Freezing Fish/Shrimp Without a Freezer

V

Valkyrie

New member
Hi Brats,

In a previous post I mentioned catching a limit of salmon on Lake Michigan, but Marcia and I continued camping in MI for four more days and had to deal with a cooler full filets and steaks and there was no freezer in sight.

Here's a trick that we first tried years ago to bring home 30 pounds of shrimp from SC when we had five more days on the road.

First buy about four pounds of rock salt like you would use for an ice cream maker. Put about six inches of ice in the bottom of the cooler and cover it with about half a box of salt, layer bagged fish on top of the ice/salt, add another layer of ice/salt and continue, with a layer of ice/salt on top of it all. Four pounds of salt will give you extra to "sweeten" the cooler later.

Drain off melted ice the next morning and "sweeten" the top with more ice/salt. Once the fish are frozen (it happens in a few hours), the ice/salt will stay in that state for almost a week in a good cooler.

We prefer a Coleman Extreme, which claims 5 days of ice life and we have found that to be true. We just bought a second Extreme yesterday at the Cabela's in MI. The new one claims 6 days of ice life.

When transporting in the truck, we always put a blanket or two on top of the cooler for extra insulation and protection from the sun.

Best regards,

Nick and Marcia
"Valkyrie"
 
I use pretty much the same trick to freeze salmon on the way back from a fishing trip. One thing is KEY though - the bags have to be well sealed or you wind up with salty fish. I vacuum pack the fish and that works fine. If you use ziplocs or similar though, you might want to double bag. I just layer ice,salt, fish, ice, salt,fish etc. If I do this at Neah Bay, I have frozen fish by the time I hit the Kingston ferry. Also, PRIOR to putting them in the freezer, give the outside of the bags a rinse in fresh water to keep the salt off the metal freezer racks.
 
This idea has some serious potential as we are faced with the same situation on longer cruises (7-10 days).

What we have done is to take an Extreme cooler and line it with rigid foam, cut on a bandsaw and glued together with silicone adhesive, to add extra insulation, such that the resulting space just accomodates four blocks of ice. Then we duct tape the cooler shut, put a cinch strap on it for good measure, and wrap the whole thing in a space blanket. Then when we get where we are going we stash the cooler in a shady place on an island. About half the ice disappears in that amount of time.

Your idea sounds good, but I assume it depends on cubed ice which wouldn't last as long as block. I've got to figure out how to make this work for us as it would allow us to "stockpile" the real "keepers" during the middle of a trip and not have the pressure of trying to fill the cooler on the day before departure, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
Al
 
Has anyone gone a step further and used dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) which has a temperature of -109 degrees Fahrenheit?

I know it's used to ship frozen food, and not always easy to find, nor cheap, but with a really good cooler, iI think it could be a useful tool.

Joe.
 
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