How Long Does It Take Ground Beef to Thaw in Hot Water
The Curious Melt
A Hot-Water Bath for Thawing Meats
EVEN in kitchens where fresh is male monarch, the freezer remains a handy tool. There'due south no easier way to deal with a bounty of meat from a big-box store or a butchering class or a C.S.A. share, or the haul from a angling trip, or the unpredictable sighting of partridge and other rare birds in the Chinese market. In my house, the freezer is essential for drawing out the enjoyment of the prime mail-order meats that my mother sends for my birthday, and that arrive rock-difficult under a block of dry ice.
Less handy, however, is the thawing process, which frequently requires planning a twenty-four hours or more alee of the cooking. Food thaws slowly in the fridge, specially when kept in its plastic packaging, which is the method recommended by purveyors and the Department of Agriculture to minimize bacterial growth and the loss of juices. Thawing in common cold water, 40 degrees or below, is safe and much faster — water transfers heat far more than efficiently than air — but information technology can nevertheless take hours. I've never had much luck with the defrost setting on microwave ovens, which can start to cook one part of the food while the rest is still frozen.
Now there'due south good news for last-minute cooks. It turns out that we can thaw frozen steaks and other compact cuts in every bit little every bit ten minutes, without compromising their quality, and with very little endeavour. All you need is hot water.
This information comes, surprisingly, from research sponsored by the Section of Agronomics, though the methods aren't yet officially recommended. The studies have been published in the Journal of Food Science and in Food Control.
At the United states of americaD.A. labs in Beltsville, Dr.., Janet Southward. Eastridge and Brian C. Bowker test-thawed more than 200 one-inch-thick beefiness strip loin steaks in three dissimilar groups: some in a refrigerator at 37 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, some in a constantly circulating h2o bath at 68 degrees, and some in a h2o bath at 102 degrees.
Air-thawing in the fridge took eighteen to twenty hours, while the room-temperature water bath thawed the steaks in about 20 minutes, and the hot-summer-day bath in 11 minutes. These water-bath times are then short that any bacterial growth would remain within safe limits.
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The water-thawed steaks actually leaked less juice than the air-thawed steaks. The researchers grilled the steaks, also, and institute that all the thawed steaks lost about 26 pct of their original weight once cooked, while never-frozen steaks lost 21 percent. The study found no significant differences in tenderness between tiresome- and quick-thawed steaks.
Eleven minutes is pretty quick, simply Brian A. Nummer and colleagues at Utah State Academy in Logan shaved away another couple of minutes by heating the water bath to 140 degrees, the standard temperature of steam tables in food service kitchens.
The Utah Country group constitute that chicken breasts about a half-inch thick thawed in a petty more than three minutes, and inch-thick breasts in less than 9 minutes. Although 140-caste h2o would eventually cook the chicken to medium-rare, they saw no signs of cooking. The quick-thawed breasts did lose slightly more juice than the fridge-thawed breasts, but when the chicken was grilled and served, a console of 18 tasters was unable to tell them apart. And based on their mathematical modeling, the researchers concluded that any bacterial growth would remain well within safe limits.
And then at that place's no downside to quick-thawing steaks, chops, fillets and other relatively thin cuts in warm water right earlier cooking. Large roasts are a unlike story. They take long enough to thaw that there may be time for significant bacterial growth on their surfaces. Prompt cooking might well eliminate that problem, but until this has been studied, information technology's safest to go along thawing roasts in the refrigerator or in h2o nether twoscore degrees.
Quick-thawing is piece of cake to adopt in the home kitchen. Just don't wait your thaw times to match the lab times I've quoted unless yous take an immersion circulator or another method to continue the h2o in motion and at a abiding temperature. If the h2o is still, a common cold zone develops around the food and insulates it from the remaining warm water. And without infusions of hot water or estrus from a burner, the icy nutrient cools the h2o bathroom.
Unless I'm in a blitz, I'grand happy to allow the thawing proceed more than slowly on its own while I have care of other tasks. I fill a large pot with 125-degree h2o from the tap, immerse the plastic-wrapped meat, counterbalance it downward with a slotted spoon to continue it under water and stir the h2o occasionally. The h2o temperature drops, but stays above 100 degrees for a half-hr or then, depending on how much food is thawing.
Last week, I thawed two-inch-thick filets mignons in an 60 minutes, whole squab in forty minutes, a i-pound whole fish in twenty minutes, and ane ¼-inch-thick salmon fillets in fifteen minutes. Thawing times tin can vary, depending on the volume, temperature and motion of the water as well as the food'due south thickness and how it's wrapped. (A lot of plastic swaddling interferes with rut transfer. It'south all-time to remove it and place the food in a thin resealable plastic bag, partly immersing it to force the air out before zipping information technology close.)
And then when you scan your larder to improvise a quick meal, don't forget to look in the freezer. The makings of the master form may be just minutes away.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/dining/a-hot-water-bath-for-thawing-meats-the-curious-cook.html
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