I’ve heard that warm water fosters bacterial growth or something but wouldn’t that take much longer to get to a harmful level than it takes to thaw?
In: Biology
This is mainly to prevent accidents that have occurred in the past. Short answer, if you ensure your cooked chicken is properly cooked using a thermometer on the coldest region of the meat, you will not have an issue other than potentially unevenly cooked meat…The issue with thawing chicken this way is mainly that you will end up with a false positive, thinking your chicken is cooked properly based on the recipe you followed but the inside of the chicken is actually undercooked and has salmonella.
Source: this topic is addressed considerably when you cook Sous Vide. A lot of the visual indicators of conventional cooking (making sure there is only clear color from chicken) are different with sous vide method, so the apps talk to you about this stuff so you aren’t blaming the cooking process instead of the improperly prepared ingredients.
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The problem is that warm water will thaw the outside of the chicken much faster than the inside of the chicken. So bacteria on the outside of the chicken will have a lot of time to “wake up” and start multiplying before you cook the chicken.
You want to keep the temperature out of the “danger zone” which is 40-140. Bacteria grows best in that range, so it’s best to not use warm water.
Mega red pill: Honestly there’s not a huge threat of bacteria growing before the chicken is thawed and this is just a “better safe than sued” thing that is reserved for actual professional food industry. At home the real reason is just that warm or hot water can actually start to cook the outside of the chicken.
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