The Best Oven Temperature To Cook Frozen Chicken

We've all been there: Whether you're minutes out the door, halfway through your errands, or just stepping back in, the dreadful feeling of realizing you forgot to thaw the chicken hits us all the same. The regret is typically followed by scrambling for last-minute dinner ideas, but there's no need to switch up your plans because of a little ice — you just need to know how to properly bake frozen chicken.

Thawing chicken can be an all-day process, tempting you to blast the heat in order to quickly rid it of its frozen state. However, cooking the chicken at unnecessarily high temperatures leads to a cooked exterior and icy center, or poultry that's dried out and overcooked. Rather than trying to compensate for its frozenness, just bake it as normal. The temperature you usually cook a cut of chicken at, or perhaps a few degrees lower, is what you should stick to when baking it from frozen.

You want it to heat as evenly as possible, ensuring that the poultry reaches 165 degrees Fahrenheit without any icy spots or dehydrated patches. If your marinated baked chicken is heated at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, or your chicken breast typically cooks at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, there is no need to mess with those numbers. While you may want to slightly decrease the temperature since the chicken will bake longer, make sure not to go lower than 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Although the temperature at which you bake the chicken may not change, you'll need to increase the cooking time to ensure it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees. The USDA says that frozen poultry takes about one and a half times more than its typical baking time to be fully cooked, so multiply that figure by 1.5 to get your answer. If you usually bake chicken drumsticks for 30 minutes, increase the time to 45 minutes. Meanwhile, an entire chicken may take an hour and a half to cook from frozen, as opposed to the usual hour.

The USDA's guideline is a good rule of thumb, but remember that larger cuts may require a little more than a 150% increase in cooking time since it'll take longer for the heat to penetrate the flesh. The makeup of the chicken may also determine how long it takes, as shown by the timing difference when cooking bone-in chicken thighs vs. boneless chicken. The bones keep the center of the chicken colder for longer, so you may need to tack on a few extra minutes with bone-in poultry.

In addition to increasing its cooking time, make sure your poultry doesn't dry out due to the lengthier process. Coating frozen chicken with fat, like butter or a yogurt marinade, helps to keep it juicy as it transitions from one extreme temperature to the next.