Thawing half frozen meat

corblimey

Say I do a grocery shop on a Saturday morning, and put all my nice fresh steak into the freezer when I come home. Then a couple of hours later, I decide to have a steak that day instead. Can I safely remove the steak from the freezer and thaw it out? Is there a min length of time that I should leave steak to freeze before attempting to thaw? Any diff between fresh steak from the butcher's counter and those packaged steak from the cold section in Tescos'?

I suspect this is a big no-no for bacteria, etc, and I should completely freeze food before thawing it out, but I'd like to get some sort of advice.

Mr Magnolia

Should be fine if it wasn't frozen before you bought it, I seriously doubt it was.

Take a wiff of it before you cook it, you'll know if it's spoilt by the smell. The microwave is fine to defrost it.

Magic Monkey

Once you minimise the amount of time from the supermarket's refrigerated section to your home freezer it should be fine. Even if it's partially frozen the point is you won't have bacteria growing and the texture won't have degraded so much due to large ice crystals forming, just smaller ice crystals, so maybe it's better to thaw from partially frozen instead of fully frozen, I'm guessing. With red meat it's better to defrost in the fridge overnight, otherwise there are too much nutrients lost to the "drip", but once your microwave doesn't start cooking the steak (have to be careful with settings/timing), it'll be ok.

rubadub

corblimey wrote: »

Can I safely remove the steak from the freezer and thaw it out?

Yes, certainly.

corblimey wrote: »

Is there a min length of time that I should leave steak to freeze before attempting to thaw?

no

A lot of myths surround freezing, and bacteria. The real reason not to refreeze thawed meat is that it changes the texture and hence the taste, if frozen and defrosted properly it can be done many times with no harmful effect. The exploding liquid cells change the texture, fruit goes mushy. Some items are quick frozen to stop this effect.

With red meat it's better to defrost in the fridge overnight,

Yes, the main reason is to slow down the thawing. You do not want it sitting outside in the kitchen, in which case the outside defrosts first and can be festering away at 20C while the inside is still frozen. By leaving in the fridge it never gets warm anywhere.

Another quick thaw technique is to submerge it in water in the fridge, like in a bowl of cold water. Water is a great conductor of heat/cold, so sucks the cold out and does not get hot.