Thawing Food in the Microwave

Sue Snider: I am Sue Snider, University of Delaware, department of Animal and Food Sciences. We are talking about microwaving of foods. Today, I want to talk about defrosting of foods. There are three safe ways to defrost foods. The first of these is in the refrigerator, the second is under cold running water and the third way is by in the microwave.

In microwaving and defrosting what you need to do is to make sure you remove the packaging before defrosting. The package can melt the starch from the milk and you can transfer harmful chemicals into the food. So take it out of the package, put it on something like this plate and put it into the microwave oven. Now, most microwave ovens today have a defrost cycle. We have a defrost cycle here where you can see the power, if yours dont and you do have power levels, you can defrost at 50% power and come out with a good product. Now when you are defrosting and you get the product defrosted, you want to cook it immediately. One of the things happens is that the exterior of the product may actually start to cook and it keeps up and is in what we call the 'Danger Zone.

' That danger zone is a temperature from about 40 degrees to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, this is where bacteria will grow very rapidly. We want to make sure that, that doesnt happen when we are preparing food. So defrosting the microwave you can then continue cooking in the microwave or you can take the food for example, out to your grill and grill the product. You just dont want to either let it sit at room temperature or even put it back in the refrigerator.

We have talked about safe microwaving to defrost foods. Its a very efficient way of defrosting the product. Next we are going to talk about explosions that can occur in your microwave.