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Home cooks have been all a-cluck over recent guidance not to wash raw chicken before it's prepared and cooked. While it may seem counterintuitive, food safety resources like the United States Department of Agriculture's "Ask Karen" website advise:
The same goes for beef, pork, lamb and veal. Eggs, too, can incur an uptick in potential contamination, because according to the USDA, "the wash water can be 'sucked' into the egg through the pores in the shell." So why did we all start bathing our birds in the first place? Probably because Julia Child, James Beard, Bettie Crocker, Fannie Farmer, Margaret Mitchell and the "Joy of Cooking" told us - and our parents and grandparents - to. However, the 2001 edition still includes the advice: "Because commercially raised chickens, on the whole, are packed in a communal tub of ice at least during part of their processing, it is probably wise to give them a thorough washing and drying before storing or cooking - just to be on the safe side." A jacket note from the same printing indicates that the text therein "leads the cook infallibly from the buying and handling of raw ingredients, through each essential step of a recipe, to the final creation of a delicate confection." Plus it's Julia Child! Her, Beck and Bertholle's masterwork became culinary canon because of its rigorous attention to getting recipes right. That omelette technique works every time. The boeuf Bourguignon recipe is practically the basis for a cult, and while there are likely far fewer consumers are consulting brain blanching methods these days, a goodly chunk of those who do probably have their copy of MtAoFC cracked open to the relevant section. It stands to reason that a home cook would assume that every facet of the guidance offered would stand the test of time - and it may have been assumed accurate in its day. Oeufs can be trusted to fluff as the decades roll on, but food production practices - and the accompanying safety concerns - are in a constant state of flux. Child, it should be noted, passed away at the age of 91 in 2004. It would not be out of the realm of strong possibility that the obsessive recipe tester might have revised the text to reflect the updated safety information, had she been just a teensy bit further from the century mark. But plenty of equally-trusted cooks of the era were in the kitchen with Julia on the topic of poultry-laundering. The 1953 edition of Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker's "The Joy Of Cooking" (originally published in 1931) counseled at the conclusion of "To Draw a Bird" not to to soak the bird at any time, but rather: "Hold it under running water to clean the insides." While it might seem somewhat antiquated or twee for modern cooks to take as gospel the teachings of a book with a robust aspic and "ring salad" section, "Joy" is a book that takes on more cachet, the more generations it's been handed down through. A cook could be forgiven for trusting a book with his or her grandmother's notes penned primly in the margin. The same goes for devotees of Betty Crocker's 1958 "Dinner for Two" ("Select roasting chicken or young turkey. Remove any pinfeathers and wash. Pat dry."), or Caroline B. Perry's 1953 classic "The Shaker Cookbook: Not by Bread Alone." ("Select chickens weighing 2 1/2 pounds or a little over, for smaller ones lack flavor and cook up waxy. Wash well and quarter.") Nine different recipes in home economist Margaret Mitchell's 1958 "Mealtime Magic Cookbook" for Alcoa Wrap Kitchens begin with some variation of "Wash, clean chicken, cut into desired pieces." Mrs. Albert Simons of 1950's "Charleston Receipts" believed a rooster needed a good washing before being "boil(ed) hard" for Faber's Pilau. Even actor Alfred Lunt hopped on the chicken cleansing train with his Chicken Paprika recipe in the 1948 "The Celebrities Cookbook." ("Wash and disjoint chicken, cutting into portions for serving.") Toss one more on the fire? Fine: no less an expert than Fannie Merritt Farmer advised in the 1929 edition of "The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book":
By 1972, gourmand and cookbook author James Beard made chicken washing contingent upon its origins. While lamenting about the loss of flavor he attributed to modern poultry raising methodology, Beard found one thing to crow about in his "American Cookery":
Just several pages later, Beard paid homage to these heavy, homey dishes with recipes for sumptuous, long-stewed Country Captain, Stuffed Poached Chicken and Country-Style White Fricassee. He cited chicken washing in each of those, but not for any fried variation, Chicken California or anything involving poaching. American cooks, it seemed, were testing their wings, but not yet ready to fly away from the faucet completely. Nowadays, there's nary a peep about chicken washing, even in poultry-centric cookbooks, unless it's a caveat against the practice. Cooks Illustrated's 1999 "The Complete Book of Chicken" makes no mention of it, and the tenth anniversary edition of Mark Bittman's food bible "How to Cook Everything" relies on general kitchen cleanliness (including lots of hand washing) and obsessive attention to temperature to ensure the annihilation of harmful bacteria like salmonella. Better Homes and Gardens, however, knows how far you've come together, and how hard it is to let go of the past. The plaid-bound workhorse of a cookbook could be found in one million American kitchens by its eighth anniversary in 1938 and has now sold more than 34 million copies. It seems almost like a civic duty for the editors to lay it out plainly: "Rinsing poultry and meat is not necessary. The less you handle it the better." Maybe...just maybe, the flock will finally follow. – Fast facts on salmonella The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that people in a normal state of health who ingest Salmonella-tainted food may experience diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps, which typically begin within 12 to 72 hours. This may be accompanied by vomiting, chills, headache and muscle pains. These symptoms may last about four to seven days, and then go away without specific treatment, but left unchecked, Salmonella infection may spread to the bloodstream and beyond and may cause death if the person is not treated promptly with antibiotics. Children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune symptoms should practice extreme caution, as salmonellosis may lead to severe illness or even death. Consumer resources: More on food poisoning from CNN Health and all foodborne illness coverage on Eatocracy |
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In college, I had the "pleasure" of working in the meat dept. of a popular grocery store. Things fall on the floor, there is sawdust on the meat from bones being cut and there are chemical preservatives that you can smell when you open up a fresh box of chicken. Also toured factories and my advice is to rinse the meat. It doesn't hurt, even if it doesn't help. You should know better than to wash your sink and counters with bleach after you deal with meat or fish. If anything, just rinse off the slimy film from packaging.
Yes! Exactly! I rinse meat because sometimes there are bits of bone, or other material left there as a result of cutting or whatever. I don't want to eat the grit or any other contaminants. I didn't raise the bird. I didn't pluck the bird. I don't know where it's been. And I don't have absolute trust in poultry companies. I will continue rinsing meats.
If these chickens have all these problems, are they immune to them? If they have problems that will kill humans, won't it kill them too? It's like the hype about bats and raccoons having rabies. If they all had it, they would all die from it.
Cooking THOROUGHLY will kill everything.
Stop eating everything half raw and get back to cooking things the whole way through. The only meals I ever got sick from were from restaurants.
I'll rinse the blood off meats if it looks like they were bathing in it, (simply a matter of choice, not reason).
I WASH CHICKEN MAINLY BECAUSE OF THE BLOOD! I READ SOMEWHERE THAT A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF MEAT, THAT PEOPLE THINK MAY BE TAINTED (GOING BAD), IS ACTUALLY NOT BAD! IT'S THE BLOOD THAT IS TURNING AND MAKING THE MEAT SMELL BAD! I READ IF YOU THOROGHLY CLEAN THE MEAT, THEN SMELL AGAIN! EVERY TIME IT HAS BEEN THE BLOOD SMELLING BAD! I CAN ONLY RECALL ONE TIME WHERE THE MEAT WAS ACTUALLY NOT GOOD TO CONSUME!
I grew up with fresh chicken. We always rinsed the hens with a mixture of cider vinegar and water. The vinegar helps reduce bacteria. But we ALWAYS washed the area afterwards where we did this. I can't imagine splashing water from washing a chicken all over and not cleaning thoroughly.
Like boiling, broiling, or baking won't kill surface bacteria anyway. No I do not wash meat. Marinating now is another subject.
I'd never heard of anyone rinsing off meats until a few months ago. I worked in retaurants for years before graduating college, and none of the kitchens I worked ever rinsed raw meats. The issue isn't so much with the "splashing" really, it's that your sink now has salmonella germs in it. And down the drain, in the garbage disposal. Sure we clean and sanitize work surfaces, and I clean out my sink, but I sure as he1l haven't ever sanitized down the drain. No way am I rinsing chicken gunk down it on purpose. I cook my chicken to 165 degrees, any germs are long dead; no rinsing required.
What is the difference between having the bacteria disappear down the drain and having it smeared all over a cutting board you wash in the sink later?
I Kosher my chicken- in other words, let it soak for a bit in salt water. It really improves the flavor- takes the barnyard taste out of it- and to blazes with all these folks advising us to absolutely do, or not do, stuff. Time only shows they don't know what they're talking about.
whish there was a "love" button for this
You wash a chicken to remove feces. I have been doing it for decades and I have never had a food borne illness. I also eat tuna and swordfish yet have never had mercury poisoning. I have never had trichinosis yet I have had pork cooked less than well done. Stop panicking about all the fear based journalism out there.
Hi Dover,
If you regularly eat canned tuna, then you have had mercury poisoning, whether you know it or not. Sometimes when I've had several cans in a week I can even taste it. (It's sort of a dull flavor on the outside edges of your tongue.)
The good news is that until recently it was believed that mercury never leaves the body - which is why health people were so freaked out about it. It's absolutely established that mercury is toxic to the body in relatively small amounts. So what they'd do is add up the tuna cans consumed over a lifetime ... and pretty soon everybody would be poisoned.
It turns out the body gets rid of mercury fairly quickly. So if you go on a tuna/swordfish binge, give them a rest for a couple months to let your body get back to normal.
You have an overactive imagination. You absolutely can not taste mercury that may have built up from eating tuna.
And canned tuna contains little to no mercury, since it is mostly smaller and younger species of tuna which have not accumulated any mercury from their diets. It's possible to get mercury poisoning from tuna. If - and it's a big if - you are wealthy and crazy enough to eat nothing but expensive cuts of (large, older) tuna for every meal.
But you're clearly a dingbat. I can't stop laughing about your "I can taste the mercury" stupidity.
I remember learning to not only wash chicken, but also inspect it for stray feathers and to burn those off. I think a big difference today compared to then...back then you rarely bought boneless skinless. A whole bird is not as messy boneless skinless and not likely to splatter contaminates. I rarely cook with skin and do not wash it before cooking but I do rinse all packaging with hot water and cook all trimmed parts of the chicken before throwing it away to keep the garbage from getting spoiled chicken smell. Cooked meat does not spoil as quickly.
The skin is the only good part of a chicken. Oh, and gizzards.
Mmmmmm-fried gizzards...
Fine, don't wash it and eat filthy chicken then.
We ate homegrown chickens as well as other game birds we would butcher and put in the freezer. So washing was more to make sure there was nothing extra i.e. feathers, on it before it was turned into a meal.
Homegrown is the best kind
To avoid bacteria in raw meat is do not eat them. There are other nutritious food sources out there.
Food borne pathogens in vegetables as well.
"To avoid bacteria in raw meat is do not eat them". (grammar issues included) You forgot one word at the end...raw. To avoid bacteria in raw meat is do not eat them raw – COOK IT
FOUND THE VEGAN
Made me laugh so hard!
I remember the advice to wash chicken came from 60 Minutes. There was a show years ago about chicken processing plants and an expert said to wash the chicken before cooking.
This is just about the worst cooking advice I have read in a long time. I rinse off raw chicken.
I've never rinsed a piece of clean-appearing chicken in 35 years of cooking it. Never been sick. Not gonna start rinsing it now.
Clearly, washing chicken is not unhealthy as well. Washing chicken certainly didn't shorten Julia Childs life now did it.......
Been washing chicken myself since we used to butcher our own in the early 50's. Have not gotten sick. Grandfather butchered his own cattle and poultry, lived to 96.
So whether you wash or not really is a moot point.
Exactly. I'm not going to tell people to stop washing their chicken.
Bingo
Exactly. I've never washed chicken in my life because it doesn't really accomplish anything except to spread the pathogens around. Any that are on the chicken in the first place (salmonella, c. perfringens, staph aureus) will be killed in cooking. No need to get them all over the sink, faucet or counter by rinsing/washing the chicken.
These are bad guidelines. You should always rinse chicken.
Theres a difference between cleaning and sterilization. This only addresses sterilization, but its not addressing the cleaning. Is it ok to mop the floor and just skip over the sweeping part? No matter how good the bleach is, your still going to have dirt on the floor.
What if there is blood or feces on the chicken? You'll kill the germs when you cook it, but you'll still be eating the cooked blood and feces.
It's good advice for careless people the don't give post food prep cleaning its due diligence. But for those who are concerned with what they are ingesting and are willing to clean and sanitize kitchen surfaces after cooking, continue to wash your chicken.
Cooked blood is good nutrition.
I wouldn't take health advice from the USDA anyway. Nor from the FDA.
I agree with you.
I wash whole chickens not because of the contamination I can't see on it....
Raw chicken is placed in colander in sink, packaging to garbage. Cold water on low stream runs over chicken. All fat,
extra skin, membranes and assorted yuck removed to garbage. Chicken left to drain, then placed on paper towels. SINK knife. poultry shears and colander spritzed with ammonia water, hot water and immediately into dishwasher. Wash my hands well and dry with paper towels. If coating I use paper bowls/plates and dispose in garbage. Any turning forks are spritzed w/ammonia water and placed in dishwasher. Again wash hands and dry with paper towels.Then cook and enjoy. What is the big deal?
Do the environment a favor and just cook the chicken.
Soak your chicken in salt water cleans and takes away that smell
I brine my chicken so I have to wash it or it will be to salty
The CNN website headline was misleading. I thought the article was about giving pet chickens a bath. They should have put a picture of a plucked bird instead of living one with the article. I was tricked!
LOL
Doctors recommend not washing. but choking the chicken prior to cooking at a moderate temp to kill bacteria.
NIIIIIIICCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEEE....LOL
If it's a dirty bird I take it out back and put the garden hose to her.
Wash and rinse the chicken, using a mild detergent containing rosemary and other herbs, using gentle cycle. Then place in dryer on high. Figure an hour per pound. Chicken should be dry (and very tender) when done.
I wash whole chickens before cooking but not usually chicken pieces like wings or drumsticks. And any beef or pork that was packaged in cryovac gets rinsed off. I also prep the meat on a tray on a sheet of butcher paper that then gets thrown in the freeze until trash day. Not saying I'm right it's just how I do it. I haven't poisoned anyone...yet!
I had never heard of washing chicken until I saw a friend of mine doing it the other day. I was always taught to handle raw meat as little as possible and cook thoroughly to kill all the germs. And of course clean all nearby counters in case any germs were hitching a ride on the packaging.
I wash and wax my chicken daily.
I shower with Cornish Game Hens and bathe with pork chops. Nice and clean.
Best way to prevent turning your kitchen and your body into a bacteria/fecal contamination zone is to avoid chicken (and beef and pork and all other animal products) altogether . . .
What about the bacteria present in flour? Or on leaves?
Yup, never any recalls for spinach, cantaloupe, or other fruits and vegetables that were contaminated or killing people..........oh wait, yes there have.
IN READING YOUR COMMENT, I WAS LIKE "WHAT?", THEN YOU FINISHED AND I WAS LIKE "OK!". ONLY BECAUSE IT WAS JUST IN THE LAST MONTH OR SO THAT THERE WAS A RECALL FOR ORGANIC FROZEN BERRIES SOLD AT COSTCO! ALSO, SPINACH WAS RECALLED RECENTLY AND A FEW YEARS AGO, GREEN ONIONS! IT HAPPENS, SO MY BEST ADVICE IS TO DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU, WHAT GIVES YOU PEACE OF MIND AND STICK TO IT!
Next we supposed to stop washing our hands after using the bathroom because we splash fecal-dirty water?
OK????? LOL
I most certainly wash chicken and any other meats in my kitchen, and I certainly recommend everyone should. I also recommend that everyone should wash and sanitize all surfaces in their kitchen regularly as well as after handling raw meats on them so there should never be an issue of cross contamination unless your kitchen is filthy.
What about brining poultry, which is increasingly popular? If the experts believe washing a chicken can do more harm than good, they likely believe the same about brining. After brining, there is a bucket of salty contaminated water that needs to be dealt with, just as if the bird had been washed rather than brined. No way are the experts going to dissuade people from brining their poultry.
Actually, brining can kill off bacteria. Remember salt is a preservative. Its not as safe as cooking, for sure, but the brine itself will prevent bacterial growth... why do you think cucumbers were brined before taste? (you know.. those pickle things)
No, brine your chicken all you want. What the CDC, USDA, FDA, and lots of other people who do this for a living are saying is that rinsing a chicken will likely lead to splashed water, contaminated by the bacteria on the chicken, cross contaminating other surfaces and utensils in your kitchen. Brining is fine as long as the brine and meat is kept in your fridge.
Back in the day when Ma and Pa washed the bird it wasn't contaminated with e-c. Now that it is we're supposed to change? That's backwards. Why not change the way our meat is processed? What ever happened to the USFDA?
Wash away. Packaged raw meats can contain slaughterhouse crud, bits of entrails and feces, all of which one does not want to eat, even if it has been sterilized. Just make sure you use common sense and you diligently clean up afterward.
Agree 100% – until the day comes that a chicken is 100% clean when it comes out of that bag it's always going to get a quick rinse.
Kitchen faucets have quite a lot of pressure, and washing poultry with water flowing at full speed will splash the bacteria all over the place. When I wash raw meats, I always am sure to adjust the water pressure way down, almost to,a,trickly, before I place any meat near the water. This way I can wash the meat safely without splashing bacteria all over the place. In other words, just use common sense.
Reading difficulties?
Lightly rinsing off factory slaughterhouse industry crud down the drain =\= turbo blasting liquids all over the kitchen.
ah yes if you wanted to eat all the gross stuff you have a burger
you would wash your meat if you knew what the butcher boy was doing to it before you see it!
This is just another one of those dumb science articles.
"Don't wash it because you might contaminate other objects."
Well, DUH. You're going to do that anyways simply by touching the raw chicken.
If washing chicken "splashes" nasties all over the kitchen then it seems pointless to wash your hands since it might do the same thing!
I wash my chicken because I don't want the nasty blood and innards to become part of what I am cooking.,
And the Chinese have been doing this for thousands of years – they do it with all meats prior to cooking – it helps remove the taste of butchering, blood, and other nasties that don't get removed during processing.
It is always a good idea to wash your "meat".... Its not a matter of size its how you prepared it!
Let's be realistic it, if you are washing and you splash around all over the place you have bigger issues... Do it the right way and you will be a happy cook.
Washing is NOT an art, we teach children to do this correctly, so take what you have learned and apply it.
Consuming chicken (or any meat for that matter) should be criminal. Eat it and you get what you deserve, washed or not.
If you have a cat or dog, do you feed them only vegetables also?
Forcing an animal to live domestically is barbaric.
Man has been domesticating animals for over 15,000 years (some say the dog was domesticated in 30,000 BC).
How long have you been around?
Oh - and all vegans have cats - domesticated in 8000 BC. Get rid of your cat, hypocrite.
Actually, that is correct. Our dog is a large healthy and happy hound who can only eat kibbles that are from vegetables such as Blue Mountain makes.. Other dog food with animal by products give him stomach and intestinal distress, however most people don't realize there is vegetarian dog food.
Why would a vegan bother to read an article about MEAT? Obviously so they can criticize and judge other people about how they live their lives. You go eat your grass and tree bark. I'm going to go ahead and have a steak. LIVE AND LET LIVE!
Of coarse, veganism is the true answer to all of this and the majority of the health problems and decimation of our world. but attacking people with hate just angers the naive.
I prefer attacking these idiots with an axe. It's much more effective.
I wash chicken (really just rinse gently), avoiding splashing. I then brine the chicken, and clean all the counter areas that might have had contact with any drips with antibacterial soap. I do all this because I like to remove any bone fragments and blood, as well as the previously mentioned slimy residue that seems to be on many cuts of meat when it is direct from the package. Pork and beef cuts, especially saw cuts through bone, always seem to leave bone fragments. I think that as long as good cleaning practices are used during preparation, that should be sufficient.
I don't really know how they process chickens in detail, but it must involve some sort of power washing, because they are incredibly clean by the time the hit the store. This is in comparison to a lot of hand-butchered birds I've purchased, which – to not be very delicate about it – have had noticeable gobbets of poo stuck to the bird, and often well smeared. I'm told this is common in Europe, as well, and a couple of cooking shows from there confirm that, well, chicken poo is everywhere. So the original advice to wash probably comes from a time prior to today's more extensive hosing. Nothing spoils a nicely served roast chicken like a blob of chicken poo encrusted on it.
When I cook my chicken I make sure it is fully cooked. What is washing going to do to the pathogens that 30 minutes at 350F can't (Heat and length varies on recopies and size).
My mom had her own catering business and my father was in Restaurant/Hotel Management. For years they told me to do this..."Wash the meat first!" When I read another article (about 2 years back) about this same thing I stopped doing it. The dishrack is in too close of proximity for my taste and the thought of salmonella sitting in my cupboard...ewww.
I read somewhere that the liquid in the package of raw chicken is called "fecal soup". I rinse all raw chicken.
What a useless article. If you have even half a brain you already know raw chicken MAY contain some levels of bacteria that can be harmful. So the key is to be cautious when handling it. I wash mine all the time because I don't trust the processing facilities to be clean and I don't want to cook my chicken without rinsing off whatever filth is on it. The key is to wash down any surfaces your chicken may come in contact with. That has always been common knowledge. Don't cut your raw veggies on the same cutting board you just had your raw chicken on. Pretty simple folks.
I will always wash meat because that whole slimy feeling just grosses me out.
That's just the afterwash, honey. Don't be scared ...
I stopped washing my chickens after seeing Julia Child & Jacque Pepin argue about it on one of their shows together. Jacque doesn't wash his chickens and neither do I.
I would neither use that as my guide or admit to it if I did. The French don't wash ANYTHING – food or otherwise.
Thanks but no thanks. Just don't wash the chicken with a full-tap sprayer that gets everywhere. Run moderate water and hold the meat low enough that it won't splash everywhere. Also, cleaning as you cook to keep things sanitary is a good idea.
Koshering Jewish practice has handed down through generations the soaking & salting of chicken/meat unless broiled which nowadays is done by any kosher butcher. Unsoaked & salted meat would be labeled. As a personal preference, prior to making chicken soup, poultry must have any guts removed, and blood, which necessitates my pouring boiling hot water over the chicken before putting the chicken into a pot where the water is also boiling with soup greens already in it. This is the practice I have used all my adult life. I then attend to the stainless steel sink which I proceed to wash with liquid dish soap and very hot water, as well as any surface the chicken package might have touched. If concerned about transference of bacteria use wet paper towel and soap instead of a sponge.
Where's the bleach?
I disagree! This is like saying washing your hands spreads germs around. I need to see some studies that prove that washing chicken or veggies or any food increases the risk of infection.
You mean the advice and warnings provides by the CDC and USDA don't hold any water in your world?
Yep, remember they said back in the 50s that cigarettes were healthy!
Reblogged this on The Chef's Last Diet and commented:
Please stop washing your chicken!
I wish chicken, fish and pork because I think it makes it taste better. I notice that those three always have a film on them that washes off. I think the food taste better without that film. Who knows, maybe it is just the placebo effect, but I like it.
Do you also wish salads? How 'bout upon a star?
Makes you wonder what ELSE you're doing that is considered "right" by society but really is a wasted effort.
I rinse my chicken.
Look, the only way you are going to contaminate surfaces with the chicken water is if you wave the thing around your kitchen afterwards, or if you bathe it with the faucet going full force so it splashes everywhere. Or you then wash your veggies for your salad without first washing your hands thoroughly. (I never put food down directly in the basin of my sink. Ever. The dishes that end up there get fully cleansed before being used again.)
Sheesh. Common sense, folks. Wash your chicken if you wanna...
You da mn Skippy.
Thinking things through: "I rinse my chicken. "
Hey! What you do on your own time is your business!
I was wondering it that was before or after he choked the chicken.
She. Wrong pronoun... ;