Rules to thawing/refrigerating meat

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  coco1458 on 14/01/2017 - 00:47

  +6

  I usually thaw it in a glad wrapped bowl in the fridge, takes longer but I guess it avoids the meat going all the way down to room temp.

  • 

    [Deactivated] on 15/01/2017 - 17:45

    +2

    I guess it avoids the meat going all the way down to room temp

    How cold is your room? O_O

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  trustnoone on 14/01/2017 - 00:59

  +4

  I could be very very wrong (please someone correct me if I am) I suck at cooking but basically I always thought, bacteria grows on food (doubles every 30 minutes) at room temperature which I think is why you shouldn't eat food thats been out for over 4 hours? The thing is though that if you heat food up (Beyond 75C?) it should kill heaps of the bacteria on the food so that it doesn't become a health risk.

  I think bacteria thrive between 5c to 65c, which is why in the fridge it shouldn't increase the bacteria on the meat as much slowing it down from spoiling the meat? So if you do thaw it to room temperature, ensure to cook it appropriately to kill off most of the bacteria lowering back to a healthy amount? I think in steaks bacteria has a hard time penetrating the meat (unlike chicken) so as long as you adequately cook the outside its usually okay (which is why you can get rare steak but not chicken lol).

  Again I could be very wrong, so please don't take my advice without a grain of salt (I'm kinda worried I'm wrong and I'm pushing you further into a health risk lol).

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  [Deactivated] on 14/01/2017 - 01:05

  My wife usually takes it out the fridge and thaws meat in a large bowl of water. when it is at room temperature, she goes ahead and prepares the food by boiling it first. Been doing the same since she started cooking, never had any issues. As far as marinades, she will thaw similarly, mix it all up with marinade and leave in glad wrap overnight in the fridge if need be. Again never had any issues with this either.

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  John Kimble on 14/01/2017 - 02:13

  +4

  Yeah, I've always been told not leave meat of any kind (frozen, fresh, cooked) out in room temperature for extended periods of time if you can help it. So this means not thawing at room temperature. It's about minimising risk. 99/100 it might be fine, but every now and again depending on the meat quality/bacteria level, you could run into issues.

  I took the rump steak out before work and thawed it in room temperature. After I come home from work, I made a marinade and placed the meat in a sealable sandwich bag.

  Now my understanding is that you need to put the meat in the fridge for it to marinade but I thought you can't put meat back in the fridge once it's thawed.

  Why can't you thaw it in the marinade bag whilst in the fridge? Or is the freezer bag stuck on the meat?

  I think it's "you shouldn't refreeze once thawed", nothing about not being allowed to put back in the fridge…

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  altomic on 14/01/2017 - 02:50

  +6

  Rules to thawing/refrigerating meat

  Best to check The Commonwealth Meat Act (1937).

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  [Deactivated] on 14/01/2017 - 06:37

  +3

  Oh my, if you have left home with so little life skills, maybe you should do some courses. A Commercial Cookery Statement of Attainment should keep you alive a while longer. A St John's First Aid course may not go astray either.

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  try2bhelpful on 14/01/2017 - 07:01

  +1

  This is an article from Epicurious on this.

  http://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-defrost-any-m…

  Personally we usually defrost in the microwave but we are usually doing either small cuts of meat or mince etc, so we can minimise the "cooking". The best way is to put it in the fridge in the morning and use that night. Also when I marinade I put it into either a bag or a microwave container and then back into the fridge.

  Probably the most important thing at this stage is to build up a set of quality cookware, a good cooks knife is essential. If you can afford it get a Magimix. That is my go to appliance and gets used, at least, three times a week.

  Good recipe site:
  http://www.delicious.com.au/

  Go look at Stephanie Alexanders "The Cooks Companion". It is pricey but it has a section on the front on techniques. This is one of my go to books and has a great Lemon Curd recipe.

  Happy cooking.

  • 

    Vampyr on 14/01/2017 - 10:35

    Thawing in the microwave grosses me out..

    • 

      try2bhelpful on 14/01/2017 - 15:44

      +1

      Yeah, but it is quick and it doesn't involve breeding bugs in my food. As long as you are careful you don't end up cooking it; although I would never defrost anything this way I wasn't going to cook afterwards in case it is partially cooked.

      • 

        Vampyr on 14/01/2017 - 16:58

        Fair enough. To be honest, it's probably bc of a memory I have of backbacking in Budapest, when these cute local girls decided to cook for us. They found some mystery meat at the back of the freezer, nuked it in the microwave (the smell was horific).. then baked in the oven with potatoes.. it was at best par-cooked and the potatoes were crunchy with rawness. Worst meal yet!

      • 

        try2bhelpful on 14/01/2017 - 17:09

        +1

        @Vampyr: You were lucky you didn't spend the next few days talking to the porcelain telephone; though to be fair it was the cooking afterwards not the microwave that caused the issue. Not to mention the choice of ingredients and cooks.

        Our microwave is mainly used as a defroster and reheat device. Although we do have a good microwave rice cooker that gets a good workout and we also steam vegies. Ours is convection so we also do pizzas, macaroni cheese, etc in it. I'm old enough to remember when Microwave ovens were first released as commercial devices. It didn't take us long to realise that cooking meat was not one of its fortes.

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  bluesky on 14/01/2017 - 07:49

  +3

  When you take the meat out from freezer, you can put it into the meat compartment of the fridge, to thaw. This compartment is designed to keep foods colder than the rest of the refrigerator, so it's ideal for raw meat, poultry, and cold cuts.

  When you come home from work, you can check on the meat. If it is still semi-frozen, you can always take it out, and speed the thawing at room temp. (If this is the case, next time, for a similar portion, you can thaw it outside of the meat compartment of fridge, which has higher temperature for faster thawing).

  If meat is sufficiently thawed, even if it is quite cold, due to being in fridge or meat compartment, you can still apply marinade to it. Then, put back into fridge/meat compartment, to marinade.

  Have fun cooking! :-)

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  SuperMick on 14/01/2017 - 09:33

  +6

  With all food, you take it out of the freezer the night before, and put it on a plate or in a bowl, then back in the fridge. Make sure that it is wrapped. With steak, you can place it unwrapped, on a wire rack, again with something under it to catch the drips. This is normally how it is done in a steak house restaurant, this will dry out the outer flesh of the steak, giving it that aged taste. You need to check the temperature when you cook chicken, it needs to be at least 75C, I am a retired chef, and my digital thermometer is still used every day at home.

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  c64 on 14/01/2017 - 10:55

  i microwave any frozen stuff to soften it

  i'm still alive and healthy ..

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  Gronk on 14/01/2017 - 11:27

  Most of the meat I freeze is either in a ziplock bag or vacuum wrapped so I just pop it in a pot of room-temperature water and leave it for an hour or 2, if I'm not going to cook it immediately then it goes in the fridge as soon as it's mostly frozen.

  Main reason I never use the microwave to defrost raw meat is that you inevitably end up with cooked and raw spots on the meat, which is a great way to give yourself food poisoning.

  • 

    try2bhelpful on 14/01/2017 - 15:45

    You won't give yourself food poisoning if you cook the meat after you defrost it.

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  bobbified on 14/01/2017 - 13:11

  It's funny - as kids, my parents used to leave cooked meat (esp chicken)on the dinner table covered with glad wrap overnight, all day, etc and everything else they did pretty much went against the food handling "guidelines" about bacteria growth at certain temperatures.

  The only thing they didn't do was mix raw and cooked foods (which is probably the most obvious).

  I don't recall ever getting sick from the way my parents handled the food and I wonder if these guidelines about food safety have been trumped-up massively just to "be on the safe side".

  I've seen how they handle raw meat in some countries that I've been to - If they were to follow the guidelines from here, all that meat they're selling would go into the bin - and there's still so many people who are alive and walking around.

  • 

    try2bhelpful on 14/01/2017 - 15:50

    There is a case for building up immunity; however, the deaths from contaminated food would be much higher in "some" countries than they are out here - particularly for young children. The guidelines are designed to deal with people who don't have good immune systems - the very young, the sick and the old. My brother got hepatitis A from a food place in "some" country; I think I will stick with the guidelines.

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  Mumbles on 14/01/2017 - 14:14

  +1

  The type of marinade can act as an anti-bactierial. I think honey never gets mould or bacteria. Sour means acidic. Salt is a natural anti-bacterial. Spicy usually means chilli which is great for preserving cooked curries for hours/days.

  Scientifically not all bacteria is the same. I remember there are Aerobic bacteria vs Anaerobic bacteria. The marinade can act as a partial barrier to oxygen, certain to slow down at least a few varieties of bacteria.

  I have an iron stomach so I'm very relaxed about re-refrigeration with the exception of sea food. I'm not an expert, just adding food for thought.

  • 

    try2bhelpful on 14/01/2017 - 17:16

    +1

    This URL might be of interest to people

    http://resources.schoolscience.co.uk/SGM/sgmbugs2.html

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  Banana on 14/01/2017 - 22:04

  -Thaw meat the night before
  -When packaging portions for freezing, always package the right amount of meat and lay them as flat as you can, will help with thawing.