Thawing in the microwave

[Canice]

Usually I keep just icecubes, butter, chicken stock and nuts in my freezer; anything meant to be a "meal" rarely works out. Such as the chicken and rice casserole I took out at about 2:00 this morning, hoping to pop in the oven for tonight's dinner - it's still hard as a brick and I have it (gasp!) now on the counter to thaw. Getting nowhere. If, in a few hours, it's still like a slab of granite, can I put it in the micro on "auto defrost"? Will it mess up the consistency? Any advice appreciated!

[tulip255]

I too never have good luck with timing things to thaw in the refrigerator. I guess I just keep my fridge pretty cold. I have never done this, but what if you put it in microwave now to defrost the casserole. Leave it in there long enough to get it started quite a bit and then leave it on the counter or in fridge to finish defrosting. If it is close to defrosted when you are ready to start dubberm you can just put it in the oven to cook for a little longer cooking time.

[Grace]

I defrost almost everything in the microwave with great results. The trick is to use really low settings (I don't use auto-defrost - my unit has it, but I find it's STILL too high of a setting). Depending on what I was thawing, I generally start out with 3 or 4 minutes on power level 3 (out of 10 - 10 is the highest). Then I might do another 2 or 3 minutes on power 3 if it was still hard as a brick. Then I switch to 3 minutes or so on power level 2, and keep doing 3 minute increments on level 2 until it's almost there. Then I might do a few minutes at level 1 if I need to, but usually you can put a very slightly frozen anything into the oven and still get a great end result - just add 5 or 10 minutes to the baking time.

By defrosting very, very slowly (using the really low power levels), you won't get any change in consistency. Your casserole won't start to cook at all, even around the edges.

It's a slight pain to stand there and keep checking it, and re-setting the micro every two or three minutes, but you might spend 10 or 15 minutes total to get the job done and it's better than waiting for hours and hours for it to defrost by itself.

[Canice]

Wow, Grace, that's some response! Thank you so much! As you can see, I use my microwave about as much as I use my freezer ;) . I'll check in on the casserole in a couple of hours and then apply your technique as needed. Thanks again.