Can frozen chicken be cooked immediately or does it need to be thawed?

Rules for choosing fresh poultry

One of the basic rules of a tasty and high-quality dish is the freshness of the product . An experienced chef will say:

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• You need to select the chicken with your eyes and nose. If there is the slightest unpleasant odor, refuse to purchase.
• The skin of the chicken should be pale white with a pinkish tint, without gray spots. The skin of an older bird is thicker and rougher.
• The fat of fresh young chicken is slightly yellowish in color.
• Blood clots, ruptures, and fractures on the carcass are not allowed.

Mussels in Korean

One of the particularly primitive and quick recipes for preparing frozen mussels is Korean-style mussels. To do this you will need 500 grams of mussels, a package of Korean carrots, 3 onions, 50 milligrams of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of salt, as well as a little nutmeg, coriander, hot red and black pepper. First of all, you need to defrost the mussels and rinse them thoroughly under cold running water, and then boil for 5 minutes and drain in a colander to drain. Ready mussels must be cleared of shells and the onions cut into half rings; the one that is salted is lightly sprinkled with lime juice and left to marinate. While the onions are soaked in the marinade, nutmeg is added to the soy sauce (literally on the tip of a knife) and other spices to taste. After this, the clams, sauce and onions are mixed in a bowl, sprinkled with red pepper, mixed again and placed in the refrigerator until completely cooled, because in Korean, mussels are especially eaten cold. The finished dish is served with Korean carrots. You should know that a huge amount of sauce or seasonings will interrupt or spoil the authentic taste of mussels.

An appetizing fragrant ear can improve your well-being, add strength and energy, warm you in the cold season and refresh you in the heat. Cooked in a slow cooker, it turns out stewed, like coming out of a Russian oven. The secret in the leisurely cooking mode is “Stewing” or “Simmering”, which allows you to preserve the useful properties of the products.

Preparation

Chickens and chickens sold in stores are usually in plastic or paper bags. The packaging will need to be removed, then the meat should be washed thoroughly and feathers removed if they are present on the carcass. Some housewives prefer to remove fat along with the skin. Cooking time depends on the size of the bird, with frozen poultry taking 50% longer to cook than refrigerated or defrosted poultry.

If you need to shorten the process, and the carcass is large, it makes sense to cut it into several pieces.

In a slow cooker or in the oven

In addition to the microwave, you can use other kitchen devices to defrost a chicken carcass - an oven and a slow cooker.

To defrost a bird in the oven, place it in a mold with deep sides and place it in a preheated oven. An important point: the heating temperature should be 30 - 50 degrees, no more. Otherwise, the meat will be covered with a beautiful golden brown crust on top, but the inside will remain raw. After 15-20 minutes, the carcass can be turned on the other side and defrosted for the same amount of time.

In a multicooker, chicken is defrosted using the “Steam” program. A little water is poured into the multi-pan, a steamer basket is placed on top, the carcass is placed on it and the desired option is started. Under the influence of steam, the meat will begin to soften literally before your eyes.

Calories and nutritional value

A chicken carcass is usually cut into several parts - legs (thighs, drumsticks), wings, back and breast. All chicken is suitable for cooking.

The calorie content of different parts also varies.

How to defrost correctly

After thawing, the chicken will not lose its taste or shape if you follow simple recommendations:

1. Thaw the product slowly, preferably in the refrigerator or on the balcony. In the microwave or oven there is a high risk of drying out the meat or even baking it. This will have a negative impact on the final dish. In the room is a good option if there are no cats/dogs and the air is cool enough, otherwise the chicken will go stale soon after it melts. A good place is a window sill on the north or west side.
2. Remove the product from the bag, film, and remove it from the container onto a plate - this will speed up defrosting.
3. Do not force defrosting with a jet of water: these meat splashes are not hygienic and the meat will become watery.
4. Place the chicken in a rimmed bowl; quite a lot of liquid will drain from it. It will be bad if everything spills on the products below.
5. To protect the chicken from pets while thawing on the counter, cover the product with a microwave hood.

Feel free to buy chicken for future use and freeze it. In this form, it retains all its useful qualities for 2 to 5 months under standard conditions in the freezer. It is not necessary to thaw the bird before cooking - for soup, add the chicken without defrosting. This is extremely convenient if you need the dish today for lunch and not tomorrow for breakfast.

Cooking features

There are many ways to cook this meat, and one of the most basic and simplest cooking methods is to simmer it in a pot on the stove. Boiled chicken is used in various dishes, including salads. Its mild taste goes well with other ingredients, sauces, spices and herbs. This cooking method allows you to quickly and easily create delicious and nutritious chicken broth at home yourself.

Despite the simplicity of the method, questions still sometimes arise. One of the most common: “Should I defrost the chicken first?” It must be said that there is no urgent need for this. If you need to cook something faster, you can put the meat in water straight from frozen. But for more uniform boiling, if you have time, you can defrost the product, only then you need to do this gradually, without using hot water.

It is difficult to say exactly how long to cook chicken without defrosting the product. To determine whether the meat is truly cooked, you need to pierce it with a knife while cooking. When raw, the ichor inside will begin to come out, which will instantly turn into foam.

There is one more caveat: do not try to cook a frozen chicken whole in a slow cooker. This technique cooks slowly, so there is a chance that cold meat will spend too much time in the high temperature range, allowing bacteria to grow. If you still want to boil it this way, you should divide the frozen chicken into small pieces.

Using running water

There are several ways to quickly defrost chicken without a microwave. The most common of them is aquatic. Since the liquid has a greater heat capacity, the process of thawing a frozen carcass will end faster.

In cold water, a whole bird will defrost in 2-3 hours, and in hot water - literally in 20-30 minutes, but, as a rule, the meat becomes tough and loses most of its taste.

How to avoid this:

1. Pack the frozen carcass in a tightly tied plastic bag, which will prevent the juice from leaching out of the meat fibers.
2. Place the chicken in the sink and turn on the faucet. The water temperature should be cool (about 15 degrees) and in no case hot or icy.

How long to cook chicken for soup?

To get rich chicken broth and delicious soup, it is better to cook the chicken for soup for at least 2 hours. To do this, the carcass is chopped into pieces, placed in cold water and brought to a boil. The foam is removed with a slotted spoon, and the meat is cooked until ready for soup at a low simmer until the meat is well separated from the bone. For a pleasant aroma, you can put a whole head of onion, parsley, parsnip or celery roots and your favorite seasonings in the pan. The broth is salted at the end of cooking, otherwise the meat will take longer to cook and will turn out tough.

When should you defrost chicken?

There are several cases when defrosting is required:

• when the frozen portion is too large, you need to let it thaw slightly, separate the required amount, and immediately put the rest back in the freezer;
• when the skin has not been removed first, and it is of no use in the dish (for example, you need a dietary dish with a minimum of fat);
• when the portion is frozen so that it does not fit into the dish and sticks out above the water;
• if you plan to fry or stew chicken, excess juice will ruin the dish, so it is recommended to let the meat thaw and drain, then rinse, dry with paper towels and cook.

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Important Re-freezing is strictly prohibited, which is why it is so important to divide the chicken into portions in advance. Otherwise, it is preferable to use the entire stock for cooking at once, for example, by making neck, back and wing soup, brisket salad and stewed potatoes with leg meat.