0

I was watching a video of Kitchen Nightmares where Gordon found the cooks defrosting chicken in a plastic bag in/on their steam table. He goes on to say that frozen food needs to be defrosted naturally, and that their method is a potentially lethal mistake.

I do not understand how a steam table can be used like; my best guess is that it was a metal tub full of water that they placed the bag into to defrost from the hot steam. Although I don't think that it's a good idea to apply heat to any kind of food while it's in a plastic bag, especially one that was never intended for this particular use case.

However, it makes sense to me that applying a gentle heat like that found in warm water (heated by the steam table) would be one way to defrost frozen chicken quicker. Whether or not this is a good idea from a taste perspective is another matter. But what I don't understand is why Gordon says that this is lethal. At what point between frozen, rapid thawing, and cooking, does the meat become dangerous to serve? This does not seem to be long enough for bacteria to take hold and to become a problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVwKhANb3Ds&t=1137s

enter image description here

Zhro
  • 245
  • 2
  • 5

2 Answers2

6

According to the USDA, this is considered unsafe:

Perishable foods should never be thawed on the counter, or in hot water and must not be left at room temperature for more than two hours.

It’s not immediately clear how long the raw chicken was sitting there defrosting, but the guidance does not recommend that method at all. For water thawing, cold water is an allowed method, however.

fyrepenguin
  • 766
  • 1
  • 4
  • 13
0

Gordon Ramsay makes TV shows to entertain a mass audience - largely at the expense of the other people on his shows - not to actually educate people about the culinary arts. That is the most important thing to take away here. Anything and everything you see on his shows has to be taken with a very very large pinch of kosher salt.

That said at least one legitimate concern I can see here is that the chicken would thaw quite unevenly and parts would be potentially be at an unsafe temperatures - i.e. the "danger zone" - for too long. But this would depend on how long the chicken was left on the steam table between being fully frozen and cooked. If less than an hour I don't see how spoilage would occur. All afternoon would be a different story. Maybe Gordon knew something we don't but the video is not clear on this.

Nonetheless, you can thaw, partially thaw, or even completely cook chicken safely with a water bath as long as no part of the meat is lukewarm for more than an hour or so. Sous vide works great here because sous vide is vacuum sealed and the bag is fully immersed in warm water which is well regulated. The meat never touches the dirty water and the cooking is very even and, especially with chicken, reaches the desired temperature fairly quickly.

The chef in the video appears to have been trying to do a poor man's version of this, and that can certainly be risky if done negligently.

Peter Moore
  • 737
  • 3
  • 14