It's Burn's Night and I want to cook some Haggis. I froze my Haggis over a week ago. The packet advises to 'fully defrost before cooking'. After which it advises a 90 minute blast in the oven (or less so in microwave, but I would much prever oven).
It's 7p.m. here and I would love to eat my haggis tonight, is this feasible? How should I defrost it? Can I (as I'm tempted to) just stick it in the oven and let it cook through?
You 'can' cook it from frozen, knowing that a few things will suffer. First, the outside will be somewhat dried out and over-cooked before it is done in the center, depending on how hot the oven is and the cooking time. That being said, if your Haggis is pre-cooked, it should be OK.
You can also 'Hurry up ' the defrosting process by putting it under running water. This can affect texture, depending on what you are defrosting.
Finally, you can speed-defrost something by using warm running water, but this carries SOME SERIOUS RISK if you don't cook it right away. The bacteria will love the warmth and will start to multiply, but I have done this many times when I knew I was using a meat immediately.
