Can You Cook Chicken That Was Thawed To Room Temp?

You didn't mean to do it, but somehow the chicken you took out of the freezer for supper didn't get put into the refrigerator to thaw. Instead it thawed all the way to room temperature on the counter. It would be nice if you could salvage it, but chicken thawed to room temperature contains a very high risk of food borne pathogens. Don't risk it. Throw it out.

Time

Thawing poultry on the counter is a bad idea. Even the cleanest chicken will have harmful bacteria in it. As long as the chicken is frozen, the bacteria don't grow. In fact, the cold may actually kill off some of the bacteria. The moment the chicken is thawed, however, the bacteria begin to multiply. If you assume that bacteria reproduce once every 20 minutes, in seven hours, a single bacteria can produce 2,097,152 new bacteria. According to Alice Henneman at the University of Nebraska Extension, two hours is the maximum time you want perishable foods to be a room temperature.

Temperature

The problem, however, is not just the amount of time the chicken was left out of the refrigerator. The problem is the internal temperature of the chicken. According to O.P. Snyder of the Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management in St. Paul, Minnesota, Salmonella, one of the more dangerous of the harmful bacteria commonly found in chicken, begins to multiply at around 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Below that temperature, it is mostly dormant. Snyder admits that some researchers say it's OK to thaw poultry at room temperature. But these researchers say thaw only to 40 degrees. Thawing to room temperature is dangerous.

Freezing Thawed Meat

You should also not refreeze chicken thawed to room temperature. According to the the U.S. Department of Agriculture "Basics for Handling Food Safely" Fact Sheet, if you thaw the chicken in the refrigerator, you can refreeze it later if you change your mind about when you want to use it. The quality of the chicken will be a little lower after the refreezing because the chicken loses moisture each time it thaws. It will, however, still be safe. If you've thawed the chicken to room temperature, however, refreezing it is not going to kill off the bacteria that have bred inside it.

Cooking Temperatures

While it is true that cooking the chicken will kill off much of the bacteria, it will not make the chicken safe. Staphylococcus aureus produces a heat-resistant toxin. Normal cooking temperatures won't destroy this toxin. Clostridium perfringens, if left to grow at room temperatures, produces spores that aren't destroyed at normal cooking temperatures. In other words, even if you cook the chicken thoroughly, and even if you kill off every bacteria in it, you could still get sick from the byproducts the bacteria produced when they were still alive.