Can You Cook Frozen Chicken On The Grill?

Oops, you did it again. Yesterday you had hopes of grilling chicken in the sunshine, only to realize today that you forgot to pull the meat from the freezer. Thinking your weekend plans have been thwarted by your own forgetful hand, you wonder if you could get away with grilling the chicken from frozen. And you can, but it's not ideal.

If you don't want to adjust your dinner strategy, preheat your grill to a temperature that is 20% lower than you normally do. This is so the outside won't cook faster than the inside can thaw. Though you don't want to wash chicken before cooking it, in this case it's a good idea to run a paper towel over it to remove any frost.  Make sure your grill is clean, avoid placing the poultry over direct heat, and count on cooking the chicken for 50% longer than usual – meaning if it generally takes 30 minutes for your fowl to come out just right, you'll need 45 minutes if it is ice-cold. However, you should consider grilling frozen chicken as a last resort. Aside from safety issues, your bird might have an unappealing texture if you cook it in this state.

Grilling frozen chicken isn't recommended, primarily because it can be hard to cook the bird without burning or drying out the outside, though slathering on sauce is one way to mitigate this. Poultry of all varieties needs to have an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit before it can be enjoyed, otherwise, everyone who eats it could be at risk of contracting salmonella poisoning. You can get by with a cake tester to clue you into the temperature of a steak, but this isn't something you should attempt when grilling frozen poultry. In this case, it's vital to use a quality meat thermometer to assess the temperature inside for safety purposes.

Another reason grilling ice-cold chicken is problematic is when you cook it from frozen, it thaws quickly, which causes the meat to release a substantial amount of moisture that can give the fowl a rubbery texture. You'll also have to be more careful with parts of the cut that are thinner than the rest, which will dry out fast if they sit over the flames for long. It's really best to avoid the headache of fretting over frozen meat on the grill by thawing it beforehand.

Before you run off toward the microwave with your frozen chicken, understand that defrosting poultry this way will dry out the outside before the inside has a chance to thaw completely. It also keeps the bird in the "danger zone" — 40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit – for an extended period of time, increasing the chances of bacterial contamination. For a quick, safe thaw, you'll want to place the meat in a bag and submerge it in a bowl of cold water. This keeps the protein safely below 40 degrees while allowing the bird to defrost. If you let the faucet drip cold water into the bowl, it should remain cold, and your chicken should be thawed somewhere between one and three hours, depending on the size of the bag.

However, if you want to use the safest method to unfreeze your chicken, you know where to look. The fridge is ideal for defrosting meat as it remains cold during the entire thaw, but it also takes longer than some other methods. The defrosting time hinges on the on size, but you can safely assume it will take somewhere between one and two days. It's okay, we've all been there. Just take the loss, pull the chicken into the refrigerator, and move your Saturday grill session to Sunday. You'll be glad you did when you taste the end product.