Sous Vide - Frozen Whole Chicken in Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce

I decided to make a Sous Vide chicken using a frozen chicken to see how it would turn out.

Using an Anova AN500 Sous Vide Precision Cooker, I followed Anova's suggestion of 9 hours at 150 degrees, but took the chicken out after 8.5 hours since it was about a 3 lb chicken.  About 3 hours into the cook, I added Sweet Baby Ray's Sauce and a bit of salt to the chicken (after the chicken was defrosted by the water temperature).

Overall, the chicken was very good.  The breast was nice and moist and not pink.  However, the chicken thigh when separated at the joint had a bit of blood still.  I figured this is because it was not cooked at 165 degrees.

I Googled the proper internal temperature for chicken and these two statements were found about the topic:

"The FDA Food Code recommends cooking chicken to 165°F (74°C). ... If you can hold your chicken at 145°F (63°C) for 8.5 minutes, you can achieve the same bacterial reduction as at 165°F (74°C)."

"For quality purposes, a chicken breast is properly cooked at 145 to 150 F. This temperature ensures that all pinkness is gone, but the meat is firm but still tender. However, the USDA recommends that chicken and poultry be cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 165 F for at least 30 seconds."

Anova was probably trying to keep the breast moist so that's why they recommended 150 degrees.  Going forward, I think I would move that to at least 160 degrees to make sure the chicken is cooked better.  It may force a slightly less moist chicken breast, but I think I'd rather have that than to have a small amount of blood still on the chicken thigh joint.

Overall, I think the chicken tasted very good and was nice and moist.  Since I did not do anything to the chicken to try to make it more visually appealing by putting in the broiler to roast up the skin, the chicken looks a bit anemic.  That's actually ok with me as many Asian chickens look this way when cooked at restaurants!  The BBQ sauce tasted good, but was runny due to the water content of the chicken.  I did pour out any of the water from the bag before putting on the sauce, but apparently there was more moisture in the chicken than could be found after only 3 hours into the cook.

Still, the taste of the chicken was very good and it was easy to make.  Take the chicken out of the freezer, rinse it off, and then put it in the bag and suspend it in the water bath.  Set the sous vide heater to the desired temperature and set the timer to 9 hours.  The formula for frozen chicken is use the same time for non-frozen and add an additional 1/2 total time to that.  In this case, the proper time was 6 hours if not frozen, so 1/2 of that is 3 hours... total is 6 + 3 = 9 hours.

I served the chicken with white rice.