Dry Ice in a Cooler of Meat ?

[Stocker Steve]

Planning to deliver some frozen beef using typical 48 quart coolers. Locally we can get a 5 pound block of dry ice. Can you break this up with a hammer to put in several coolers? Any then how long would you expect a chunk to last?

 

[Brute 23]

I'm not 100% on the dry ice but I'm pretty sure I remember some one saying it is not a good idea. I think it was literally too cold. Hopefully some else chimes in. We talked about it for packing food on hunting trips and I think that is what came up. I know we dont do it.

When carrying frozen food like that those yeti, artic, kodiak, etc coolers do pay. If I put ice in my big kodiak cooler I can literally re-freeze it if it melts a little. We take food for 7 days at a time in those. That's where they shine.

With that said, I pack frozen fish in a suit case, jump on a plane, and fly with it from Florida to Texas. It is still frozen when I get to the house.

 

[SmokinM]

You can freezer burn it if you put it in direct contact with the meat packages. Need a towel or something to pad it out. Coming straight from the locker if they have their freezer set right it would take 4-5 hours for a cooler packed full to start to thaw with no ice.
I used some to get my lion hide back from AZ to VA. Taxidermist said use the towel or some sort of spacer no direct contact and it wouldn't take much. Couple pieces not much bigger than my hands got it here frozen solid. That was driving home with an overnight stop in NM after a couple hours sightseeing at the Grand Canyon.

 

[daneg]

Be Careful with dry ice it doesn't melt it gasses off into carbon dioxide

 

[Stocker Steve]

Couple pieces not much bigger than my hands got it here frozen solid. That was driving home with an overnight stop in NM after a couple hours sightseeing at the Grand Canyon.

They sold small pieces, or you made them ?

Only local source here sells 5# blocks...

 

[SmokinM]

They sold them that way at the grocery store in AZ. Looked about the size of the disposable ice packs you buy best I can remember.

 

[greybeard]

Yes, you can break dry ice with a hammer, or leave it in the bag and drop it from about waist high onto concrete. Handle the pieces with tongs.

Way back when, one of our neighbors was a shrimper and we got loads of shrimp at low cost each year and froze most of it. Took coolers full of it to West and North Texas when we visited relatives 8 hrs away and used small pieces of dry ice with no problems, and that was in the 'not very good' coolers they had in the 60s.
As others stated, don't put it directly on meat or directly on meat wrapping.