Meat is considered cooked once the internal temperature reaches a certain threshhold (140-170 F depending on the type of meat). Room temperature is about 35 degrees warmer than the refrigerator, so it makes a big difference in the amount of time you have to cook the meat, and how evenly it cooks.
I don’t worry much about microbes when I’m cooking whole pieces of meat - they are basically on the outside and easy to kill off during cooking. I wouldn’t do the same thing with ground meat, though.
As for the OP squeezing the little absorbent pad: Not a big deal in my mind.
And especially for chicken, take the goddam tray and sany-tary pad out to the curb ASAP. Beef trays and pads aren’t too bad… but a chicken paddy thingy can turn your kitchen into a rank murder scene in a matter of hours.
True, but, in a hotter environment, it will heat up faster. So the total time is higher. Whether that affects the quality, I’ve never noticed. I’ve only noticed uneven heating in frozen foods. And, even then, I often won’t bother thawing them.
(Often because I know that, if we put the meat out to thaw, we may wind up eating something else, and then forget about it. Way too often has meat wound up spoiled because of this.)
That’s how we do it! I take garbage to work with me and dumpster it when the bag is full. I add any frozen smelly bits from the freezer as I’m heading out the door.
In our house, Leet the Wonder Dog[sup]TM[/sup] is always happy to assist in the clean up of any beef juices that come within range of his inquisitive snout. I sometimes squeeze out the little diaper thingie into his dog dish to add flavor to his dog food. He approves in the strongest possible terms.
Maybe I shouldn’t, but it doesn’t appear to have the slightest effect on his digestion, and when he spots me cooking he is generally sitting and looking adorable and starving just in case he can help get rid of scraps.
I will always rebag meat before freezing. If it goes into the fridge for a day or two, it goes onto a china plate and gets wrapped in a tea towel or ham bag.
In Brisbane one doesn’t leave meat out to get to room temperature. You get to throw a lot of meat out if you do.