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Health Risks of slightly thawing frozen pizza before cooking
Elaro
ApologeticRegistered User regular
ApologeticRegistered User regular
Hi!
I just recently annoyed my housemates because I got alarmed about one of them leaving an unwrapped frozen pizza with meat toppings to thaw while the oven was preheating, despite its packaging clearly stating that it was important to not do that and to cook the pizza from frozen. I don't think it had been left out for more than 6-7 minutes. When I picked it up to put it in the oven, the edges of the crust had gotten soft enough to move around, but like, not more than half a centimeter (at most!) was soft.
Yes, the pizza was being prepared for all three of us.
I got alarmed because I had previously been informed, probably from some resource on the Internet, that leaving frozen pizzas with meat toppings out to thaw before cooking increased the risk of getting food poisoning. I'm having a difficult time finding anything official enough about frozen pizza, though. This is the pizza in question.
Now, are they being irresponsible, or am I overreacting? And if they are, do you have any resources I could share with them to convince them?
I just recently annoyed my housemates because I got alarmed about one of them leaving an unwrapped frozen pizza with meat toppings to thaw while the oven was preheating, despite its packaging clearly stating that it was important to not do that and to cook the pizza from frozen. I don't think it had been left out for more than 6-7 minutes. When I picked it up to put it in the oven, the edges of the crust had gotten soft enough to move around, but like, not more than half a centimeter (at most!) was soft.
Yes, the pizza was being prepared for all three of us.
I got alarmed because I had previously been informed, probably from some resource on the Internet, that leaving frozen pizzas with meat toppings out to thaw before cooking increased the risk of getting food poisoning. I'm having a difficult time finding anything official enough about frozen pizza, though. This is the pizza in question.
Now, are they being irresponsible, or am I overreacting? And if they are, do you have any resources I could share with them to convince them?
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Elaro on
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The instructions on the box are there to make cooking that kind of thing absolutely as brainless as possible; with that in mind they’re prepared to be cooked from frozen.
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The temperature on a pizza probably gets way above comfortable for bacteria as well. I don't think a fully frozen pizza would get to the "danger zone" unless left out for several hours.
6+ hours is danger zone though.
I've always had a firm rule that anyone who follows the instructions of placing the pizza directly on the rack is responsible for cleaning the god damned oven immediately after eating the pizza
The best pro tip is to have 2 racks, the top rack has the pizza, and the bottom rack under it has a cookie sheet.
If the oven isn't big enough for that they have holey oven sheets for pizza that are almost as good.
I found one of those under my oven when I moved it. It is delightful to have trash frozen pizza and not have to clean the ash out of the bottom of the oven.
Really though, you're facing bigger health risks just eating frozen pizza than you are thawing it out before you cook it.
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I’ve cooked a frozen one on a baking sheet with parchment paper before. Not directly in the rack.
Parchment should be fine. When you're up around 450 or more for awhile it will sometimes brown, but the only time I've really had issues with parchment burning in the oven is when using the broiler.
Food cooking instructions are validated so that they should kill incidental contaminants. THey validate them by spiking, say, a pizza with a pathogen like E. coli, following the instructions, and trying to recover it afterward. (This includes the "let it set for X minutes" which lets the heat have time kill microbes). If you can't recover the pathogens then the instructions are sufficient to sterilize incidental contaminants and so only the inputs are tested, since they're cheaper than final product.
So in sitting out the time it took your oven to warm up, maybe there are a few more bacteria, but you're not planning on eating it raw anyhow and cooking it per the package is going to kill them anyway.
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