It appears I have have a fridge that manages to create temperatures below absolute zero, it is the only explanation.
Saturday I go shopping, hehe what is this I see? Pork loin only $1.29 per pound, must be an early Easter loss leader. I grab one all ready planning my nice roast jerk pork dinner and a week of sweet jerk porky sammiches. I finish my shopping and go home.
ABout 3 hours later I go to prepare my pork for dinner. Curses! I absentmindedly put it in the freezer, Frozen like a block of granite. Well no roast pork for me on Saturday, I put it in the fridge to defrost for dinner sunday.
Sunday comes still rock hard, no pork goodness tonight. and no Sammich for Monday
Monday comes. Still rock hard at dinner time, have to go out for a burger, and nothing for tommorow.
Today, How the hell is it still that hard? Did it take 10000 Viagra? There is no deforsting whatsoever? Why will this damn thing not Thaw? my fridge is 38, like it is supposed to be.
The cryovac plastic will decompose back into a dinosaur before the meat defrosts. Alton Brown and his food dicta bedammed, tommorow I’m throwing in a sink full of hot water as soon as I get off work.
How is it possible for something that froze for three hours to still be frozen 4 days later? Did one of you bastards sneak ice-9 into the pork supply?
If I may suggest NOT throwing it in a sink of hot water…you will partially cook the outside, and you are going to be unhappy with your pork loin.
Instead, place it in a large bowl and run cold water over it, allowing it to spill out of the bowl. Depending on thickness, this will take 30 minutes to 1 hour to thaw it out, I would think. Don’t run the water full blast, but just let it dribble out slowly.
Or just fill the sink with cool/cold water. If you need it in a hurry, warm water is fine, assuming you are going to cook it right away. But yeah, don’t use hot water…
The effect of just a little bit of moving water moving through the pool that the loin is sitting in will rapidly reduce the defrost time. Just letting it sit in the water (even warm) won’t thaw it as fast.
Couldn’t you, I don’t know, just leave it out on the counter over night? It’s in plastic wrap presumably, so it should thaw out pretty much over night…then toss it back in the fridge and cook it when you get home that night.
That’s what I generally do with frozen steaks…I would think it would work with pork loin as well.
As I’ve posted before, put it on the counter and cover it with a couple of oven mitts. It’ll thaw out but still stay cold this way. The oven mitts are so efficient, it may very well be partially frozen by the end of the day.
You’re leavig a good portion of the meat in the “danger zone” where bacteria can grow and thrive when you do this. I’m not saying it will absolutely cause problems, but it’s a risk I’d rather not take.
You increase the chance of bacteria growing if you leave it out over night. I’ve always done it like that too, but you are increasing the chances of making yourself sick, particularly if it subsequently doesn’t get cooked properly.
Well…it’s in plastic, right? I guess I can see your point, all though you would probably be shocked as to how MY folks dealt with food when I was a kid…or how my grand parents did.
Ok…though it would only do that on the surface, yes? Which will be killed off when you cook the thing.
At any rate, it was just a suggestion. As I said, I do it all the time without, afaict, any ill effects. If you leave a frozen item in a refrigerator though it’s going to take a LONG ass time for it to de-thaw enough to use. If you put it under cold (presumably tap) water, I’d think that the same bacteria that is under there would still be under there (though perhaps it wouldn’t multiply as fast), since you are still de-thawing the thing.
Yeah, like I said, I do it myself, but mainly just when I’m cooking for me and my family, if I have visitors I try to be better prepared and defrost the meat in the fridge. I haven’t managed to food poison myself, but I’d feel a bit crap if I made someone else sick.
I’m not disagreeing with you guys. Myself, if the thing is essentially a block of ice when I go to bed then I’ve got my doubts that it will be a teaming swamp of bacteria in the morning when I get up to go to work…6 hours (which is about the max I generally sleep during my work week) just isn’t going to do that IMHO.
But agreed…it’s probably not as safe as running it under cold (or room temp) water until it thaws out and then cooking it from there.
No, we’re not re-freezing it, we’re defrosting it, or thawing it. “De-thawing” it would require putting it back in the freezer, which I would not recommend, it will do horrible things to your meat.
Using COLD running water works because it keeps the temp COLD (but above freezing) but water is a much better conductor of heat than air. So you are bringing it up to, say, 40 degrees, still outside of the danger zone, much more quickly than just exposing it to 40 degree air.
