do a bunch of food at once but once blast frozen it can be stored in a regular freezer.
I’d be surprised if anyone here has tried it. The reason I’d be surprised is that, to put it bluntly, I think it’s a stupid idea that will cost you more money than it’ll save. I doubt anyone in their right mind would want to waste the time, effort, and money rigging up something like this so that they can save (not really, when you factor everything in) a small amount of money on vegetables.
If this is another thing you want to obsess over though (I remember we last talked about it a month or two ago), maybe just go ahead and try it, then post your results and cost savings? If you can prove me wrong, great!
Option 1: You leave it running 24/7 because you realise that having your other freezer completely full and unusable for six months is not practical. Thus negating any savings when hydro is factored in. In fact, it’s probably more expensive.
Option 2: You have the thing turned off with a full freezer for several months, still paying lots in hydro because chest freezers cost money to operate, and then when it inevitably gets covered in mould, cause it’s Taiwan, you have to clean it every time. It takes up valuable space in a house. And if unplugged, they need to be stored properly!
Chest freezer uses VERY little electricity because of their 2 inch thick insulation, AND their top open design means if you open them, the cold air stays in. They can only achieve the low temperature because of the insulation. You can tell because when you open them after closing them, it doesn’t suck itself back in (this happens because the warm air is cooled, causing a vacuum to occur).
I already have one, so no need to spend money on it.
French door fridge is actually the least energy efficient design out there.
I have not, but there are people who have. They consume about 2kwh per day if that.
In fact some off grid guys have used them as fridge, set the thermostat so it will only cool to about 3 degrees C rather than -20 or -30, and it becomes super efficient.
If I can afford bigger house, that’s what I’ll do. Buy another chest freezer and have their thermostat set to refrigerator temperature. They’re incredibly energy efficient if set this way.
Efficient appliances are nice and all, but the (very obvious) point is that no sane person this side of an apocalypse wants to go rooting around in the bottom of a chest freezer set to refrigerator temperature just so they can save a couple of hundred TWD (?) per month in electricity.
I like having a fridge where the eggs and mozzarella cheese don’t get crushed underneath the orange juice and a leaking carton of milk doesn’t spill out over everything in there and require me to clean the entire bloody thing.
I’m happy to pay a bit more in electricity each month to avoid these things, both for my own general comfort and convenience and because I don’t want to have to explain this sheer lunacy whenever I have a visitor, then see a look of horror wash over their face and watch them suddenly back off and remember they have somewhere else they need to be.
I’m not sure why you’ve gotten it into your head that maximizing energy efficiency is one of life’s primary goals, but wouldn’t it be preferable to just try and increase your income so you don’t have to worry about bizarre workarounds like this? You’re talking about a hell of a lot of effort for negligible cost savings, and at some point I think it’s better to just do things the “normal” way and get on with more important stuff.
