How to Defrost Sausage

Co-authored by wikiHow Staff

You might feel unsure about defrosting sausages. Bacteria and other diseases love improperly defrosted meat. You can defrost your sausages using a fridge, a microwave, or a bowl of lukewarm water. The fridge is the easiest to use but takes the longest. The microwave is the fastest but you could burn the sausages using it. The bowl of lukewarm water is the most awkward method to use but there's no chance of burning the sausages when cooking them.

Method 1

Method 1 of 3:

Using a Refrigerator

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Test to make sure the temperature of the fridge is below 5 °C (41 °F). Temperatures higher than this allow bacteria the chance to grow and multiply. Use a thermometer to test the temperature if your fridge doesn't have an inbuilt thermometer.^{[1]
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- Place the thermometer in the fridge and leave the door closed for 5 minutes. Take the thermometer out after the 5 minutes are up and check the reading.
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Leave the sausages in their packaging. There's no need to remove the packaging for this step as it actually helps the sausages defrost faster and more evenly while in the fridge.^{[2]
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- If you already removed the packaging, you can wrap the sausages in plastic wrap before placing them in the fridge.
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Place the sausages on a plate at the bottom of your fridge. The plate will prevent your fridge from being soaked by the thawed ice on the sausages. Make sure that you place the sausages in an area of the fridge where they are isolated from ready-to-eat foods.^{[3]
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- If frozen pork comes into contact with other foods, you could get sick eating the other foods.
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Leave the sausages in the fridge until they feel soft to the touch. Once the sausages feel soft to the touch and you can't feel any ice or frost on them, they should be fully defrosted. The fridge is possibly the easiest method to use but is also the slowest. If you have a large batch of sausages, it could take up to 24 hours for the sausages to fully defrost.^{[4]
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- When the sausages are thawed, you can keep them in the fridge for 3 to 5 days before you cook them. If you do take the sausages out of the fridge before this time, cook them immediately.

Method 2

Method 2 of 3:

Using a Microwave

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Place the sausages on a microwave-safe plate. Leaving the wrapping on the sausages, place the batch of them on a microwave-safe plate. If you don't know if your plate is safe to use in a microwave or not, there are a few ways to tell:^{[5]
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- Some plates will have a label on their back which will specify whether or not they are safe to use in a microwave.
- A symbol of a dish with wavy lines above it indicates that the plate is safe for microwave use.
- A symbol of wavy lines also means that the plate is microwave-safe.
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Microwave the sausages using the defrost setting until you can separate them. If your microwave does not have a defrost setting, use the 50% power setting. Open the microwave after 3-4 minutes and check with a fork if you can separate the sausages from each other. ^{[6]
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- If the sausages are still stuck together, turn the microwave on again and check after another minute or so.
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Place the sausages in the microwave for 2-minute intervals. Once the sausages are defrosted enough to separate, place them back in the microwave and turn it on for 2 minutes. Leave a gap between the sausages on the plate to allow every part of the sausages to fully defrost. Check every 2 minutes until the sausages are fully thawed.^{[7]
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- Once the sausages have fully defrosted, cook them immediately to prevent bacteria from forming.

Method 3

Method 3 of 3:

Thawing in a Bowl of Water

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Remove the wrapping from the sausages and place them in a bowl. Sausages are sold with a protective wrapping which needs to be removed to defrost them with this method. Get a bowl large enough to fit all of the sausages you want to thaw and put the sausages in the bowl.^{[8]
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- If you don't have a big enough bowl to fit all of the sausages you want to defrost, use 2 different bowls.
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Fill the bowl with lukewarm water. Lukewarm water is usually around 110 °F (43 °C) in temperature. Use a thermometer to test the temperature of the water once the bowl is filled. Any temperature within 5 °F (−15 °C) of 110 °F (43 °C) should be okay.^{[9]
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Put the bowl in a sink below a dripping faucet. Slightly turn the faucet on to ensure a quick stream of dripping water. The water should be dripping and not flowing from the faucet. The water should feel cool to the touch. This helps to make sure that the water around the meat stays at a constant temperature.^{[10]
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- The dripping faucet also ensures that the water in the bowl is constantly moving. This prevents bacteria from growing while the sausages are thawing in the bowl.
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Keep the bowl under the faucet until the sausages have fully thawed. The time it takes for the sausages to thaw depends on the amount and size of the meat in the bowl. If you have 1 or 2 small sausages, they might be fully thawed in 25 minutes. If you have 6 or more large sausages, it might take an hour or more.^{[11]
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- Don't leave the bowl of meat under the tap for longer than 4 hours as bacteria will start to grow.
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Wash the bowl and your sink with bleach. Now that your sausages have fully thawed, you need to thoroughly clean the bowl and the sink. If you don't clean the bowl or the sink, bacteria or diseases like salmonella can thrive on these surfaces.

Warnings

Never defrost sausages or most other meat products at room temperature. Room temperature defrosting allows bacteria to thrive on the meat.

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