Does washing actually cause the fat to come off though?
I’ve had bloody chicken before which you do actually want to wash/clean off because cooked blood will completely destroy your dish.
Otherwise you can cut off some cartilage and hard fat that won’t render when cooked. No need to wash it.
Nope. The slimy stuff that comes off when you wash chicken is not fat and the pink liquid is myoglobin, not blood. The reason not to wash chicken is that it potentially sprays salmonella all around your sink. Basically, there is no good reason to wash chicken, but it shouldn’t affect the actual meat.
Not myoglobin, actual blood. Very rare, but sometimes the butcher didn’t drain properly.
You can tell because by that time, the blood has coagulated into a mush.
Myoglobin is clearish red and pink like you said. That’s stuff is fine.
Not myoglobin
Oh yeah for sure. I usually just cut that out if it’s a vein in the chicken or just scrape it off if its on the meat or skin.
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As a middle aged person who is generally healthy, I’ve never washed chicken. On a side note, we eat chicken weekly. I’ve not experienced diarrhea, or been really sick, or died post chicken eating. I could safely say 1/2 of the days of the year, at least, involve basic butcher parted out chicken, and it is delicious.
Washing a backyard/farm chicken post killing/plucking to remove blood and debris, sure. But what is the logic behind this strange internet trend?
I think it’s just how boomers were raised. I’m middle-aged and I don’t wash chicken, but my boomer mom is horrified at the thought. She came for a visit and made sure I washed the chicken before I cooked with it. 🙄
My parents are boomers and don’t do this. Not a big sample, but it’s what I’ve got.
So weird, maybe it’s just the ones I know. I’m probably stereotyping them!
I had told my mom to go sit down and get out of my kitchen for less.
I’ve not met a single “boomer” that does this.
The idea would be that due to suspected unsanitary conditions in which mass-produced meat products are collected and transported, additional substances and materials not fit for consumption become attached and go unnoticed.
Washing would remove the extra stuff supposedly.
So why only chicken then?
Because it’s the topic of this discussion?
Look at the comments and no one mentioned any other type of meat, it’s only chicken that they wash.
Or they only mentioned chicken because no one mentioned anything else and so they stayed on topic.
You, like me, probably just cook the chicken properly.
Washed or not, chicken needs to be cooked properly, there’s nothing people do by washing the outside that will kill the salmonella inside the muscle. Hell, cooking will kill it on the surface right away so I don’t know what people think they’re doing by washing the outside!
I could see it in a factory/large kitchen setting, as in:
- Wash chicken in separate area to remove surface bacteria
- Hand off to another chef, repeat 1
The chef then cooks with the chicken, sanitizing hands between steps, and the purpose of washing the chicken is to reduce the amount of bacteria spread between washings. Production kitchens are busy places, and having more checks can help prevent issues if some are skipped/performed inadequately.
It makes no sense in home or small kitchens though and would likely do more harm than good.
I’ve worked in a large kitchen and my girlfriend has worked in kitchens in the healthcare system and nope, your wouldn’t wash chicken in a kitchen environment, maybe in factories where it makes sense to have space for that, but in a kitchen you would never lose space to build something that is basically a cross contamination room.
Yeah, that’s the kind of “big kitchen” I’m talking about. Like a factory or maybe a stadium where you’re serving thousands of people at the same time, and repeatability matters a lot more than quality.
Nobody tell him about restaurant kitchens washing their chicken in bleach to remove the smell of freezer burn…
So that’s why I can’t get my chicken to taste restaurant quality!
politics? earth shape? religion? nah, i like to argue about washing or not the chicken when preparing it
washing or not the chicken
Chinese youtube chef recommends washing chicken to reduce the albumin levels and help tenderize, never tested it personally and I definitely don’t wash meat
I’m confused what they think they’re washing off. If you don’t believe the cooking kills the germs then you’re not cooking it right (or are confused). If you think it’s something that won’t come off with cooking like dirt or dust, then, ew, why are you getting chicken from somewhere that gets it covered in dirt or dust?
I don’t know what this text is going on about. People don’t wash the ‘white shit’ off chicken. Some people think that washing chicken (or poultry in general) reduces the chance of cross contamination due to salmonella. In reality it makes it more likely for cross contamination because it splatters all around your sink and surrounding areas.
It also doesn’t make it taste bland. It’s just useless.
My guess is that Anon made an assumption about what they were attempting to do while washing it off and that night didn’t put a lot of effort into the cooking and also expected it to taste bad.
I’m confused what they think they’re washing off.
A LOT of kitchen practices in families are passed-down traditions, with a lot of people not really knowing why they do the things they do.
My Filipino family-in-law washes their cuts of meat, which yeah is entirely unnecessary and I always wondered why they do it, then I traveled to the Philippines and saw the town where they lived, and most of the local butchers hang fresh cuts of meat up on hooks, uncovered, right next to busy roads and sidewalks.
I genuinely don’t know how everyone there hasn’t died of acute food poisoning from the unrefrigerated meats in high heat and humidity, but they at least like to wash off the road grime and dust.
It can also help tenderize the meat (via vinegar or lemon/lime); I tend to find that, when “nondeveloped” countries talk about washing their meat, it means in a vinegar/citrus solution while “developed” countries quite literally mean just plain water.
People who consume a lot of floor chickens
Butcher pubes
Sometimes it’s the bacteria that kills you sometimes it’s the poop of the bacteria that kills you. The latter won’t matter if you cook it well or not. But yeah generally it’s useless to wash chicken.
What kind of regarded shitfuckery is washing chicken? What u washing off the bacteria that will die by the time the chicken reaches a safe temperature? This just seems like a good way to spread salmonella all over ur sink with no advantage.
Don’t you wash your sink?
Are you crazy? I’ve been seasoning that thing for years, I don’t want to ruin it by washing it!
Ok, you’re oven must be huge!
Bold of you to assume the size of my sink.
Only correct reason not to wash it
it should be almost done marinating now. Can’t wait to put it in the oven, next to the dish rack
Do you disinfect your sink as often as you make a meat dish?
No I don’t disinfect it just like I don’t disinfect my dishes. I wash my dishes (those that cannot be machine washed) and after I am finished I wash the sink.
Why wash the chicken then wash the sink and surrounding area when you can just not rinse the chicken and cook it without issue?
Washing the sink is just part of the washing dishes or making food in general. Sink will get dirt anyway. Do you just leave it dirty and grimy all the time?
No I clean it as I need to. Do you stamp around your house with muddy boots? I mean you clean your floor right?
Floor is not part of making food. Sink is where the non-dishwasher stuff is washed to be food safe.
Yeah, I remember seeing some clip of some British science woman and whatever, washing chicken is not only fucking dumv, but a great way to spread bacteria
Yea, there was a short series a few years ago with a cute blonde (hey, she gets guys to watch).
She visited a lab and demonstrated very clearly why washing chicken is a bad idea.
And how much difference soap makes when washing your hands, especially after handling something like chicken.
She also covered a bunch of chemical uage from the Victorian era.
Wish I could remember the show name for you.
she gets guys to watch
Can confirm, I clicked on NBTV and Eric Talks Money because the girl be cute, and I stayed because the info is good. I’m happily married, and can confirm it absolutely works. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same works on women and people of other genders and sexual orientations with the respective gender.
Yea, from what I’ve read attractive folks hold our attention better, and attractive women do more so, for both men and women.
Something in the way we’re wired.
Yeah it potentially splashes salmonella round everywhere.
So where I live, frozen chicken is cut on a wooden chopping board overlaid with pieces of the carton it came it. Without washing you’ll end up with random bits of cardboard, wood, fish fins and possibly sand.
makes chicken fish fins and sand in it
Are you the little mermaid?
Unda da sea!
If your meat is visibly dirty then sure, go ahead and rinse it, don’t be an idiot and eat wood. This conversation is people buying it from the grocery though.
This is reasonable time to wash your chicken and also likely where this habit comes from. Before the age of factory farming and the advent of reliable home refrigeration a lot of meat was improperly stored before and after selling.
Washing your produce was likely a good defense mechanism to wash away actual dirt, grime and bugs that may have adhered to it. Nowadays it’s largely unnecessary unless you’re still living in a place where butchering and processing techniques may not be of the greatest quality.
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If it smells bad it’s in the bin that you should be sending it, not in your sink for a wash.
Or ideally, return it to the store if it’s within the expected expiration time, they’ll want to track it to people don’t get sick. Wrap it up well though so you don’t contaminate anything on the way.
I do not think I have ever washed any chicken I have prepared, EVER
The only time I wash chicken is after cooking it, and when I drop it on the floor and thing “eh, I can still eat this”
me neither (ive never prepared any chicken)
me neither (ive never washed any thing)
Me neither (ive never eaten any thing)
Me neither (I’ve never)
Me
Not washing your chicken with vinegar gives it a dirty taste. Don’t @ me.
Bro just discovered marinade, thinks it’s “washing”. My steaks taste better if I “wash” them with lemon juice
Unwashed Chicken is totally safe if you do this one amazing trick.
Cook it properly.
If you don’t know how to do that by sight or touch then buy yourself a instant read thermometer.
Do people wash pork chops? steaks? hamburgers?
People of West Indian descent often wash meat like pork and beef with a vinegar solution, but not ground meat
I often wash my beef and pork with a vinegar mixture called mustard then scrub it with a dry abrasive spice mix before I put it on a smoker for a few hours before searing the outside for a few minutes.
I don’t know how I survived before these meat washing times.
Washed chicken won’t be any safer if it’s undercooked, salmonella isn’t a surface only danger, so you can remove the “unwashed” part at the beginning.
Washed chicken is a stupid concept, I was including the unwashed part because that is the default state of uncooked chicken.
Unless you accidentally drop a chicken on the floor and don’t want to waste it, there isn’t a reason to wash it.
And by washing it you might spread the salmonella all over the place.
This is like finding out that there are Flat Earthers that actually believe and it’s not just a satirical joke.
I bring this up every so often but I remember flat earth being about questioning science and understanding how to think for yourself… That understanding the earth was round was such a simple thing to do just by really looking at the horizon… You could then question other science and try to see how it could be wrong… It was like a gateway into critical thinking or something…
But I never could find any reference to the old club that was started for it or find anything on the topic… I also haven’t looked in a while and most of the information is just now about how these people are incorrect and also craziness
The only time I would ever wash a chicken is if I’m going to brine it in something. Otherwise it cooks just fine.
My mom has always made me “wash chicken,” which would just be running it under water. Just chicken, nothing else.
I used to do it out of habit, but laziness seems to have worked in my favor this time.
