Can you freeze Lunch Meat? And how long is its shelf life?
Lunch meat is a delicious and versatile food item that is found in every household in one form or another. May it be the main star in a sandwich, or diced and added to your favorite salad, or served in thin slices with cheese, lunch meat truly elevates every dish? So, it’s no wonder that it is one of the most popular items in grocery stores.
The amazing taste and versatility of use combined with the fact that it isn’t cheap might tempt you to make use of a good sale and stock up on your lunch meat. But where will you store it? Even prepackaged lunch meat has a short shelf life in a refrigerator. So, the real question is, can you freeze lunch meat? And if so, how long can you freeze it for?
We’ve put together some interesting facts and ideas here that will help you answer these questions.
Types of Lunch Meat
Before jumping into the answers, let’s first clarify what
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Usually, grocery stores or delis cook different types of lunch meat every day and put them up for sale. These meats sometimes have a lot of spices and flavors. This is usually when the meat is prepared in the form of a specific dish like roast beef. You can also get freshly cooked lunch meat that has been only slightly cooked or baked and seasoned with just salt (like baked chicken or baked turkey).
Semi-Processed Lunch Meat
This is the kind of lunch meat that goes through some processing and usually needs to be cooked before eating. The meat is first scraped from bones, ground, and emulsified. Then it is loaded with preservatives, additives, and flavors before being placed in a mold (usually cylindrical) and cooked in a smoke house. After being cooked for several hours they are either packaged as one whole slab of meat or cut into slices. Turkey, chicken, bologna are good examples of this type of lunch meat.
Fully Processed Lunch