How to Defrost Meat

Featured Pro: Curtis Stone
Category: Cooking
Time: 1:39


CURTIS STONE: Hey, I’m Curtis Stone, and my next GMC Trade Secret won’t leave you out in the cold. It’s all about defrosting food correctly.

Now, there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. So come over here to my freezer. What I’ve got in here is some frozen raw shrimp. Now, shrimp’s actually better to buy frozen than it is to buy fresh, because when the boats go out, most of the shrimp boats catch the shrimp and then they freeze them on board.

What’s the best way to do it is to buy it still frozen, and you can decide when you defrost it, as opposed to letting a market or a grocery store decide when they defrost it, and then you’ve got no control over it.

Now, the best way to defrost something, whether it’s a piece of chicken or some shrimp or whatever it is, is to get yourself a rack, okay, something that juice can run through and then be caught in the bottom of this tray. So I’m going to just pour my shrimp out. That way, once the shrimp defrosts, it won’t be sitting in a whole pile of juice. It’ll be just sitting up there, allowing it to defrost naturally. If you haven’t got a rack and a tray – you know, everybody’s got one of these old steamers, right. You can put that in a bowl, exactly the same.

The only other important thing to do is to cover it in cling film and then leave it in the fridge. Now, the reason you leave it in the fridge is because that’s a safe temperature for this to be kept at. If you leave it out, you never know the temperature of your room, of your kitchen. You don’t want to put it into water. You don’t want to put it into the microwave. You just want to stick it straight back here into the fridge and let it defrost.

Now, it’ll take about a day. If it’s a big piece of meat or something like that, it might even take two. So give yourself plenty of time.

I’m Curtis Stone, and that’s your GMC Trade Secret.