Braising steak went into the cooker frozen because I forgot to defrost it, was that actually risky

The official food safety guidance from the agencies is to thaw before slow cooking, and the reasoning is worth understanding rather than just obeying. The concern is not the finished temperature, it is how long the food loiters between roughly 5 and 60C while a frozen mass absorbs heat from a low powered appliance. Diced steak in hot stock passes through that band far faster than a frozen roast or a whole bird, which is why the same rule feels overcautious for what you did and is absolutely not overcautious for a chicken. If you keep doing it, use hot liquid, keep pieces small, and run the first hour on high.

I will gently push back on the it is fine for diced consensus. It is probably fine, and probably is doing a lot of work in a sentence about food safety, especially if you are cooking for anyone pregnant, elderly or immune compromised. Moving meat from the freezer to the fridge the night before costs you thirty seconds of planning and removes the question entirely, so I do not understand why we are optimising the other way.

Fridge overnight, in the pot in the morning. It is free, it is boring, and it means you never have to write this post.

I probe mine, which turned this from an argument into a measurement. With diced frozen beef and boiling stock, high for the first hour, my pot was above 70C within about ninety minutes. With a frozen roast of similar total weight the middle was still under 60C at the four hour mark, and that is the scenario the guidance is written for. Same appliance, same weight, completely different risk, and the variable is the size of the lump.

I did this with a frozen whole chicken years ago and threw the whole thing away at hour five when I finally bought a thermometer and saw what the middle was doing. That was about twelve pounds of food and a very late dinner. Frozen and diced is one thing, frozen and solid is a different appliance problem.