cooking meat from frozen?

mandco

I have some random pieces of meat/fish mostly salmon & chicken that were brought as fresh but then frozen as short/same day dated can I cook them from frozen or do I have to defrost them 1st?
If so whats the best way to cook them?

Not sure what I do wrong but it seems to take forever to defrost things then I'm not sure if they are ok to still use - last time I left chicken breasts in the fridge to defrost and they were still part frozen 24hrs later :huh:

any advice appreciated
thanks

PasturesNew

Yes you can cook them from frozen. The best way to find out how is to find a supermarket's website where they're selling a frozen item the same sort/weight as what you've got - and they usually give the cooking instructions there these days.

In short: Cook it as you'd have done it if fresh, but longer.... so it depends on the size how much longer.

Primrose

Do you have a microwave with a defrost function on it? If not and you need to defrost slowly it,s always better to menu plan for the next day, take stuff out of the freezer the previous day and leave it open on the counter for a few hours before storing in the fridge overnight.
If you don’t have a microwave, putting something on a heatproof dish over a saucepan of previously boiled water will speed up the process.

Farway

A tip I saw for defrosting, put item on/in metal dish, if you have one, and place on metal drainer if you have one

The metal will help heat loss

dingdongsaving

I often put 3 or 4 chicken breasts in an oven dish and cook from frozen for about 45 minutes at 180 degrees. It's a great no-think/no-prep dinner for the family mid-week and can be cooked so many ways:
under a tin of toms and some herbs
under a tin of condensed soup with some sliced mushrooms
under some gravy
under jar of curry sauce
under a jar of sweet and sour/tin of pineapple...

Just add mash/rice/stuffing and some veg.

jackyann

I tend to think that the texture is better if defrosted slowly, but no problem as long as you ensure it is properly cooked through. I wouldn't be without my meat thermometer for checking.

Primrose

I think the real risky one trying to cook from frozen is chicken. Personally I wouldn’t risk it because of the risk of compilobacter or other types of food poisoning.

Callie22

I tend not to cook meat from frozen solid, but I will admit that sometimes I cook things like stewing steak and chicken breast from part frozen if it hasn't defrosted completely by the time I want to cook it. One thing is that it's a heck of a lot easier to cut up slightly frozen meat, in fact that's what they recommend for things like carpaccio, so that you can get really thin slices.