We’ve all been there before. It’s a long night – maybe a REAL long night – and you’re just looking for something to munch on before your head hits the pillow. You go digging in the freezer for a box of pizza rolls, pop them open, and then realize that you’re having a tough time keeping your eyes open. The pizza rolls go back in the fridge, you barely make it to the couch before passing out for the night, and then when you wake up in the morning you realize the pizza rolls got left in the refrigerator and not the freezer – and that’s when the panic starts to set in. So can you put pizza rolls in the fridge?
Can you put pizza rolls in the fridge even if they should have stayed in the freezer until they were heated up and eaten (spoiler alert – it’s recommended but it’s not the end of the world)?
Is the info out there about pizza rolls getting “ruined” spending even just a little bit of time in the fridge an extreme overreaction?
What’s the worst that could happen heating these pizza rolls up and crushing them while the football game is on?
Should you feed a couple of them to your kids just to make sure that they are good to go?
We dig into all of that (and then some) in this detailed guide.
Can You Put Pizza Rolls in the Fridge?
If you’re worried that accidentally stuffing pizza rolls into the refrigerator is going to ruin them completely, to the point where you are beyond safe eating them and they end up in the garbage, we can put your fears and worries to rest.
While it’s not recommended that you put your pizza rolls in the fridge for extended amounts of time (they keep a lot longer when you leave them in your freezer), a night – or even a couple of days – in your fridge isn’t the end of the world.
You’ll have to adjust your pizza roll’s reheating time (they heat up a lot faster from the fridge than they did when frozen solid) to avoid melting your mouth – though that might happen anyway – but other than that there’s no real difference.
How Long Were Your Pizza Rolls in the Fridge?
How long your pizza rolls got left in your fridge plays a major role in whether or not they are safe to eat or if they should go directly to the garbage bin or compost pile.
As mentioned a moment ago, pizza rolls that got left in the fridge accidentally for just a few hours – even up to a couple of days – shouldn’t really put you addressed. They shouldn’t ruin the pizza rolls themselves and you should be able to reheat them and eat them without any issues.
That said, if you leave your pizza rolls in the fridge for a week or more – especially closer to two weeks or longer – you’re really starting to play with fire a little bit.
Exposure to warmer temperatures (at least compared to your freezer) for that long invites bacterial growth that you don’t want to anywhere near your mouth or stomach.
Within a week, there’s really nothing to worry about. Longer than a week (and certainly longer than two weeks) and you should be side eyeing those pizza rolls as they slide into a garbage bag.
165°F is the “Magic Number” When Cooking Pizza Rolls
If you are still a little bit nervous about your pizza rolls not being safe to eat, even though they’ve only spent a short amount of time in the fridge, make sure that you heat them up to 165°F for at least a couple of minutes.
This is the “magic number” temperature that will burn off and destroy all kinds of bad bacteria that would have otherwise wreaked havoc on your stomach and your digestive system.
Lucky for you, pizza rolls don’t take long to hit 165°F – and sometimes it feels like they get a whole lot hotter than that, almost warm enough to melt steel, even. If you’ve ever burned the roof of your mouth on a pizza roll fresh from the microwave you know exactly what we are talking about.
Get those pizza rolls up to 165°F for two or three minutes and you’ll be good to go!
Should I Defrost Frozen Pizza Rolls in the Fridge?
While boxes of pizza rolls will give you directions for how to get these delicious little snacks warmed up and ready to eat straight from a solid frozen block, some people still like to slide their pizza rolls into the refrigerator overnight to kind of thaw the amount.
You shouldn’t have anything to worry about here, either.
It’s going to take a while for those pizza rolls to thaw out completely, certainly longer than the eight, 12, or even 16 hours you have them in the fridge before heating them back up.
Just remember to adjust your cooking times if you decide to go in this direction.
Cook them like they were still frozen and you’ll end up with little molten chunks of pizza you’ll have to stick back in the fridge just to cool down enough to eat!
Can I Save Heated Up Pizza Rolls in the Fridge for a Couple of Days?
Let’s say for a moment that you were a little ambitious when it came time to heat up a box of pizza rolls from the freezer and now you’ve got ½ a dozen or more that you’re not going to be able to finish in this sitting.
Can they go back into the fridge, maybe even for a couple of days, or at least until a pizza roll craving strikes you again?
Absolutely!
Again, you’ll have at least a couple of days as a “grace period” to keep your pizza rolls in the fridge without them getting funky on you. Sometimes this can stretch out to a week, but you really don’t want to go any further than that.
Any obvious signs of funkiness (weird consistency, weird texture, wild smells, little mold spots, etc.) after a couple of days in the fridge mean those pizza rolls are garbage bound for sure.
What’s the Worst That Can Happen, Really?
At the end of the day, it’s not the worst thing in the world for pizza rolls to end up in the refrigerator for a short amount of time.
They don’t belong in the fridge, though – they belong in the freezer and will keep in the freezer a whole lot longer than they would in the warmer fridge environment. It’s not at all uncommon for frozen pizza rolls to keep for a couple of months in a freezer (maybe even longer) without any ill effects, either.
If you do have pizza rolls in the fridge it’s a good idea to heat and eat them ASAP. Leave them in the fridge for too long and they are going to spoil, often a whole lot faster than you would have thought possible.
But maybe that was your plan all along?
We’re not going to judge and we definitely won’t tell anyone. We might have even been there before ourselves, even.
Don’t worry – these lips are sealed!
Latest post’s
