Chicken – safely freeze the yogurt marinated chicken

There are several reasons why you should marinate before cooking:

• Many marinades contain raw ingredients that should be cooked along with the food being marinated, such as garlic or ginger. In some cases this may actually be a health hazard (raw garlic can harbor botulism), in other cases you'll simply end up with an undesirable pungent flavour.

• Many marinades also use some amount of acid, which helps to kick-start the process of breaking down the connective tissue and tenderizing the meat. This is an especially big deal for chicken breast meat and tougher cuts of beef or pork, because most cooking methods (except for slow-cooking) don't do much of this and tend to produce a tougher, chewier end result. Once the meat has already been cooked, using an acid-based marinade won't give you much more tenderization; you need the combination of acid and heat.

• Finally, many spices release most of their flavour when heated (cooked). Examples are cinnamon, saffron, star anise, and various types of hot pepper or chili powder. If you marinate after cooking, you won't get much flavour from these.

Of course if you are using a very simple marinade such as soy sauce and are marinating only for flavour purposes, then it might not matter much, but that's the exception rather than the rule. Marinating afterward can certainly improve the taste, but most of the time you'll end up with better results by marinating beforehand.

You can absolutely freeze marinated meat - defrost in the refrigerator, and it will continue to marinate as it defrosts. I find that it usually takes about a day to defrost chicken breasts in the fridge.

The meat is more of a concern than the type of marinade when it comes to freezing. Most marinades should be fine to freeze. However, if you're starting off with meat that was frozen, you may not want to refreeze it. There are a couple reasons for this:

1) If the meat was frozen and NOT kept refrigerated (i.e., defrosted on the countertop or in the microwave), there's a chance that bacteria could start to grow in the meat, and freezing it again won't kill the bacteria. This isn't a problem if your meat is refrigerated and kept in an airtight container. The USDA has a quick guide on freezing, defrosting and refreezing here.

2) Texture may be affected if you refreeze meat. Most meat dries out a little in the process of freezing and defrosting, so doing this multiple times will probably affect the texture. When the ice crystals form in the meat, they burst cells, which then lose juice when the meat is defrosted. The result is often mushier, less juicy meat.

As a less scientific reason, the Food Network has recipes where they say you can freeze marinated chicken. Sometimes, if it's good enough for the Food Network, it's good enough for me... :)