Thawing ground turkey to be used for cooking? Have no worry, thawing ground meats, especially turkey, can be done through several options. First, you can transfer it from the freezer and put the meat in the fridge compartment. Second, soak the turkey meats in water. Then, you can also do it by defrosting it with a help of microwave. Choose one based on the equipment availability in your house, whichever method is fine.
Thawing turkey meat by transferring to the fridge compartment
For thawing ground turkey with this method, you can do these steps:
- Take out the frozen ground turkey from the freezer
- Prepare a container with its cover. Put the meat inside that container then cover it immediately.
- Prepare a place to put your container. Make sure to put it away from any fresh, open foods such as fruits and vegetables. Anyway, putting it inside the vegetable shelf isn’t recommended.
- It’s recommended not to put the container on the lower and back compartment of the fridge as the temperature here tends to be lower. Hence making it harder to defrost.
- To defrost through this method, it takes long time which is 12-24 hours.
If you need the meat real quick while the meat is still thawing, you can directly use it, though. But that’ll take longer time to cook. That can take 1.5 times longer to cook the meat.
Thawing turkey meat with a microwave
For thawing ground turkey in microwave, make sure you have a microwave-safe dish. Using microwave will make the defrosting process much quicker.
- Put the ground turkey in a microwave-safe dish. Never put the meat with its regular packaging because that may cause the packaging to melt and even ignite fire.
- Set the microwave to 50% power for around 2 minutes per lb. Add more time if the meat hasn’t defrosted yet. To start, you can add 1 more minute but do it after rotating the meat.
- Cook the meat right away after it gets thawed.
Thawing the ground turkey with cold water
To use this method, you’ll need to prepare a sealed plastic bag. You’ll also need a large container enough to wholly submerge the turkey bag.
- Take out the frozen turkey meat from the freezer.
- Put inside the plastic bag and make sure to seal it tightly. Any disclosure will allow bacteria and especially water to get through; hence making the meat goes bad.
- Place the bag in a large container/bowl. Then, fill the container with cold water. Then, just let the water do the rest. You can change the water every 30 minutes.
Those are several ways on how to defrost your frozen ground turkey. Before thawing it, make sure to check the meat condition first. Is it good enough to be cooked or not? Once you’re sure that the turkey meat is still good, you can opt one aforementioned method of thawing ground turkey.
