There are a lot of great things to buy at Trader Joe’s. But undoubtedly, one of the best, or at least the tastiest, is the signature hashbrowns. They’re super convenient too: since they are already cooked, you can just heat them up whenever with an oven or a skillet.
They’re cheap, convenient, and tasty, so why is it that so few people know how to store them? We suppose it’s a fair question, but it’s also a question that would be better off being answered, don’t you think?
Today, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about how to store Trader Joe’s delicious hashbrowns, as well as a few other useful things about storing them and how long they’ll last.
How to Store Trader Joe’s Hashbrowns
As with most food items that are pre-cooked, it is very important that Trader Joe’s hashbrowns are kept frozen at all times, save for when you are actually ready to warm them up and eat them.
Why is this? Well, food has a limited lifespan, especially after it has been cooked. Every food item is on a timer to expiration, when it will no longer be safe to eat.
Freezing a food item, especially a precooked one, will drastically slow down the expiration process and ensure that your precooked food remains safe to consume for several more weeks, or even months. That’s why freezing Trader Joe’s hashbrowns is very important.
This also means that storing them is a pretty simple matter. Chances are, your refrigerator also comes with a freezer. Plop these bad boys in there and call it a day.
Of course, this only works if you are keeping your freezer at the right temperature. Your freezer should always be below -18 degrees Celsius (below zero in Fahrenheit)
If your freezer is too warm, your food will not be maintained properly! Keep this in mind or you will find yourself in a lot of trouble, and without any tasty hashbrowns!
Not to mention, you’d probably have to throw away everything in the freezer if it wasn’t being kept at the right temperature.
How Long do Trader Joe’s Frozen Hashbrowns Last?
Well, that’s kind of a tricky one, isn’t it? Technically speaking, frozen hashbrowns, assuming they remain in the freezer and are not thawed unnecessarily, should last approximately eight months before you need to start checking them for going bad. However, this isn’t an absolute hard limit.
That’s just when you need to start being mindful of expiration. The hashbrowns may last longer than that, especially if you really put them in a deep freeze.
However, they might also have a slightly shorter lifespan than eight months.
After all, you can’t really know how long the hashbrowns you bought have been on the shelf before you actually bought them.
So some might last only six months, or something like that. However, you can decently expect your hashbrowns to last several months while in the freezer.
Do Trader Joe’s Frozen Hashbrowns Have to Stay Frozen?
Aside from when you are actually eating them, yes, they do. You cannot leave precooked food unfrozen for very long, or it will start to go bad.
In fact, if you were to accidentally leave precooked hashbrowns that were supposed to be frozen out on your kitchen counter overnight, you would need to throw them away.
Remember, when the instructions on food packaging tell you that they need to be stored a certain way, there is a good reason for that.
The food just won’t remain safe to eat for very long if it isn’t stored the way it was meant to be stored. So, you must keep Trader Joe’s hashbrowns frozen at all times.
Of course, if you thaw them out and cook them to be eaten immediately, that’s fine. But if you are storing them, you must ensure that they remain frozen, otherwise, they’ll go bad quite quickly. That is the state they should be kept in 99% of the time.
Can I Refreeze Thawed Hashbrowns?
OK, so let’s say you have taken your hashbrowns out of the freezer and thawed them out because you want to eat them.
But before you get around to actually cooking them, something happens. Maybe you change your mind. Maybe you have to go somewhere suddenly. Point is, can you refreeze a hashbrown you’ve thawed?
You can refreeze thawed hashbrowns depending on how you thawed them in the first place. If you thawed them slowly by moving them from the freezer to the refrigerator, then yes, you can refreeze hashbrowns under those circumstances.
However, if you thawed them at room temperature or in a microwave, those are not safe to refreeze.
Basically, the hashbrowns have to still be fairly cold in order to be refrozen safely.
If they reach room temperature (or any temperature above 40 degrees Fahrenheit, really) you should not refreeze them. They will not be safe to eat again under those circumstances.
Final Thoughts
Trader Joe’s precooked hashbrowns need to be kept frozen as a means of storage. That means keeping them in your freezer, below zero degrees Fahrenheit. You should only thaw them out when you are ready to eat them, and it is best to thaw them slowly by moving them to the refrigerator for a day or so.
However, you can store hashbrowns in your freezer for a very long time. They are likely to last around eight months when frozen. If you do thaw them out, you can refreeze them if you wish so long as the hashbrowns did not reach 40 degrees Fahrenheit. So you cannot refreeze them if you heated them up or left them on the counter overnight.
Well, there you have it: everything you need to know about Trader Joe’s hashbrowns. They are delicious, but they must be kept frozen or they won’t be safe to eat for very long. As long as you keep them frozen until you are ready to eat them, everything will be fine.