Cooking Frozen Food -Thawing

The first and foremost step of cooking frozen food is to bring back the food to a normal temperature or thawing the food. The frozen food has undergone physical, biological and chemical changes and hence has cannot be cooked as such. A change in temperature of the frozen food has to be brought about so as to make it suitable for cooking without causing its spoilage. The purpose of thawing frozen foods thoroughly before cooking is to ensure that during cooking the food is heated sufficiently to kill harmful bacteria.

Thawing is the process of melting the solid food product or defrosting the frozen food items. Quick thawing is desirable as it keeps microbial population in check. Slow thawing of frozen food causes loss of food quality due to concentration effects and also causes separation of cells due to physical rupture of cells in between and within the food. The process of thawing will take varying length of time depending on the type of food being thawed and the size of the food, for example it will take as long as 48 hrs with large frozen foods. Repeated freezing & thawing can be very detrimental to the quality of foods. Quick thawing can be easily attained with the help of hot water, steam or microwave heating.

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Depending on how much time you have, there are three accepted ways to safely defrost frozen foods.

There are three safe ways to defrost food:

• In the refrigerator
• In cold water
• In the microwave (Most importantly, follow instructions from manufacturer)

Foods such as meats should be first defrosted by keeping in the refrigerator and consequently adopting other method of thawing.

Sometimes the frozen foods can be better defrosted by placing it in cold water and changing the water every 30 minutes.

The option of defrosting in microwave should be resorted to only after carefully reading the manufacturer's instructions and if the freezer bag is tolerant alone to defrosting in microwave it is not advised to cook in the microwave itself.

For faster defrosting, place food in a leak proof plastic bag and immerse it in cold water. Change water every 30 minutes. After thawing, cook immediately.

For defrosting ready meals always follow the instructions on the packet.

Many ready prepared foods can be safely cooked directly from the frozen state because the manufactures have designed the cooking method to ensure that the food is properly cooked. Therefore, if the pack tells you to ‘cook from frozen’ it is important to do so, as this will give the best results. Always follow the cooking instructions on the packaging carefully. Always cook vegetables from frozen in order to preserve the nutrients.

Refreezing thawed foods is not advised from a safety or quality point of view. The main reason is to avoid the risk of improper defrosting methods, i.e. thawing at room temperature for too long a time or letting the thawed food get too warm before refreezing is started.

Thawed foods should be treated as carefully as chilled foods, i.e. kept in the refrigerator. Thawed frozen foods should be cooked as soon as possible. Care should be taken to ensure that juices released after thawing do not drip onto the refrigerator surfaces – therefore, thawed meats should be stored covered at the bottom of a fridge for no more than 24 hours. 

Post by Faiz Lahori