How to defrost a food safely: defrosting methods?
There's a few ways to defrost something.
The first would be putting it in the fridge instead of the freezer. This takes a lot longer because the food is still chilled but the risk of accidentally leaving it out too long is really minimal unless you like super forget it was in there for days on end. If you want to defrost this way I suggest at least 48 hours in advance to give it time, possibly even longer if it's something large like say a Thanksgiving turkey.
Second method is just leaving the food on the counter, which I've done plenty in my life. Literally just did that with some frozen leftover chicken soup yesterday; pulled the container out of the freezer and left it sit on the counter all day to defrost then popped it in the microwave to heat it up to acceptable warm eating temperatures.
This method, however, is a little more risky. Meat and dairy products, for example, will quickly go bad when left like this once the cold fades. There can be some variation based on the ambient temperature of the place it's being kept, for example you can leave stuff out longer if you've got a cold winter as opposed to a hot summer, but still. Anything left like this needs to be carefully monitored and either consumed quickly or put in the fridge as soon as it's reached the desired non-frozen state to keep it from going bad.
The final method would be applying heat such as with a microwave or oven. If your item is frozen and hasn't been thawed some other method this can take time, however. I'll go back to the Thanksgiving turkey; my grandma always kept hers frozen, and the day of she would bring it out early in the morning and put it in a sink full of hot water that she'd drain and refill every hour. The application of the hot water in this case helped defrost the turkey quite fast so it could be ready to be dressed and go in the oven to cook all the way through as if it had been left out on the counter or in the fridge for days. My mother would also do this with our chicken breasts to keep them from going bad, just pull a few out of the freezer and heat them in the microwave for a few minutes until they weren't frozen anymore before cooking them up.
No matter how you do it, though, I wouldn't advise defrosting or thawing anything you weren't ready and willing to eat in a pretty narrow time frame because once it's not frozen anymore you're on a timer to cook and consume it. So really just keep an eye on whatever you're defrosting with whatever method you're using and be prepared to cook it up pretty quickly and that's the best way to handle it.