would it be safe to leave a frozen chicken breast out for 10 hours to thaw while im at work?!


Question: Would it be safe to leave a frozen chicken breast out for 10 hours to thaw while im at work?
Answers:

It's unsafe to thaw meat in the danger zone of 40-140 deg. F. If you do this at a restaurant, you could be cited for a serious healthcode violation. At home, you could just send yourself to the hospital by ambulance, making that one very expensive experiment in foodborne microbiology.

The reason you don't do this, particularly for chicken, is that salmonella bacteria occassional makes it through the food chain to sit in your fridge. Given a nice temp between 40-140, bacteria can double every 20 minutes. Meat that contacts a surface at 80 deg can start that doubling process immediately, even though the rest is still frozen solid and thawing. In 10 hours, that's 30 opportunities for a single bacteria to double. 2 to the power of 29 (30-1), is a big number. A single bacteria can become 536,870,912 of them in 10 hours. You don't want to know how big that number can be if you start with chicken meat that came from a contaminated bird, as the number of zeros will fill this page, and you'll fill your digestive system with a such a huge amount of them that you might not survive. People do die from salmonellosis, you know. 1,500 people die each year from Salmonella, Listeria, and Toxoplasma. That's 30 per state, on average, more than 2 people a month. Is it your turn this month? All so that you can avoid learning how to thaw meat properly.



So long as you keep it covered it should be no problem - if anything, it's better than leaving it in a fridge - if your fridge is fairly full and set quite low, it may NOT thaw out fully! All this business about leaving a frozen chicken to that overnight in the fridge is looking for a still frozen chicken the next day - as I've found to my cost! Far better to leave it out to thaw at room temperature



Put it on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator and when you get home, put it in a bowl and run water over it. Twenty minutes or so under running water will have it ready to cook.

Use cold water! After the bowl is filled, you can turn the water down to a trickle.

Don't leave any frozen meat out the counter for that length of time.

Doc Hudson



It would be better to leave the chicken in the refrigerator to thaw, that is the best method. If you cannot wait that long, defrost it in the microwave.



if you let it thaw in the fridge it will be ok.after 10 hours it should just be chilled rather than frozen.

if you leave it at room tempreture it will go off.



if the weather is hot , it will b damaged ..... if the weather is fine , it will b good



Absolutely not.



Let it thaw in the fridge while you are at work................



Only in a cool place, but the fridge will be better.




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