Im hungry now!
You can do anything once.
The most difficult thing about cooking chicken is getting the inside cooked all the way through without burning or drying out the outside.
If it’s frozen, that’s much more difficult.
So yes - you can cook it from frozen, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, the odds are that it’s going to end up cooked on the outside and raw on the inside or cooked on the inside and burnt on the outside.
This is why air fryers or a sous vide are perfect for frozen foods. Air fryer chicken is super simple and pretty quick. Sous vide even easier but takes a bit longer.
Edit: because you lot seem to not understand that an air fryer is just a convection oven…
https://foodess.com/air-fryer-frozen-chicken-breast/
https://realsimplegood.com/air-fryer-frozen-chicken-breasts/
https://savaskitchen.com/frozen-chicken-breasts-in-air-fryer/
Are you all putting the air fryer on broil at 450 or something? Lol
Air frying a frozen chicken is like the perfect way to burn the outside while keeping the inside raw.
https://foodess.com/air-fryer-frozen-chicken-breast/
No just no… it’s completely fine.
Lol fucking down voting me doesn’t magically make you correct. Frozen chicken breast in the air fryer will make it juicy inside.
Have any of you ever cooked anything before? Lol air fryers are just convection ovens. Lol
No they are not. The thing that separates them is how efficiently they take moisture away from food by moving air around with methods that are not convection.
It’s the reason you can get soggier fries in a regular oven when compared to an air fryer.
That said, a lot of air fryers are close to convection ovens because they either missed the concept or were designed poorly.
Even America’s test kitchen compares air fryers to mini convection ovens from what I recall. I’d trust them over someone random that seems to just want to be technically correct. The main advantage they have is the small area which can heat up quicker, but the way the function is equivalent for most definitions.
You’re confusing convection with conventional.
A convection oven is an oven with a fan to induce convection currents. A conventional oven is a hot box. Air fryers are ovens with fans in them to induce convection currents, ergo air fryers are convection ovens.
I came to that conclusion further down this thread, and tldr same same but different, so it’s still different. In the way that a CRT TV is different than LED TV.
They both have their strong suites and do different cooking styles better than the other, much like CRT/LED.
What??? They’re literally convection ovens. They pull in fresh air and blow out moisture with the element very close to the food. Your own link further down pretty much says the same thing.
I disagree. Keep reading down the thread
An air fryer is like a mini convection oven, but it’s designed to make food super crispy with way less oil.
From your own link… it’s a convection oven. Period.
What methods are those? I thought it was just way stronger convection, would love to learn more!
Usually a fan from my experience, pulls air and it’s moisture out and pulls fresh air through a heating mechanism or near one
Ah I see, and normal convection just circulates air inside the oven without removing the moisture?
Mmm, nice pink center
I like my chicken rare
Can I have your stuff?
Please explain how you think frozen chicken in an air fryer would turn out ok. I’m curious.
Got a hunch that their idea of air frying chicken is pre-cooked and frozen chicken tenders
Yeah, plus it’s like 10x more flavor and faster to cook if it’s room temp and has a light coat of olive oil and seasoning. Just night/difference in texture and flavor. That’s one thing all the cooking videos never mention, let it get to room temp for superior everything. Not cold, not frozen.
https://foodess.com/air-fryer-frozen-chicken-breast/
The fuck? Literally tons of recipes online for it.
Its actually better than thawed. It keeps the center super moist.
I’m also confused as to why. I use a commercial connection oven a lot. From my experience, convection decreases cooking time (obviously) and gets a better crisp. I don’t see how that helps the issue of preventing overcooked outside and/or undercooked inside. If anything, I’d think it makes it more of a problem. Isn’t it the conduction through the food that the determining factor?
Not saying you’re wrong, just that I didn’t get it
It doesn’t work. Too much heat on the outside, but not enough time for that heat to get to the inside of an even slightly thick cut, especially if it’s frozen. Phase changes take a lot more energy to cross than simply heating through the same temperature change. That’s also why those fake ice cube things that aren’t water (stone, metal, etc.) really suck at actually chilling a drink as well as plain old ice.
That’s how I see it
It’s just a faster way to cook, because the moisture which is basically the cold, is removed from the air. Plus the super hot air is circulated around the food.
I will say I don’t know the entire science around it, but it completely works just fine and I use my sous vide and air fryer constantly.
I feel fundamentally uncomfortable with sois vide using plastic.
You can sous vide in silicone bags. You just won’t be able to vacuum seal it, but you can squeeze most of the air out.
The trick is to submerge the bag in water before sealing it. It’s not a perfect vacuum, but the water pressure still helps squeeze out the air out of the bag.
I don’t even vacuum seal my plastic bags, so I can confirm this approach should work.
Quickest way I know of to cook frozen chicken is in a Pressure Cooker aka Instant Pot. It’s done in like 30 minutes to an hour depending on what your cooking. full bird I think was an hour and change. Wings are super quick.
if you dont defrost it first you will most likely over cook the outside while the middle will be frozen or undercooked. potentially dangerous for chicken.
pro tip for fast defrosting? cut it up in smaller pieces, while its frozen. this gives each piece a greater surface area, meaning it will defrost and cook much faster. in this case, baking would be slowest option, i would chop into cubes and pan fry.
whip up a slice of nice verse pie.
pro tip for fast defrosting? cut it up in smaller pieces, while its frozen.
This is also a pro tip for cutting chicken breast into cubes - it’s way easier to do while it’s still partially frozen.
I use an old cpu cooler to effectively increase the surface area without cutting, works a treat
But how much heatsink? Pea sized is surely a bit small for a whole chicken. Maybe egg sized?
Lots of thermal paste makes the skin extra crispy, and is a great source of heavy metal toxicity you won’t find in other cooking methods!
“Potentially” dangerous for the chicken? Isn’t the chicken usually dead by this point? 😅
Not in this house, but you do you.
You’re still good to fuck that chicken before you chop its head off! Yeee haw!
The Devil’s Rejects: You gonna fuck that chicken?
Another pro tip is putting the meat in a ziplock bag and putting it in lukewarm water. It will defrost much quicker than in the ambient air.
Defrost in fridge, no other safe way to do it.
I cook from frozen all the time, but I use a sous vide stick in a cooler box (keeps the water insulated so less heat loss), then finish in the air fryer.
EDIT: ITT people who clearly win the lottery every time they buy a ticket
Well, other than microwaving it, or cooking it from frozen, or thawing it in water.
Just don’t sit it on a counter in open air for 8 hours to thaw and you’ll be fine.
2 hours max in the danger zone. More than that will get people sick.
No you won’t. This whole defrost conversation always bothers the hell out of me because people leave out a very important factor. Will the defrosted item be consumed right away or will it be cooked first?
Cooking it kills the bacteria that would’ve came about during defrosting in the “danger zone”. I’m not saying you can leave it on the counter for a week but it’s not as bad as a lot of people on the internet make it sound.
Wait what? Do you not know why this is a food safety issue?
Bacteria like to grow. Do you know what cooking does? Yep! It kills the bacteria. Here’s the thing though…as the bacteria are growing before we kill them, they are all making waste products.
Do you know what cooking does NOT destroy? Yup, bacterial waste products.
Think of it like this. When certain bacteria grow, they make a poison as a byproduct. For our purposes, pretend the byproduct is bleach.
What happens when you put a living being in a 200 degree oven? It dies. What happens when you put bleach in a 200 degree oven? Maybe it will turn into vapor…idk…but once it cools and recondenses, it’s still going to be bleach.
Some cases of food poisoning are due to colonization by live bacteria, but other cases of food poisoning are due to bacterial waste chemicals/byproducts, even if all of the pathogens are killed.
There’s a difference between food or meat that had been refrigerated and then was sat out and allowed to return to room temperature as compared to meat that is frozen and is allowed to de-thaw for a few hours.
The ice inside of the meat will keep the overall meat cool enough that bacteria will not grow on it for a while.
I have been thawing meat for over a decade and sitting some meat out in a bowl or on a plate and allowing it to thaw for two or three hours has never gotten anybody sick from my cooking.
two to three hours is barely past what people are saying is safe… You’re using an edge case to try and justify the entire practice, which is a terrible idea unless you want to make others sick.
I have said specifically what I have said without deviation. If people want to misinterpret that, that is on them. 2-3 hours from frozen is fine for me. If it’s not for you then that is perfectly fine with me, you do you.
“I’ve been firing guns in the air for decades and never hit a bystander in town, no way that’s a thing”
“I’ve fucked girls without condoms for more than a decade, sexual diseases aren’t real”
“My grandma smoked for 60 years and died from bowel cancer, not lung cancer.”
“I’m not vaccinated, and never got COVID”
Letting frozen chicken thaw out for three hours is not the same as raw dogging every single chick you meet at a bar for a decade.
That’s textbook false equivalence, lol.
See my comment under yours.
LOL, I throw my meat (wrapped) on the hood of the pickup and let it cook in the summer sun for a couple of hours. Always astonishes me at what people deem unsafe. Some y’all would starve to death within 2-weeks if teleported to the middle ages.
My wife wraps the dinner leftovers, leaves it on the table, we eat it for lunch, or sometimes dinner the next day. And here come the rebuttals:
YOU WILL DIE!
We haven’t had a single tummy ache.
YOU WILL DIE!
Lived like this our whole lives, into middle age. No tummy aches.
YOU WILL DIE EVENTUALLY!
Got me there.
Most of y’all would be horrified at how we lived Hurricane Ivan. Buddy brought a 5g bucket of meat over. No electricity, no refrigeration. We cooked everything to hell and back, ate the seafood that evening, munched on the beef and chicken for 3 days after.
I suspect everyone took a health or food prep class and decided any meat left under 140°F for X minutes instantly and magically turns to poison. Now I’m going to go all anti-vaxer: I hAve aN ImmUnE SySTem!
Yeah, the health and safety standards are for a commercial kitchen, and are wildly conservative. I’d follow those standards if I was serving food for someone else. But, I’d also take the “expired” leftovers home and eat for a few more days.
The people who throw away leftovers after a day or two (or refuse to eat leftovers) are insane. They’re the same ones who won’t drink a bottle of water after its “expiration date”. Smell the thing. If it’s gross, get rid of it. Otherwise, it’s fine. I mean damn, people.
The bottled water expiration date is not exactly because the water will go bad, instead it’s the bottle itself. After some time, the plastic starts to break down and leech into the water. Storing the bottles somewhere cool and dark will slow that process down though.
That being said, if the seal isn’t broken, it’s not going to make you sick even if it’s well past the expiration date.
To be fair, we don’t really know the health hazards of microplastics yet, so I wouldn’t want to become a case study in extreme exposure…
Old bottled water also tastes terrible, so I wouldn’t drink it even if I were going to deny any danger. lol
I had consistent results with my instantpot/pressure cooker when cooking from frozen. The breast was always cooked thoroughly and tender.
You can as long as you get the center hot enough. However baking frozen chicken often makes the meat mushy. I’d recommend a thaw first.
Cooking from raw can result in a beautifully delicate interior. The key is to start at a lower temp and then raise it to your normal temp after a certain temp is hit. I did my turkey this way this year all because of this video. In case you don’t know who Chris Young is, he was the science consultant at The Fat Duck, co founder of ChefSteps, inventor of the Joule, and co-author to The Modernist Cookbook.
Yeah honestly I either sousvide or use a control freak.
Salt 1.5% or 3% equilibrium brine. I pound the breast about 3/4 of an inch thick and set the control freak to 160c 5 min a side. It won’t be completely done in the center but a 5 min rest will get it there.
You can cook it however you want as long as it gets to 160F. I sous vide frozen chicken all the time. I bet you could roast it at low temp just fine. Or just defrost it in the microwave.
How long would you say, do i flip it? What do you say about the other response saying absolutely not to do that?
Honestly I have no idea. Maybe like 20 minutes at 325F? Buy a cheap meat thermometer.
No harm can come of it as long as you cook it to temp. It might not be very good, but it won’t make you sick.
Maybe like 20 minutes at 325F?
This 1,000% will not work (assuming it’s a cutlet / thighs or something). This is not enough for even a defrosted chicken breast.
There are ways you can do it, other people have commented some approaches (basically, cut it up, if you want it to work). But (a) it’s unsafe without a meat thermometer (b) it will probably be a failure unless you’re pretty skilled. Definitely don’t just throw it in at 325, the most likely outcome is that you’ll have to leave it way longer than 20 minutes, and then give up once it’s getting dried and awful around the outside, and have to take it out anyway and slice it up and fry it or something, because the inside is still raw.
Not to mention (if you’re in the US) the deregulation that’s happening. You need to be extra careful now because nothing is being looked at like it should, and the only recalls happening now are from companies doing it on their own to avoid being sued down the line.
Chicken and anything ground should absolutely be cooked in a way consistent with killing bacteria. Anything else is asking for horrible consequences.
You can defrost quickly with the microwave.
Instant Pot:
Yes. About twice the cooking time as thawed. Check that it’s cooked before you eat it though.
Same temperature, just double time?
If you are intent on doing this, get a meat thermometer to confirm internal temp of at least 165F.
Microwave defrost function. Usually there is one for poultry and it will assign a time based on the weight you enter.
Every time it beeps mid cycle, dump the water from the plate and flip the meat.
This works for all frozen goods, but some veggies do not survive this process and get all mushy.
You would have to chop it up into manageable pieces, somehow, while it’s frozen. Then bake or fry or whatever.
Basically make your own chicken nuggets, which are designed to be baked from frozen.
Then the problem becomes cutting solid chicken into slices or strips or bite size cubes. Not sure how to do that reliably or safely
Actually, partially frozen chicken is much easier to cut anyways.
This is how you quickly defrost a chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2jlCx_xqFw
I find it amazing they never revealed their identity and it will forever remain a mystery.
You can pressure cook frozen chicken in an instant pot.
