I bought this yesterday at an estate sale. How does this tray defrost meat in minutes instead of hours.
In: Chemistry
evThe simplest explanation is that they’re made of metal, and that’s pretty much 80% of the “miracle”.
Metal is a very good conductor.
When you place your frozen food on the defrosting tray, the metal acts like a “heatsink” for the cold food, quickly cooling itself from the frozen item on it. At the same time, the tray quickly absorbs heat from the air around it.
Basically, it makes the process of equalizing the temperature very quick, because metals are good conductors of heat.
The remaining 20% of the miracle is how the tray is actually designed. [A tray like this is actually a very good design.](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJBTP7GG?content-id=amzn1.sym.386c274b-4bfe-4421-9052-a1a56db557ab&s=kitchen&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWxfdGhlbWF0aWM&th=1) It’s literally designed like a heatsink. The fins at the bottom allow the tray to have much more surface area, and more surface area exposed to the warmer air around it allows it to equalize temperature much, much faster – just like real heatsinks.
You can make your own “miracle thawing tray” by simply putting your frozen items on a cookie sheet, and then putting that cookie sheet on top of a cooling rack. The metal cookie sheet does most of the thawing job, and putting the cookie sheet on top of the cooling rack simply elevates the bottom of the cookie sheet so it is exposed to air instead of a non-conductive table surface, ensuring the cookie sheet does its job optimally.
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