When the hostess does not have time to prepare food, semi-finished products come to the rescue. Of course, if they are bought in a store, they contain almost nothing useful, but made with your own hands, they can be useful in some cases. Many people wonder how to fry frozen patties so that they are hot inside. You can, of course, cook them in the oven, then they will bake evenly and delight the household with their taste. But sometimes you want to taste fried homemade cutlets, therefore, in order not to spoil the frozen product, it is recommended to adhere to some rules for preparing semi-finished products.
Fried cutlets
Before in the pan, you need to choose the right semi-finished product. It is recommended to pay special attention to the composition of the product, which is indicated on the packaging. You cannot defrost semi-finished products before frying, as their taste will only worsen. No additional components, salt or spices are added to the product. All this is already in the frozen product. Usually, frozen pieces are fried in a skillet, putting it on low heat. Refined vegetable oil is poured into a frying pan, in extreme cases, they are added.The products are fried under a closed lid for up to ten minutes on both sides, the readiness of the dish is checked with a fork, the product is pierced with it, if the liquid begins to flow out, then it is ready. If nothing happens, continue to fry for another two minutes on each side. So that the semi-finished products do not burn, before frying the frozen cutlets, the vegetable oil must be well warmed up. A good option would be to choose breaded foods.
Algorithm of actions
To fry cutlets in a frying pan, you need to get the product out of the freezer in advance so that it melts. Sunflower oil is heated in a frying pan, the semi-finished products are rolled in flour or breadcrumbs and put into the pan, first in its central part, and then moved to the edge. When one side is well fried, the product is turned over to the other side with a spatula and fried in the same way. If you know, then you can end up with a juicy ruddy product that is not overdried. The dish is served with sauces, vegetables and salads.
Oven-baked cutlets
A hot dish in the form of cutlets with cheese can be considered good. Before, it is necessary to warm up the oil well. They are prepared as described above. Then the blanks are laid out in a mold, a plate of hard cheese and a piece of tomato are placed on each product. The form is sent to the oven and baked until tender. Serve cutlets with sauce of tomatoes, herbs and garlic.
Homemade cutlets in tomato
Ingredients:
1 onion;
2 cloves of garlic;
Vegetable oil;
4 tomatoes;
1 carrot;
Half a tablespoon of basil;
Frozen homemade cutlets.
Preparation
Every hostess should know. For this, homemade preparations are used. First, the cutlets are fried on both sides for five minutes each in the above way. Chopped onions and garlic, grated carrots are fried separately in a frying pan. Then the tomatoes are doused with boiling water, peeled and finely chopped. Add the tomato mass to vegetables, salt and put basil, pepper and other spices to taste. Stew the sauce for a few minutes. Then the prepared cutlets are laid out on a mold and poured over with tomato, covered with a lid and placed in the oven for thirty minutes. The dish is served hot, pre-poured with tomato sauce.
Cutlets with sour cream and mushrooms
Ingredients:
1 onion;
200 grams of champignons;
5 cutlets frozen;
1 glass of fatty sour cream;
Salt and spices.
Preparation
Before, you need to warm up a large amount of oil well. Then the products are fried, and how to do this is described above. Then, in a separate bowl, chopped onions, mushrooms cut into plates are fried, cutlets are added and poured with a mixture of sour cream, salt and seasonings to taste. Cover the skillet with a lid and stew the dish for about fifteen minutes. These cutlets are served with pasta or boiled rice.
How much to fry cutlets from different meats
Depending on what kind of meat was used to prepare semi-finished products, it takes a different amount of time to fry the cutlets. For example, turkey products are fried for about four minutes on each side without a lid. Chicken cutlets are cooked for about twelve minutes, closing the pan with a lid at the end of frying. Products from pork meat are fried for up to twenty minutes, fifteen of which they should languish under a closed lid. Fry the beef cutlets for eight minutes.
Thus, it is better to use frozen semi-finished homemade foods for cooking, since recently manufacturers have been producing a large number of low-quality products. If you still have to purchase frozen cutlets in a store, you need to pay attention to their composition and shelf life.
With modern technologies, even a hostess who is in constant time trouble will be able to freeze raw, meatballs or dumplings for at least a week and every day diversify the family menu with freshly prepared dishes.
The taste of the product, subject to the conditions of manufacture and storage, does not change.
Frozen cutlets are especially good. If for dumplings, pancakes or dumplings we have to cook both the dough and the filling, in this case everything is simple: we sculpt blanks from the minced meat, and then send them to the freezer until they are needed.
How to freeze homemade patties
You can cook semi-finished products from meat, poultry, fish or vegetables (vegetarian option).
The principles of freezing are the same everywhere. Let's consider them on the example of meat cutlets. 
We make minced meat from the products we are used to. Since semi-finished products can become dry after freezing, some housewives try to take two types of meat for them: one is fatter - pork or lamb, the second is less high-calorie, most often beef.
Fish cakes are flavored with twisted bacon.
Raw onions and garlic added to minced meat may lose some of their flavor when stored in the freezer. It is recommended to pre-fry them slightly and then add them to our semi-finished product. In addition, cutlets with cheese onions are stored less than without it.
Minced meat should be immediately salted and spices added.
The next step will ensure the integrity of our piece when frying. To prevent the cutlets from falling apart in the pan, the minced meat must be thoroughly kneaded and beaten off. Then the structure of the meat mass will be homogeneous, and the output will be a juicy, soft and fluffy product.
We shape our cutlets. It is advisable to throw them from palm to palm several times - a kind of "mini-beating" or hit the board several times. 
Although each housewife has her own idea of \u200b\u200bthe ideal cutlets, we recall that it is undesirable to sculpt large products. They can disintegrate when turned over in a pan. Cutlets that are too tall will stay moist in the middle, and thin cutlets will dry out and harden. The optimum thickness of the semi-finished product is 2 cm.
The taste of the product changes slightly, but this is not a particular problem. If you want the feeling that our products are "hot, hot", it is best not just to heat them up, but to stew them in some rich sauce.
It is easy to freeze ready-made cutlets: after complete cooling, we place the result of culinary creativity in a food container (it can crumble in a bag) and send it for storage.
How to properly fry frozen patties
Both homemade and commercial convenience foods are prepared in the same way. However, factory-made products must also be chosen correctly. We advise you to pay attention to the following points:
- Integrity of packaging... A torn box or polyethylene may indicate a violation of the product storage conditions. It is best to buy products in a transparent vacuum package - they retain their taste and aroma, and, moreover, are clearly visible.
- Shake the cutlets in the box. If they knock, it means that they have not defrosted or stuck to the cardboard.
- Long list of ingredients indicates poor product quality: the content of preservatives, dyes, flavors, trans fats and other "harmful substances" that are absolutely unnecessary for our body.
- It is necessary to pay attention to the sequence of listing the components. In minced meat cutlets, beef (poultry) comes first, then pork or lard. Water should be in the last place, or even better, that it should be absent altogether. The proportion of meat in the product varies from 80% to 20%. It is clear that the less in the composition of vegetable proteins, the better the quality of the semi-finished products.
- Trans fats are listed as "hydrogenated oils" in the ingredient list.
A large amount of bright, aromatic spices most likely indicates an attempt to disguise a stale product. - If minced meat is visible through the breading, the cutlets will turn out to be dry and harsh.
- Appearance... The cutlets should have the correct shape and a pleasant creamy or golden hue (depending on the breading). Gray color indicates re-freezing, cracks - an excess of water and moisture-retaining "chemistry".
note
GOST or TU? We already know that quality products are made only in accordance with government regulations. But manufacturers often go for a trick: they indicate on the packaging of goods produced according to technical conditions (and they can be absolutely arbitrary) the GOST number, which they are supposedly guided by. Don't fall into this trap. The “TU” marking clearly indicates that it is far from clear product quality standards.
Weighed semi-finished products have a number of disadvantages: the date of their production, composition and production conditions are unknown. The main plus is the low cost. If you have to save money, you need to buy goods only from trusted brands.
Do I need to defrost semi-finished products
Most chefs agree that it is better not to do this. After defrosting cutlets easily lose their shape, "float", their taste worsens.
However, the question remains whether the meat will have time to cook if the semi-finished products are fried, for example, in a pan or in a microwave. With such concerns, you can defrost the cutlets in the same microwave for about 5 minutes at 600 watts. Or take it out of the freezer in advance and hold it in the fridge for a while, so that it "moves away" a little.
But there are culinary tricks that allow you to bring the product to full readiness without such manipulations. We will talk about them below.
How to fry frozen patties in a pan
We heat the oil until a slight haze appears. You need to choose fat in accordance with the composition of the cutlets:
- baked lard is suitable for products that contain pork or lamb;
- it is better to fry fish cakes in refined sunflower or olive oil;
- the same product is also suitable for poultry;
- the exception is Kiev cutlets, for which they take only butter.
We spread our semi-finished products without defrosting, and fry for 8 to 10 minutes on each side until a golden crust appears. 
Attention!
The bottom of the pan should be thick or Teflon coated to prevent the food from burning. You don't need to salt and sprinkle!
Do not forget about the splashes that will provoke the liquid from the cutlets getting into the oil. Therefore, if we are not striving by all means to get a crisp, it is better to immediately cover the pan with a lid.
You can do this after a quick frying over medium heat, reducing it to a minimum. So we will already stew the cutlets so that the middle does not remain damp, which is dangerous, especially when we are dealing with store products.
On a note
How much exactly to fry the product in a pan depends on the minced meat chosen. The longest time - up to 20 minutes, pork products are cooked. Poultry and fish are twice as fast (10 - 12 minutes).
A clear juice is released from finished meat products. 
When stewing, you can add a little water, spices, fried onions, tomato paste or sour cream to the pan. You will get a great sauce that will improve the taste of cutlets, first of all, purchased ones.
Cooking frozen cutlets in the oven
Semi-finished products can be baked - you get an excellent dietary dish. 
There are two ways:
No roasting
- Put the cutlets, without defrosting, in a greased refractory mold.
- Let's preheat the oven to 200 ° C and send our semi-finished product there.
- It is advisable to cover the product with foil - this way it will bake better and hold for 15 minutes, and then the same amount without it.
Alternatively, you can use a culinary sleeve.
Browning in a pan
- We fry frozen semi-finished products in hot oil for literally 3-5 minutes.
- Transfer to a baking sheet or in a mold, fill with sauce and bake in a preheated oven for 20 - 30 minutes.
Diet steamer recipe
The owners of a wonderful device for steaming, all that remains is to put the frozen cutlets on the wire rack and cook for 30 minutes. If the meat remains pinkish inside, you need to wait another quarter of an hour. 
Quick cooking of cutlets in the microwave
This option is only suitable for devices equipped with a grill. 
- We defrost semi-finished products using the appropriate function.
- After that, cook them for 7 minutes in a combined mode: "waves" plus grill.
- Turn over, grease with sour cream. Then let sit only on the grill for 3 minutes to get a crispy crust.
- You can sprinkle cheese on the dish and turn on the same mode for another 5 minutes.
Ready frozen cutlets must be folded into a glass microwave container, covered and heated for 14 minutes at 650 watts. Then turn off the appliance and let the food stand for 2-3 minutes.
There are enough ways to prepare frozen semi-finished products for each housewife to choose the most suitable option for herself. It is only advisable to make cutlets with your own hands, and not rely on factory manufacturers. 
I have been making homemade semi-finished products for a long time - at any moment I took them out of the freezer and prepared a quick dinner. Homemade semi-finished products, of course, are better than store products, the choice of which is now wide, but you don't know what was put there.
For example, I cook home-style minced meat - classic.
Soak the loaf for a short time in milk or water. We turn beef, pork and lard in a meat grinder, I do it on my favorite combine. Scroll the soaked bun in the same place.
✓ A very interesting taste of cutlets is obtained by adding equal parts of a white roll and Borodino bread.
We chop the onion very, very finely with a sharp knife, I do not scroll it in the combine. It tastes better that way.
Add salt and pepper,. Mix thoroughly. If the minced meat is thick, add a little milk or water to it. Here, the main thing is to tightly form the cutlets, as if tamping them with your palms. Then the cutlet will not fall apart without it. And eggs give the cutlet firmness.
✓ There are various tricks to make the cutlets juicier, someone puts a small piece of butter inside the cutlet, some put a piece of frozen ice. Experiment, don't be afraid. You can add various to cutlets for juiciness - cabbage. For example, minced meat cutlets with zucchini, a recipe, turn out to be unusually juicy and tasty.
Roll the cutlets, as you like, in flour or breadcrumbs. Various breading options are possible, read. Fry in a frying pan over low heat for about 30 minutes, first under the lid, and when we turn the lid to the other side, remove the lid.
The recipe for homemade semi-finished cutlets
We take a larger cutting board, put a plastic bag on it, sprinkle it lightly with flour, and carefully place the formed cutlets.
We put it in the freezer. After a day (or earlier), when the cutlets are thoroughly frozen, we transfer the cutlets to a bag or box to free the cutting board.
Now you always have in your freezer semi-finished products of excellent homemade minced meat cutlets. You can get as much as you need and fry quickly. You can also separate some minced meat and make meatballs for soup and freeze, you can make dumplings and dumplings. You can also make meat hedgehogs with rice in advance.
For frying, cutlets do not need to be defrosted. Preheat the frying pan, pour in the vegetable oil and lay out the frozen cutlets. Cover and fry over low heat for 30-40 minutes. Don't forget to turn the patties. The lid can be opened shortly before the end of frying.
Here is a classic recipe for minced meat cutlets at home will help you stock up on semi-finished products in the freezer.
And you can prepare tzatziki sauce for cutlets.
Ingredients:
- beef 350 g
- pork 350 g
- unsalted pork lard 100 g
- large onion 1 pc.
- loaf 4 slices
- milk or water ½ cup for soaking the loaf
- salt, pepper to taste, seasonings
Minced meat and zucchini cutlets. Economically. How to make semi-finished home videos
Frozen burgers in the oven are a quick and tasty meal for the whole family. In order for them to be tasty, it is advisable to cook any semi-finished meat products yourself. But even tasteless store-bought meatballs or chops can be made juicy and flavorful if properly baked and supplemented with other ingredients. The main thing is that it is very simple to prepare such a dish; any housewife can cope with this task. And husbands can surprise their wives on March 8 by preparing a wonderful lunch of semi-finished products.
Pros and cons of frozen convenience foods
Frozen semi-finished meat products are of two types: industrial production and do-it-yourself. Among the semi-finished products of industrial production in domestic supermarkets, the following are most often sold:
- Cutlets are oval products made from minced meat or poultry.
- Zrazy - the same oval minced meat products, but with a filling inside. Mushrooms, cheese or ham are usually used as the filling.
- Meatballs are small round balls of minced meat, which are usually used to fill soups, borscht, cabbage soup.
- Meatballs are small round cutlets that are very popular in baby and diet food.
The main advantage of such frozen products is that it is very simple to prepare them. It is enough to place semi-finished meat products, without defrosting, in a preheated oven or in a cast-iron pan with hot vegetable oil. You can also use a multicooker, double boiler, pressure cooker, or airfryer for these purposes.
But such products have and pronounced cons... First, commercially produced frozen meat products are often made from “tasting” meat of poor quality. Secondly, no one can give the buyer a guarantee that during the time in the store the product has not been defrosted or re-frozen.
During defrosting and re-freezing, pathogenic bacteria rapidly multiply in the meat, contributing to the rapid deterioration of the product. And finally, thirdly, the composition of such semi-finished products often includes a variety of food additives containing aggressive chemicals: flavoring agents, flavor enhancers, stabilizers.
In this regard, more and more housewives are making a choice in favor of homemade cutlets, cooked and frozen on their own. It is best to freeze in a special freezer.
You need to cook such semi-finished products yourself from chilled high quality minced meat or fresh chilled meat passed through a meat grinder. Lean beef, fatty pork, chicken breast fillets, or chicken thighs work well. Those who observe Orthodox fasting and temporarily do not eat meat can purchase minced fish in specialized stores and make cutlets from it.
Pike cutlets are best made; they come out especially tender and airy. You can also make your own minced fish from sea fish fillets: hake, haddock or pollock. And finally, another option for frozen cutlets is vegetarian vegetable cutlets (potato, beetroot, carrot or cabbage). They are more like pancakes. However, these cutlets can also be baked in the oven. And convinced vegetarians can bake buckwheat meatballs in the oven.
You can bake any cutlets, meatballs, zrazy in the oven in the following ways: separately or in the form of a casserole, along with other ingredients. The second method seems to be the most interesting. The result is a complete second course.
How to cook mouth-watering cutlets in the oven
Before cooking frozen patties, you need to defrost them at least a little. Next, you need to do the following:
This method is convenient for the speed of cooking, but inconvenient in that you will have to make some kind of side dish for the cutlets. Therefore, it is best not just to bake semi-finished meat products in the oven, but to cook a hearty, tasty, high-calorie casserole. To do this, grease a non-stick form with a Teflon coating with a thin layer of vegetable oil, put thin slices of boiled potatoes into this form, place a layer of cutlets on the potatoes.
Next, the potatoes are stacked again. Each layer is salted, sprinkled with spices, onions and garlic rubbed through a press. The top of the casserole is poured with mayonnaise or heavy cream. You can also add boiled mushrooms, young green beans, sliced \u200b\u200bzucchini or eggplant between the layers of potatoes and meat.
The dish is baked for about 50 minutes, then sprinkled with plenty of grated cheese, you can also decorate the casserole with tomato slices. After that, the dish is baked again for ten to fifteen minutes so that the cheese melts and tightly seals all the ingredients to each other. Hot juicy casserole is cut into portions and served on the table. This dish of frozen minced meat and potatoes is very popular in France and is called "gratin", that is, "casserole".
All products for the casserole must be cut into thin layers. If you put thick potato slices on top of the frozen cutlets, the cutlets may not bake to the end.
You need to heat the oven to 150-180 degrees, but not more, otherwise the cutlets will quickly burn out without having time to fry. Finished semi-finished meat products should be soft, but not fall apart. The minced meat should change from bright red to dark brown. Properly cooked cutlets have a delicate taste and a pronounced meaty aroma. The finished dish can be generously sprinkled with any seasonal chopped herbs, basil goes well with chicken, and cilantro goes well with red meat.
Manufacturing and freezing of meat preparations
In order to make delicious cutlets or meatballs with your own hands and then freeze them for future use, you must:
Such cutlets will be a real boon for the hostess, especially when there is not too much time available to prepare dinner.
Secrets of delicious cutlets
In order for self-made meat semi-finished products to turn out tasty and healthy, and also not to lose their beneficial properties when freezing and defrosting, you must definitely add a small piece of butter to each cutlet or meal. When the butter melts during cooking, the meat dish is juicy, literally melting in your mouth. When the hostess adds a chicken egg to the minced meat dish, it must first be thoroughly beaten with a fork or whisk.
If the cook "regretted" the bread, the cutlets will be dry and tough. But if you add too much bread, the finished dish will turn out to be loose and unappetizing in appearance. Such cutlets or meatballs will quickly fall apart right in the pan. It should be borne in mind that hot minced chicken dishes are softer and more tender in structure than the same minced pork dishes. Therefore, chicken cutlets are an ideal main course for children and the elderly.
If it is not possible to bake cutlets in the oven, you need to fry them over low heat in a deep frying pan (preferably in a cast iron), periodically adding hot water there. This way the dish will not burn.
Delicious frozen patties cooked in the oven - a great option for those who like a quick and delicious homemade lunch. The main thing is that meat dishes do not burn in the oven, which cannot be said about cutlets fried in a pan. And at the same time, they have an appetizing crisp crust, which is lacking in semi-finished products cooked in a double boiler or multicooker. You can just bake the meat, or you can make a tasty and healthy casserole with potatoes on the basis of cutlets. In any case, households and guests will be happy.
Gone are the days when housewives hurried home and realized with horror that they would have to spend most of the evening preparing a hearty dinner. Today, everything is much easier thanks to semi-finished products - products that have been prepared in advance and frozen.
Semi-finished products can be home-made or store-bought, of course, homemade is always better. They cooked cabbage rolls or cutlets, did more than needed, put it off and froze it, then, when needed, took it, fried it or stewed it, and now the meat component is ready, it is enough to make a salad and boil the cereal.
You can also use store semi-finished products. It can be fish or meat cutlets, again, stuffed cabbage, pancakes, and so on. The main thing is to be sure of their quality and unreleased shelf life.
To properly cook semi-finished products, you do not need a lot of intelligence, however, here you need to follow a certain sequence that will allow you to cook correctly and tasty, for example, cutlets.
Frozen cutlets in a pan
The advantage of semi-finished products is the fact that they do not need to be thawed at all. This process will simply ruin the structure of the product and, as a result, a banal porridge will turn out in the pan.
Therefore, first we heat the pan with oil and only then put the frozen patties on the surface. Over medium heat, bring one side of the product until golden brown, then turn over and cook the other in the same way, but on a lower heat, which will allow the meat to be evenly fried inside.
If the fire is strong, the hostess runs the risk of getting too fried, but cold and raw cutlets, but if the fire is very low, all the moisture will evaporate and instead of a juicy dish, you will get a crouton.
On average, frying one side takes up to 12-15 minutes, it all depends on the size of the cutlet.
Instead of a frying pan, you can use a multicooker. In it, the turning process is also relevant or a microwave oven. Here, the cutlets will be cooked without the participation of the hostess, but you need to choose the optimal power and cooking time. The cutlets will not brown in the microwave.
Frozen cutlets can be taken on brakes or cooked for dinner or lunch instead of a full-fledged meat side dish. With such a lunch or dinner, you can feed not only the whole family, but also unexpected guests. Homemade frozen cutlets are in no way inferior to freshly made ones and are perfectly stored in the freezer for several months in a tightly tied bag or container.