by Texas Homesteader ~
Going on a picnic or BBQ cookout? Today I’m talking about Keeping Food Cold!
Food safety is important, especially if you’re bringing food from home when the weather turns hot. Come see my tips for keeping your cold dishes safely chilled on the cheap!
Food Safety When Traveling
I’ve written before about food safety and keeping your hot dish hot until it’s time to eat.
But today I’m tackling the issue from the other side of the coin – keeping your cold dishes safely COLD when attending a cookout or a picnic.
What Food Is Good For A Picnic?
When the weather turns warm there are often many opportunities to get together.
Picnics and cookouts, swim parties and birthday gatherings, BBQ’s, camping and family reunions. How fun!
It’s fun to get out in the great outdoors, spread a blanket and enjoy a delicious homemade lunch.
There are many fun foods to bring to a picnic, here are our favorites:
Egg Salad Sandwiches
Air Fryer Fried Chicken
Homemade Ranch-Style Beans
Chilled Sun Tea
Seedless watermelon
Homemade Hummus
Zesty Pico de Gallo Deviled Eggs
But keeping food safely cold when bringing it from home is important for food safety. And our ice maker is small and doesn’t make much ice.
What will we do?
Larger Ice Chunks Keep Food Cold Longer
The secret to keeping food chilled longer is using larger ice chunks so they’ll melt slower.
We keep several water bottles in our freezer that have been refilled with water and frozen.
Frozen Water Bottles Serve two purposes:
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First, the fuller a freezer is kept the more efficiently it runs. So these frozen bottles are actually helping our freezer to save electricity.
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Secondly, I use these frozen bottles in many different ways such as when I’m making homemade yogurt. When I need to cool the warmed milk I fill a large bowl with water & drop in a couple of these frozen bottles. It cools the water for me to set the pan of hot milk in it.
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How To Make Longer-Lasting Ice For CHEAP
Today we’ll be tossing a few of these refilled frozen water bottles into a cooler to help keep our food and drinks cold. I’d say that’s quite a bit of mileage from previously empty bottles destined only for the recycling bin!
But we also needed something for the cooler that packs a little more punch. Those small frozen water bottles will be helpful but we needed ice to spread throughout the food containers and lots of it.
Benefits of Homemade Ice
Although ice is not expensive, it’s just frozen water! It always seemed crazy to me that there was such a market for it.
And then there would be the plastic bag it’s sold in that doesn’t recycle in our area. Ugh…
So I took a cue from my dad’s oh-so-smart tip arsenal and provided ice the way he does for his large coolers.
How To Keep Food Safely Cold For A Picnic?
Right before we left for the picnic we brought out our cooler and several frozen water bottles. (of course you could use ice from your freezer if your ice maker’s not crappy like ours, or you can just buy ice).
I placed our container of sandwiches, the deviled eggs & hummus containers as well as our watermelon and jar of tea into the cooler.
Then packed the smaller frozen water bottles around them.
Finally I brought out a couple of large frozen 2-liter drink bottles from the freezer. RancherMan took a utility knife and scored around the middle of each bottle, then beat them with a hammer until they broke in half.
He took the halves of the bottles and held them over the cooler, hitting them with the hammer to break the ice into large chunks that then fell right into the cooler.
The beauty of this is that large pieces of ice take longer to melt than smaller pieces. It will also help the frozen water bottles to stay cold even longer.
This can be a money-saving way of providing ice for your coolers throughout the summer.
And this ice will typically melt significantly more slowly than the commercial stuff that’s sold in plastic bags because commercial ice is much smaller pieces.
Homemade ice chunks has certainly been the ice choice for us.
No plastic bags
No cash out of pocket
Significantly longer safe food cooling.
Gotta love it!
A Fun Outside Family Gathering
We enjoyed our family gathering filled with good food, lots of laughs, rousting games of Ranch-Themed Cornhole and a good time was had by all!
What are your favorite tips for keeping food safely chilled during the hot summer months?
~TxH~
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Agree we use frozen bottles especially when we carry a smaller cooler and don’t have much room. The biggest thing I like about the bottles are ice packs (get from family who get diabetic meds by mail with the ice pack so they share them) is no water melts and get’s into things. It is also much easier cleanup when you get home and back in the freezer they go.
Agree. And a great example of #UseWhatchaGot! ~TxH~
Hi Tammy! This is super helpful. Such smart tips đŸ™‚
I think freezing water bottles is the coolest hack ever.
Great Tips!! I use frozen water bottles as well!! Thanks for sharing on My 2 Favorite Things on Thursday! Pinned!
Hi Tammy! Stopping by from the Let’s Get Real Blog Hop. Really smart idea to keep frozen water bottles on hand. I like your idea of using them for cooling the water when you’re making yogurt, or anything else you need to cool down quickly. Thanks for the tips!
Hi Tammy, Great ideas for keeping cold food cold! It’s so important in this weather – people don’t realize how often food poisoning happens in the summertime! Thanks for sharing this information! Blessings, Janet
When the daughters where younger we used to do a lot of camping and I would make frozen ice in anything and everything, from bread pans to large freezer bags. Nice thing about using freezer bags, they would lay flat on bottom of cooler and food items would set on top surrounded by large chunks of ice. I have even used the heavy duty ice packs that would stay frozen for long periods of time. When going to pot lucks in the heat of summer and would have a cold dish that needed to be kept cold, I would put my cold dish inside a larger bowl and surround with crushed ice. For a family gathering at one time I had taken a kiddy pool, filled with ice and set the cold food items inside the pool. Worked like a charm. A smaller one to hold the beverages in.
If I have the room in my freezer, I’d much rather freeze large chunks of ice instead of buying those bags of crushed ice. The crushed ice just doesn’t last very long! I like your idea of freezing in bread pans for a larger chunk of ice! Like you, I’ve used the heavy duty ice packs and they stay frozen for a long time but they just don’t seem to share a lot of cold. But I still toss ’em in along with the frozen water bottles and the larger chunks of ice and it all helps to varying degrees.