How to Safely Defrost Your Chest Freezer
High efficiency freezers that are less than 10 years old typically only need to be defrosted once a year. If your unit is older, it may need to be defrosted more often. A good rule of thumb to follow is to defrost when the ice is preventing the lid from sealing properly or when there’s a quarter inch to half inch build up of frost on the inside.
Emptying the freezer
Before defrosting your chest freezer, the food needs to be removed. The easiest method is eat up everything in the freezer prior to defrosting. What ever can’t be eaten can be transferred to the freezer unit above your refrigerator or tightly packed in a large insulated cooler. The food will remain frozen in the cooler for several hours.
Beginning the defrost
Once the food has been transferred, the lid to the freezer should be opened and the power shut off. Some chest freezers have a button that can be turned off, while other units require the unit to be unplugged from the wall.
There’s a quick way to defrost a freezer and a couple of lazy ways. The quick way is to boil a large soup kettle of water, place it in the bottom of the freezer, and shut the lid. The steam of the hot water will warm up the frost and cause it to melt. While this method works quite well, the drawback is that the water cools in a hurry and must be switched out several times. If you choose to use the hot water method, remember to protect the freezer liner from heat damage by setting the kettle on a thickly folded beach towel.
This isn’t the only way to defrost a freezer, however.
Years ago, our grandparents used a dandy little tool called a “freezer defroster.” This small electrical appliance looked a bit like an old fashioned fireplace popcorn popper and was set inside the unit with the door shut. The defroster raised the internal temperature of the freezer and the slowly melted away the ice. Freezer defrosters aren’t as common as they used to be, but are still available at catalog outlets like Walter Drake for $27.
A final and free alternative to defrosting your chest freezer is simply to leave the lid open and walk away for an hour or so. The room temperature of your house will also begin to melt the ice.
In all three cases, setting towels in the bottom of the freezer will help absorb the water caused by the melting ice.
Removing the frost chunks by hand
Regardless of how you begin the defrost process, at some point the frost will start to pull away from the walls. To speed things along, you may use a rubber or plastic spatula to gently ease the ice chunks away from the wall, taking care to avoid the area near the seals. Tugging on the seals will cause them to stretch out of shape and prevent them from working properly. If the ice is refusing to melt in these locations, a blow dryer does a wonderful job of speeding up the thawing process.
Worth noting is that a rubber spatula will prevent the lining of the freezer from getting damaged. An ice pick, flat head screwdriver, or even a metal spatula may pierce through the liner and ruin your freezer for good. The advantage of manually pulling away the ice chunks with a spatula is that less water will gather in the bottom of the freezer.
Cleaning the freezer
Once the ice has been removed, the inside of the freezer should be wiped down. I mix up a solution of baking soda and warm water to clean and deodarize the walls. For stubborn food stains, a paste of baking soda and water makes a gentle abrasive cleaner that is safe to use on the liner of your freezer.
Once the freezer is clean, you should wipe down the inside of the unit with dry towels, taking care to remove any remaining liquid. After drying, the baskets can be dropped back in place and the unit turned back on. Do let the freezer come back up to temperature before replacing your frozen goods. This usually only takes between 15-30 minutes depending on the size of the freezer.
Defrosting a chest freezer is really quite simple, and really doesn’t require much more than time, patience, and a lot of towels. It is a weekend job however, and can take anywhere between two to four hours depending on the size of the freezer and the amount of frost that needs to be removed.
