Do I thaw frozen sea food before cooking?

Question

Do I need to keep prepared frozen sea food frozen before cooking? I purchased cod, shrimp, and scallops.

Answer 1

If this is just raw seafood, and not already prepared, heat and serve meals, keep frozen until use. Thaw (ideally in the refrigerator), then cook. If they are meals already prepared (with other ingredients), simply follow the package directions. Many of these items are cooked from frozen.

Answer 2

I thaw frozen seafood in a bowl of hot tap water.

Some frozen stuff like Lean Cuisines are meant to go freezer to microwave. I don't mean those. I mean bags of frozen fish or shrimp, cooked or uncooked.

If it is in plastic, I leave it in plastic. If it is not, I put it in a plastic bag. If there is enough frozen seafood to cool the water down, I put in more. I like the hot water because the fish thaws fast and will not get overcooked, and we always have hot water.

Thawing it in the refrigerator is theoretically a good idea except I either don't think of it the day before, or I do and it is still not thawed and it goes into the hot water anyway.

Cooked cocktail shrimp for stirfry are an exception. I think the ice in those bags of cooked cocktail shrimp have shrimp flavor and so the whole thing goes in after the stirfry is done, and the hot vegetables thaw the shrimp and the shrimp cools down the vegetables and I don't have to wait as long to eat.

Answer 3

Scientifically, cooking any frozen food directly should waste some of its value and change the taste and seafood is not an exception.

Reference:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_food#Quality

2. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5fa4/7b747878f686a658134760b7811b0e2172d1.pdf

3. http://www.adafsa.gov.ae/English/Awareness/topics/Pages/ThawingFrozenFood.aspx -Look at Cook it frozen method