Frozen cooking

When cooking a frozen meat, can the meat in its sealed bag be put into the water container at the very beginning of the cooking process? The Anova timer will not begin counting down until the water reaches target temperature, and the frozen meat will lengthen the time that it takes to reach that count-down point.

Ok, yes, in at the beginning won’t harm your meat. I don’t use the Anova app, so i can’t confirm the starting time control.

Of course the frozen meat will add to the preheat time. It’s like adding a block of ice. Don’t overlook frozen meat also adds to the total cook time and i don’t know if the app’s control can be adjusted for frozen meat.

As an example, a 1 1/2-inch thick frozen piece of meat requires 3 hours to reach temperature equilibrium with the water bath.

The same piece of completely thawed meat requires 2 hours to reach temperature equilibrium.

Many cooks do not realize it takes many times the amount of energy required to thaw meat than to raise its temperature by 1 degree once thawed.

Hello. I just joined the community; & I was looking for this very same topic! I just seasoned & vacuum sealed ten pork chops. They are now frozen, two chops per bag. Would it be advisable, to thaw the chops first, & then put them in the water bath for cooking? This will be my very first attempt at sous vide cooking. I’d hate to ruin those lovely pork chops! Thanks for recommending any advice.

No need to thaw first. Just add time to your planned cook to take into account that they are frozen. Amount of time varies primarily depending on thickness. I think general rule of thumb is to at minimum add 50% to the planned cook time that you would normally use to reach the point of “safely cooked”.

@chatnoir has previously made some posts with some excellent detail on the subject. You might try searching some of the older conversations in this forum.

Good luck!

Hi, I’m new to this business, so I was also interested to learn about it, thank you for your answers. I used to have a lot of work and little time to cook, so I had lunch at a cafe or at my parents ’ house, but then everything changed and now I have a lot of free time, so I decided to learn how to cook. Because there’s nothing like home-cooked food. I also learned that I can freeze cooked meals so that I don’t have to cook every day. And I found a blog https://freezeit.co.uk where you can find information about whether you can freeze different products or not. If you know anything about this, please share your experience.