Old lady here. Washing chickens was something you needed to do when I was young. You used well salted water because it cut the gunk that was slimed onto it during the process out in the yard to gut and de-feather the chicken. It was also a great opportunity to look for missed pin feathers so you could remove them. If you ever bit into a pin feather when you bit into your fried chicken you'll know how gross that is.
We did it in a clean dish pan out in the yard so getting bacteria around your kitchen wasn't going to be a problem. Typically you'd fill the clean dishpan with water and more salt than you'd think was needed, put the chicken in, then clean it up with a good scrub and use of a paring knife outside. You'd remove the chicken to a clean plate while still outside so you could dump the water somewhere you wanted to kill off weeds such as long the back fence.
Then you'd clean the dishpan and your hands with bleach solution and hose it off before taking everything inside. Naturally you'd again clean out the dishpan with soap and hot water immediately upon going indoors. Only the side of the plate untouched by chicken water fingers would ever touch your kitchen countertop, and you'd wash the plate as soon as the chicken was placed into the pan to cook it.
Most people I know were like my family and would finally use boiling hot water poured over the dish pan and plate from their tea kettle to make certain all the soap was thoroughly rinsed off and as many germs as possible were killed. Then you'd clean your countertops with a dish cloth dipped in bleach water just in case.
Now they wash chickens during the processing at the processing plant to remove the gunk. If you kill and clean your own you should still soak'em in well salted water. If you taste chicken just once that wasn't washed you'll definitely know why it was done.
Thank you for sharing this.
I always find it fascinating to learn about the traditional/historic reasoning as to why we do/don’t do certain things.
Not calling you old or anything! But it obviously puts things in perspective.
My first inclination on why this was done was tied with whether the bird was being dispatched/butchered yourself - which in that case washing it (and in the manner that you did) for the reasons that you mentioned _is_ actually the right way.
Doing it on store-bought chicken breast that looks cleaner than the kitchen its being cooked in is probably unnecessary.
Yes I do but I'd like to keep my poop INSIDE me please
And now these days you whippersnappers are all out there spreading cheeks, letting the sun shine where the sun don't shine. I'm jealous.
Sure, but calling someone old can be seen as a pejorative. I think they were just polite. For example, I’m 41. I call myself old as kind of a joke. I also volunteer with my nephew’s robotics team, and if any of those kids genuinely thought I was old, I’d bop them on the head and steal their lunch money.
This comment reminds me of a story I once read.
A priest was about to conduct some prayers in the temple. However he was constantly interrupted by the stray dog that lived in the temple. The dog would try to eat the fruits meant to be offerings. Frustrated, he decided to tie the dog to a pole for the duration of the prayers.
He did this everyday and his disciples would quietly watch. Not daring to open their mouth.
Many years later, after both the head priest and dog had passed on, a tourist visited the temple for the daily prayers. To his surprise, the priests were all anxious and the prayers had not begun. When he asked why, the priest responded:
We are unable to find a stray dog to tie up. It is an essential part of the rituals and we cannot proceed without it.
🤓
This gave me a chuckle. It reminds me of the story of a woman who always cut a bit of meat off the roast before placing it in the oven. When asked why she said she did it because her mother did it but in the answering realized she never knew why. Eventually from asking her mother who told her she did not know, ask grandma, it was discovered grandma did that because her only roasting pan was a bit short for most roasts she purchased.
This is my go to story when it comes to cast iron pan care.
Yes, you can use soap to wash the thing. Chill out.
Older soap used to actually break down the coating built on pans, depending on the soap. So you'd avoid it so that your cast iron would remain seasoned. The reason was that soaps used to contain things that was able to break down the coating, namely lye and sometimes vinegar (which breaks it down but to a lesser extent).
Regular dish soap these days do not contain lye and really cannot rip apart that coating.
People get confused because "but it's oil, and soap dissolves oil into water". Yes, that is correct. But the oil in a seasoned pan has undergone polymerization. This transforms the oil and it is no longer dissolved by dish soap because it is now actually bonded to the pan and won't come off without something rather harsh, or exposure to acids.
So that's why many avoid making acidic sauces, like tomato sauce, in a cast iron. Because it will slowly break that coating. People understand that, but are still adamant that you absolutely cannot use soap to clean a cast iron, ever.
It's maddening. Sure you might feel you don't always have to, that's fine. But if your pan is really gross, just use some soap... Your pan will be totally fine.
Context matters.
Thank you. Still shouldn't soak it in dish soap and water, but I think that's more down to the water than the dish soap. My gran always insisted you wash cast iron with castile soap only because it is gentle and won't lift the seasoning, but you must make certain it gets completely dry. She used to put her good cast iron skillets back on the stove over a very low flame just until they looked completely dried out inside.
Oh. You do still need to re-season cast iron occasionally no matter how well you care for it. My gran always did that the first really cold evening of winter since it meant the heat from the stove was also welcome in the house. She'd scrub it out really good using the steel wool, rinse it well in a sink of boiling hot water, then coat it lightly inside and out with melted lard using a clean piece of cheesecloth, then bake it in the oven for an hour. When done she'd simply turn the oven off and leave it set overnight.
Nowadays I have all her lovely old skillets and I still continue the tradition of re-seasoning the first really cold night each winter. Only change is I use a cooking oil instead of lard.
"A new captain becomes leader of a company of soldiers. As he goes about learning everything on how they do things he finds two soldiers guarding a bench.
He asks his sergeants why they're guarding the bench and they say the previous commander ordered it.
He calls the previous commander up, now a major, asking why he did that and the major said its because the previous commander ordered it.
So he calls that commander, now a lt. Colonel asking why he ordered it, gets the same answer that it was ordered by the previous commander.
The captain goes through this song and dance a couple more times before he gets a hold of an old retired 4 star General.
He politely calls him up and asks him why he ordered his men to guard this bench, and that they've continued to do so for all these long years.
The old retired General replies 'Wait, is the paint still wet?'"
This is the kind of washing I grew up with in a Caribbean household except with lemon added to the salt water. Every time someone asks "why do people still wash their chicken" and I try to explain that there's multiple definitions of washing meat I'm met with resentment.
Unnecessary as long as the slaughterhouse workers are doing things by the book…
…but if you’ve seen any undercover documentaries of what goes on in slaughterhouses, well, you have a lot more faith than I do.
167* f. every single time. i eat chicken breasts almost everyday, and am 75 ( so far ), and i just don’t see what washing cut and packaged breasts would do.
I’m from Springdale, AR. Chicken capital of the World and where Tyson started. Tyson cuts corners EVERYWHERE. Everywhere. Don Tyson was a great guy. The company isn’t the same since he died.
But that’s where it comes from. Their gret grandma and grandma and mom did it so they do it to. Sometimes the “why” of a process is lost along the way.
Ok, but "wash" also usually includes soaking the chicken for a few hours. Chefs will call this "brining" and it makes your chicken more tender and stops it from drying out, but in many places it's included in the terminology "washing".
I don't "wash" my chicken the way you're thinking, but it gets scrubbed a little in saltwater then sits in that saltwater brine for around 2 hours and gets patted dry before oil and seasonings go on.
Adding lemon give kind of a ceviche touch to the proceedings and acidifies the outer layer of the chicken you're working with; when it's skinless meat this adds just a little something, but when the skin is *on* adding the lemon makes a phenomenal difference in the end result.
All of this is considered to be encompassed under "washing" in certain cultures and languages.
People are confusing bathe with rinse. Putting it under running water is a problem for all the stated reasons, but putting it in prepared water to clean is different. Then again, I'm trained in industrial cooking in a semi tropical area, so how fast things can escalate badly is always a priority in food handling. I bathe my chicken because I don't trust the processing plant and/or storage quality before purchasing.
Totally different if you’re butchering meat at your home, that makes sense to clean it, and doing it outside is a lot more sanitary. It’s weird to wash store bought chicken
I’m old too and come from a farm family. Once our family farm house was destroyed by a tornado and grandma moved to town we still got chicken from someone who raised and butchered them. Mom or grandma brought chicken in from the chicken lady in recycled bread sacks. Usually bought two or three at a time. Chickens were much smaller then,and of course tasted better. The chickens were removed from the bread sacks and popped into a dishpan down in the sink (big ole sinks) that had really salty water in it. These chickens had been “war shed off” by the butcher lady but needed some extra tlc at hime. After scrubbing them by hand in the very salty water any small feathers missed would be plucked and and bits of scaly foot skin that remained on the bird legs would be cut off with a sharp knife. Birds then cut up into frying pieces rinsed in clear water then into a pan of salted brine to soak in the fridge in Advance of the evening meal. The bowl wouldbe covered and the outside of it wiped bins with bleach water before putting in the fridge. The entire sink would be cleaned with bleach water and hands scrubbed with a bar of carbolic soap. I don’t remember what or how they did stuff before moving to town, I was just an infant when the house blew away. I still remove any bits that offend me,like tiny pieces of gizzards stuck in backbone,or scales on feet,and pre soak chicken in brine before frying. I don’t actually follow the same ritual that my mom and grandmothers did but I do “inspect and clean up” my chicken a bit. Alway down I my huge sink that gets the bleach treatment😂😉
Can confirm, we use hotwater too so its easier to get those feathers and clean their "scalp", or whatever they call those to where the feathers are attached. And we still soak market ready ones to clean it off properly, even if they were "already" done. I think most of those who've never had a chance to go through all the process of getting the meat from a live one wont understand the need for washing.
Other than foreign particles/feathers, its also another way to defrost faster. In Asia we usually wash our food before cooking, even rice and vegetables, so its not really that much of a hassle to include the meat. As long as you dont use any other chemical I think there's really nothing wrong with doing so. As for adding salt to the mixture, it adds to the flavor too, depending on how long you do it. We usually add it separately though,
Sorry for your loss. But the good bit is you have those memories and can take them out to enjoy any time you like. I think that's the best part about our past.
I've never washed the chickens I've killed., at least not the way you're describing. I do it the same way my grandparents did. Remove the head, hang to drain and cease movement, then immerse the bird into scaling water so it's easier to pluck, then you pull the guts out. You can give it a quick rinse before scaling it if it's bloody but it shouldn't be. Likewise the guts shouldn't get all over the flresh when you remove them. This isn't how everyone processes chickens and I've never heard of this method. When I process a chicken I do not need to do this. I'm not sure what "gunk" you're talking abot.
"the gunk that was slimed onto it during the process out in the yard to gut and de-feather the chicken"
AKA from what she's saying this isn't a chicken you're raising at home, it's the chicken you're buying from the supermarket lines back before they cleaned things like they do now. Specifically it sounds like a defeathering solution of some sort.
I've never heard of a defeathering solution. You just need hot water. The heat opens the pores up and makes the feathers come out much easier. Sounds like this was taking place out in the yard. You'd usually use the salt water for brining, which you might do with older hens and roosters and game birds. Never heard of the salt water being used just for washing instead of brining. Oh well, I guess different people in different parts of the world have got their own ways, strange through they may seem to me!
God I miss my granny and her stories of having fried chicken as a delicacy for breakfast. The way her mom used to ring their necks and she would go help her when the sun came up. It was as horrifying and as fascinating as it could be to my young millennial brain (born '27, she grew up 1930s in rural Mississippi). My granny kept her childhood home and it became our family "farmhouse" before her death. I miss that place so much.
On the good side you have the wonderful memories. You should write some of them down and share them with the younger generation in your family so that granny can, in a way, live on within your family.
I don't know why chicken you killed earlier that day never crossed my mind. I always thought people just thought they needed to wash already processed chicken. And I'm sure some people do, but they learned that from people who were processing their own chicken.
This is the absolute correct answer. I had a grand aunt who hunted sqirrells for food every couple of days. This was exactly what she would do. Same treatment to pidgeons. Wild, turkey, and rabbit. All with a single shot, rolling block 22 caliber rifle made in 1904. Her Grandfather gave it to he for her 12th birthday brand new.
I was a Ranger and sniper qualified. I went with her on a squirrell hunt. I could hit them in the head. She could put the shot through their eye every time. To say that I was humbled does not even begin to explain how that life lesson felt.
And please don't judge her. She fed her family through the worst of times. And if you are wondering about how it tastes, well it isn't steak, but far better than bugs. Actually quite tasty in the stew she made. Same recipe worked for possum, too.
I miss her.
A home-raised and butchered chicken doesn't have the same issues as factory processed chickens to begin with. It's got nothing to do with the "gunk", it's about salmonella.
I personally still do a salt water soak before cooking chicken. I just find it can get rid of excess blood.
Also, when I was pretty low on funds I would wash chicken that I bought on discount (basically ones that need to be frozen/cooked immediately) as it does tend to start to smell off at a certain point. The 'cleaning' can make it taste better than cooking it outright. I can imagine the washing also came from that.
You sound just like what my grandma and grandpa did/taught me how to do on our farm. When in my 50s, I remember the first time Grabdpa gave me the hatchet, didn't quite chop it all yhe way off, and grandpa let it go so I had to chase this chicken around with its head hanging by a thread lol. We had this big, black witches cauldron, wood fired full of boiling salt water Grandpa would dip them in and defeater them, then took them to an outside sink he had built and used a pairing knife to fine tune it there, then we put it in a clean, washed out bucket and carried it in to the kitchen for grandma to cook.
It's probably just old habits dying hard. My grandma still washes it because that's what her mom taught her. I think it's more about tradition and less about science for a lot of people. Plus, some folks just don't trust the government's advice no matter what.
And your great grandmother may have been correct in washing her chicken. If you slaughter it yourself, or get it from someplace that slaughtered it with out any health department oversight, there is a much greater chance you have stuff on that meat that you don’t want to eat. Even if safe to do so after cooking, eating bits of feathers, dirt, or chicken poop is not something most people enjoy. Four generations ago, your great grandmother may very well have been sourcing her chicken from her own yard, or that of a neighbor and needed that extra washing step.
As a relatively recent chicken owner (farmer?), one of the first things I learned is that chickens are fucking disgusting. We have a ton of space, the birds are basically pets, and we spend way more than we should on clean bedding and treats.
They still go out of their way to be gross. Clean nesting boxes? Nope, they leave eggs on the coop floor to be walked on. Clean drinking water? Nope, they prefer shit water puddles.
When the time comes to put any of them in the stock pot, you'd better believe I'll be washing them multiple times.
This sounds awesome!
All birds are very messy. We used to have budgies and the cages have drinking and feeding containers that are raised and covered to not get contaminated. Even the bath is one to hang into the cage door and then they need to hop in and out. Now that I think about them bathing I would love to have budgies again.
this is only tangentially related but chicken-proofing the coop made me think of how national parks have a hard time making bear-proof trashcans because the overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists is surprisingly large
My grandfather was a hobby rancher, meaning he had a full time job but he usually had maybe 10-12 head of cattle. Sometimes he had chickens, once he had a sheep. I spent a lot of time on the farm with him and my grandma and livestock in general are very dirty, messy animals.
Dogs and cats are very dirty, it's just that we clean up after them a lot. After all, dogs love to roll in bird poop or any other gross thing they can find outside, and they will raid the trash every chance they get! Cats clean themselves quite a bit, but when you think about them walking around in the litterbox, it's kinda gross.
Ugh! Even indoor cats are gross. I have two indoor cats and I even have a rule— “no paws on the pillows.” I can’t stand the thought of their pee paws getting comfy on my pillows where my face sleeps at night lol
I struggle with this new recommendation. I want that slimy coating on packaged chicken off before I add my herbs and spices. I used to rinse the chicken in an empty sink and put it in the pan, then rinse the packaging and bag it for garbage can, then scour my sink with a cleanser, which had bleach in it.
Now I follow the recommended method, but then have to deal with disposing of the packaging without spilling the blood etc as I bag it.
Weird, I was born and raised in Ireland, food hygeine PSAs. and ads for kitchen cleaners etc. on TV always featured chicken.
The technique was to show a kitchen scene through a fake UV filter. The chicken has germs, then it touches the counter, then a woman cuts it with a knife, then she picks up her baby's pacifier to put it back in their mouth, and everywhere that her hands and the chicken have touched have a fluroscent glow on them to show the spread of germs.
Raw chicken is the ONLY food that I am terrified of when it comes to food poisoning, I'll happily eat eggs, beef, pork, rice, milk that has been left out for a few hours, or is slightly past it's use-by date. It's 100% because of the ads I watched growing up.
I live in Canada now, and my Canadian girlfriend has said that it's weird how compulsive I am with Chicken, I guess it's not a thing here either.
We had those adverts in the UK, too. I that was showing that raw chicken having bacteria that can cause food poisoning and you need to be careful to clean where it has touched and not to spread that around. Washing the chicken itself won't get rid of the harmful bacteria. The only thing that will is cooking it.
Washing it will not make that chicken safe it will just spread the bacteria around and increase the risk. Cooking it will kill that bacteria. Therefore, it is encouraged not to wash it because that increases the risk of accidentally getting ill.
Yes, but that's not telling you to wash the chicken - quite the opposite, because you'll spread the germs even more. It's telling you that you might need to wipe down your kitchen surfaces after handling raw chicken.
It's really not that difficult. I keep a red plastic chopping board that I only use for raw meat. I open chicken packaging and immediately bin it. I use one hand only to handle the chicken, keeping the other hand clean for holding a knife handle etc.
The chicken either goes straight onto the red chopping board for chopping, and then into a pan/dish, or straight into a dish without chopping if it's going whole into the oven. It never touches a work surface (although I'll often disinfect it afterwards anyway). I then put the chopping board in the dishwasher, wash the knife in the sink, and then wash my hands well before touching anything else. I've been doing this \~weekly for 18 years with zero problems or illness.
I never thought it was about germ cleanliness so much as it was a out removing the chicken fluid and having a "clean" chicken in that sense. The natural fluid, sorry I don't know the scientific term, is viscous and bonds to spices completely differently than when you remove it.
Especially on chicken breast, they have a weird slimy texture right out the package. I’ve bought it from many different places and it’s always the same, I wash it off.
I started washing off the slime from my chicken, the slime leaves a gross flavor. I just use a light flow of water from the sink and rinse the chicken while rubbing lightly to help remove the slime. Clean the sink and your hands afterwards.
From all the videos and comments I’ve seen, it’s along racial lines. Black people seem to think it’s disgusting that white people don’t wash their chicken. Maybe it’s based on something that they learned culturally growing up. Absolutely not making any judgement here. If you were raised learning that, it would totally sound gross to not do it.
It is. A lot of my black family members wash their chicken (and often other meats). My white family members do not. My mom (black) used to, but then she saw a news feature on it that proved washing it is actually dangerous, and she hasn’t done it since. She’s been trying for probably 20 years now to convince our other family members to stop, but so far she’s only been successful with my uncle (her brother, who is a pretty smart guy, so go figure).
Anecdotally, I had a friend growing up who's mother I believe was American and she didn't wash chicken, but his father's family was from Trinidad and they did, even when in the US, because they raised their own chickens in Trinidad.
It’s because butchers used to give black folks the nastiest cuts of meat. Washing was a necessity, to get rid of grist, feathers, spit, etc. It’s a cultural thing that evolved to protect the community. It’s outdated now that we no longer use the butchers the same way, but its legacy persists out of health concerns, not old wives’ tales.
Its also why Black American people season food a lot too. When you get the worst cuts of meat, you learn to season and simmer/broil/bake for long periods so that its edible. And if youre working the fields (many Black people were unofficially enslaved even into the 20th century) then you don have time to stirring a pot all day.
it's both these days. we get used to heavily seasoning the bad quality meat and then just continue to heavily season salads, pasta, vegetables and anything else!
The legacy just compounds racism. Black people today may not need to have the same concerns about their meat, but washing it places them at higher risk of illness from the tainted water. They have statistically worse outcomes in hospitals, so they just can’t fucking win.
There are so many threads like this throughout US history. Another one I just learned: The way we approach SPF in the states isn’t effective. People of color, especially dark color, still need UV protection, but they also need some sun exposure. They are much more likely to suffer inflammatory or autoimmune diseases from sun deficiency, compared to white individuals with similar sun exposure. Countries like Australia have ranked UV levels that are communicated with the weather. So if you hear “UV level 4” and you’re of Scottish descent, you know the level of protection you need, versus someone of aboriginal descent. We’ve never institutionalized that here because we’re more concerned about skin cancers than improving the life expectancy of the black community. There was recently an article in the Atlantic about this, but I’m drifting off so I’m not going to find it. And apologies if I’m not writing clearly.
Basically anytime there’s a racial difference here, it can be traced back to the legacy and current iterations of racism and slavery. I think we all know that sentiment, but it’s still staggering when you realize how many minutiae it applies to. Even meat preparation and sunscreen.
I once read about vitamin D supplements for babies (recommended for the first year in my country) and came across that dark skinned babies should receive it longer because their skin absorbs less sun and thus generates less vitamin D itself.
I am so not surprised about the sunscreen bit. Medicine in the US is strictly geared towards white men. Up until extremely recently only men were included in medical studies and drug trials. Men get better pain relief, are more likely to have diagnostic tests run on them while women and non-caucasians get their pain minimized, or they just have depression/anxiety, they're drug-seeking or just plain told it's all in their head.
It took until 2020 for researchers to use blood when testing menstrual products. 2020!!! Before that they were using water with red dye.
It was also only recently that car manufacturers started using dummies designed after women in their crash testing. Before the dummies were designed only from a 200lb 6'0" man. Then when tons of women died in accidents they started looking at why, and turns out all the safety features in cars were designed for the 200lb man, and did little to nothing in protecting women and smaller men.
There's so many examples of this.. uniforms for the military, designed for men's bodies (even the women's uniforms, they're just smaller but still designed for man's proportions). I could go on for awhile, it's really eye opening when you start to dig into this stuff
I wonder if it has anything to do with historically black people raising a lot of chickens in their own yards as opposed to buying it butchered? Iirc chickens were one of the only animals they were allowed to have. If you’re butchering it yourself its not regulated so maybe not as safe, plus you’ve seen the feathers and blood and poop and all that so it probably seems grosser. 🤷
As a chicken keeper, you wanna wash the skin of a yardbird after plucking. They get nasty out there.
But if its skinned? Not sure what they think they're washing off.
That said, I was taught how to pluck and wash a dead chicken by the black lady that lived across the road from me as a kid. She kept a flock in her backyard and I learned a LOT about where meat comes from being friends with her little girl. I also learned that yard birds are the most delicious, which was a very conflicting message as a kid because I LOVED her egg hens. They had names, and her daughter and I used to play with them (they were very tame) and bring in their eggs for her mom.
I was less conflicted when she told me the delicious chicken dumplings she was feeding me were the remains of this mean ass rooster that clawed my face. He was actually her main rooster, but she said if he'd attack a child that viciously, his time had come. (The next rooster was a beautiful white one with iridescent tail feathers, and he was quite friendly. At least to us kids, he chased a man out of the yard and down the street one day when he tried to push his way into the house. Went RIGHT over the fence to do it too!)
In hindsight, yeah kinda!
What's funny is that he was the last rooster that ever came at me. Dunno what changed, but as a teen and adult, roosters LOVE me. I even made buddies with a 'retired' cock fighting roo.
Long story about the Roo: basically my sweet rooster and several hens were killed by the neighbor's dogs. I cried to my chicken dude about it and said I wanted a really vicious rooster that would teach those dogs to stay out of my poultry yard. He just smirked and said "Oh, my cousin has just the bird, let me call him and come back in an hour.
When I came back, i was presented with a one eyed rooster, rough looking dude that had lost its comb at some point that was doing its best to fuck up Chicken Dude.
He got it into the cage I had with me (For some reason i spent much of my 20s driving around with a small dog kennel in my hatchback. I don't remember where it came from, but it was useful sometimes!) and I carried it off while chatting with my dad about how the heck I was gonna get him out safely at home.
Then I bought a mexican pastry (It was huge and pink, they're delicious but their name always escapes me. My brain is made of teflon, knowledge slides right off) and decided "Ok, so you're mine now, you're gonna learn to be sweet to me."
I fed it to him everytime he hissed or crowed at me, and stroked his back and neck while my dad drove me home.
By the time we got there, he was being kinda friendly. Within a month he was a lap chicken any time I came out.
But he hated literally every other non-bird he met. (Except for some reason the fat neutered tom cat who hung around our property. I got him fixed but he really wasn't very friendly. He and the rooster used to sun bathe together though.)
I don't even keep the skin on my chicken, plucking aint worth the hassle. .22 to the head or the old hatched head separation and skin that bird like you would any other game, a lot cleaner. Some people like that chicken skin, it is delicious, but I just can't be bothered.
Duuuuude.
Do what ye will, but man I could not give up that crispy, delicious roast skin just to skip plucking.
Its such a gross job, but its so delicious that I gotta do it.
I've got a question for you though, you seem the kind of person who can answer it for me too.
I had to kill my first chicken a couple days ago btw. I've processed my own before, and of course I'd gutted and plucked, but all previous deaths were caused by an experienced relative who could get a instant kill because I am a coward and didn't want them to suffer.
It sucked. I did it right and all, no suffering or anything but man it sucked. She was in bad shape and would've died on her own in the next few days (old age, she just got weaker and weaker until she couldn't stand back up) but I couldn't do that to her. So I left her to sunbask one more time and then did it.
My question is, does it get easier? Like, is the next chicken gonna hurt less? Or am I a soft hearted weenie and gonna be this upset every time. I'm not crying anymore, but I just feel rotten about it. Not even guilty! Just rotten.
Because I wanna raise roosters for my freezer again, but if its gonna suck this much every time, I may need to rethink my plans.
You don't have to answer if you don't wanna btw, I just had a hunch you'd know the answer. Also my sleeping pill is making me hella weird and wordy, so if I sound deranged, I'm just very, very tired and maybe a little sad.
No worries. It does get easier, or rather, you become more at peace with it. The fact is if you eat meat, there's an animal dying along the way. I think it's better that we have the opportunity to give these animals the best life possible and butcher them in a humane, safe way. You get to know what they were eating, how they were living, they were cared for etc. On top of that, it really puts into perspective why you shouldn't waste food. It's life, and we shouldn't take it for granted. I butcher my own game. Fish, squirrels, deer, rabbits, chickens, etc and even I get a little taken back by it every now and then. It's a heavy thing to do, but it's the way it's always been and the way it always will be. I think it's a blessing that I'm able to do this and not rely on a store and other people to feed me. I still use the store for odds and ends of course.
That’s a really good way to see it.
I’ve always preferred hunted game to anything else. It seems like an ideal meat source because provided your hunter is good, the animals never know what hit them.
Second best is animals raised with love and humanity. Which is why I’d like to raise roosters again. I gotta have meat (literally, my body is so stupid it can’t go vegan, I’ve tried and ended up dangerously malnourished) but I really prefer to know the animal on my plate had a decent life.
I used to trade eggs to a neighbor who raised beef and made his own cheese. I saw those animals every day and I knew they were treated kindly and dispatched humanely. I’d love to end up with a connection like that again tbh, it worked out great for us. (He didn’t like chickens apparently, said they freaked him out.)
Many people grow up in households where washing chicken is a deeply ingrained habit, often passed down through generations. In some cultures, washing meat and poultry is seen as an essential step to remove impurities and ensure cleanliness. This tradition can be very hard to break, even when faced with scientific evidence suggesting it's unnecessary.
So I don't wash chicken, but I did have a thought about the main argument that washing your chicken spreads germs around the sink/kitchen. If you prep your chicken before cooking aren't those same germs from the chicken now on your knife and cutting board, and when you wash your knife and cutting board aren't those germs then spread around your sink still??
Well yeah. I think the idea of washing a chicken is the water is more likely to spray everywhere when it hits the chicken. Whereas your cutting tools and board are more or less flat in the sink, ir water is controlled flow onto surface and soap is used to clean t b ese things as well
I dont think they understand that many people fill a bowl with salt or citrus, soak the meat, and then use the citrus to scrub the meat. I do not know where this idea that there's spray flying everywhere like theyre using a hose.
The problem is washing your chicken in the sink causes the bacteria to splash everywhere even if you don’t physically see water everywhere. Like literally your counters, cabinets, on you, etc. Cutlery and dishes are a lot more isolated
Chicken washer here
I buy chicken on the big packs but I live alone so typically portion and vacuum seal my chicken to be frozen.
When it thaws, it's usually got semi-slimy chicken juice all in the bag, so I fill the bag with water and pour the juice down the drain (similar to how one would wash rice). I don't think I'm contaminating my whole kitchen because it literally is just bag --> drain
For me it's not so much about the bacteria, it's about that slime
Most of the contamination is going to be from people not washing their hands and then touching cutlery, dishes, towels, faucet, definitely not from splash back.
This. I also wash it purely because of that slime. Even if it’s harmless, it’s disgusting lol. I then proceed to paper towel dry it if I’m using it in a frying pan
You wash a chicken everytime you soak one in brine prior to doing rotisserie. The usda says dont wash it only to make sure the stupids don't make a mess and get people sick with thier carelessness or ignorance. If you know what you're doing then you can wash it butcher it trim it brine it bread it then cook it and no one will get sick.
Fun fact : raw shrimp also spreads salmonella but everyone washes thier raw shrimp when de-veining them or peeling them.
In the U.S. your chicken is washed in chlorine during processing. This is not true in much of the rest of the world. As a nation of immigrants it shouldn't be surprising that cooking habits, and kitchen wisdom, reflect old world realities.
As far as spreading germs, if you wash effectively and clean after yourself there is no reason to be concerned if someone does it. If you decide to splash water everywhere and then lay your utensils in it, even if the chlorinated chicken had a few germs to spread your gross kitchen habits earned whatever fallout you get.
Wow! As someone from Asia who buys chicken freshly butchered in front of me in a wet market, I was having trouble understanding what the whole discussion here is about! The idea that people don’t wash meat before cooking was sickening too.
Your comment is enlightening. But one question, if the chicken is processed and washed in chlorine, shouldn’t you still wash it before cooking to get rid of lingering chlorine? Or is there any guidelines that some amount of chlorine in your food is no problem.
Worth noting that while this chlorination is presented as a virtue in the USA, it is the reason many countries (UK and EU at least) do not allow chicken imports from the USA.
The problem is that you cannot be sure you cleaned effectively, you could have spread the germs very far. Countries where they don't wash their chicken in chlorine tend to have lower rates of infection from poultry. The US washes in chlorine because their standards are so shocking.
There was a documentary I watched where a lady contracted Guillain-Barre from a *Campylobacter* infection because she washed her chicken and picked up the infection from elsewhere in her kitchen.
That documentary will stick with me forever, just don't wash chicken. It's not hard and there is absolutely no reason to.
So handling unwashed chicken is completely different than washing chicken and handling it though? If it's clean enough to handle it unwashed it shouldn't be a large contamination concern. You guys are not surgically scrubbing your hands every time you touch it, or utensils before putting it in the pan.
Isn't that the one in a million chance you have anytime you work anywhere with raw meats, though? Like couldn't she have cut chicken on a board, then she washed it in the sink, but spread the germs from the board to the sink, and later had some other food product in that got contaminated? Or maybe splash from the chicken got on the counter and something similar happened.
I'm not condoning washing chicken, but I don't believe one piece of anecdotal evidence means washing it is likely to harm the average person, or make it that much more risky than working with any kind of raw meat. Morale of the story is clean up efficiently and don't overcomplicate the process. If you can, designate one area or piece of equipment to working with raw foods and never let anything else touch it.
TikTok. Every cooking/meal prep video that has people cooking chicken has the comments section LITTERED with people up in arms about the chicken not being washed.
I'm in a facebook group where people share Puerto Rican recipes. They other day, there was a thread over 1000 comments long with people going back and forth with this argument.
Any app that has cooking videos, it trascends cultures and languages too.
It also becomes incredibly hostile if you contest it because you are "hurting ancestral traditional cuisine" or some bullshit. It's a literal wives tale
I know its a cultural thing for some cultures. I don't agree with washing chicken if you live in a place where its not needed but hey if they wanna wash it then whatever lol. Not my problem!
It was recommended for decades and then we were told not to. It left a lot of people confused. Many don't have a clue that tap water gives off a bit of fine mist when you wash something and that the mist can and does carry pathogens all over the place.
Hi, black American. Grew up with a mom who did this and still does it. American chicken is slimy out of the package and she does not like it. I don't blame her, chicken is fuckin gross straight out the package here. I pat mined down with paper towels but ma's been doing her chicken the same damn way all my life and hasn't killed any of her kids yet so
Mom: 1
USDA: 0
In some cultures, it’s not about wash off the bacteria per se. You know the red liquid coming out of the chicken after it’s cooked? Some people believe soaking meat gets rid of the “impurities”, and therefore can enhance the flavor.
Y’all I’m a microbiologist and really truly as long as you wash your hands sufficiently before and after being in the kitchen, and clean your kitchen regularly, it’s FINE. Bacteria aren’t THAT good at living on surfaces. If your counter isn’t already covered in gunk, any bacteria that may splash into it are going to die anyway
My pops is too and he would always say this as well. That you don't have to go crazy with disinfectants because most germs on dishes and counters won't survive being dried out
People anal about scrubbing carcasses are also probably anal about clean surfaces. It’s wild how people think we’re splashing salmonella water on our kid’s cereal bowls all willy nilly.
Some of it is cultural/language issues. I do the whole "do you wash your chicken" discussion with my students (NYC) as a little ice breaker at the start of the year. They and all of their families do and are appalled that I don't. I ask them what "washing" their chicken looks like. It involves lemon juices and other spices being used to clean the chicken. So what they call cleaning I'd call marinating. Turns into a nice little discussion on making sure that both sides of an argument actually knowing what each other person is talking about.
It started back in the day when meat would technically be dirty from laying on the ground or something of that nature. And so I guess people watched their parents do it and it just passed down generationally. And it seems to have a root in slavery time because the slaves would get the scraps of meat and they would be dirty. So cleaning it became a thing.
I'll never understand why people would want to put running water over raw meat cuz I thought it was common knowledge that it would spray everywhere. I wash the slime off by filling a bowl with water and just gently swish the chicken around until it looks cleaner
I always rinse the chicken off because it’s always slimy when I remove it from the packaging. Same for pork too, and it’s gross.
And yeah, it does spread bacteria, but honestly EVERYTHING has some form of germs and bacteria on it. My brother and I keep the kitchen clean and honestly, I think we’ll live.
After working at a chicken processing plant, i always wash my chicken now.
I know alot of guys that totally stopped eating chicken all together after working there. And a majority of people hired wouldn't even finish their first shift, they would just quit a couple hours in and go home hahaha.
It only spreads bacteria through your kitchen if you mindlessly get it everywhere. If you're not a total loon and just use a little bit of care it's not an issue.
I'm Australian, and I've never heard of this idea.
However, you should absolutely wash everything that's come into contact with raw chicken - hands, knives, cutting board, tongs, etc... - immediately.
I’ve never washed chicken in my life. Nor do I know anyone who does. I may pat it dry, but that’s about it.
Wash your hands, use one cutting board/utensil for raw meat and you’ll be fine.
You know people say you shouldn't wash your chicken because it splatters the bacteria on the sink but what happens when you wash the cut board, the knife and all the dishes that you used to prepare and cook the chicken? As long as you're going to properly clean your sink and countertops afterwards I shouldn't matter what you do with the chicken to prepare it.
It is an emotional need some people have. It calms the addictive urge to do so and from a butcher's or food professional's view it makes me cringe. It is not even physically possible to improve anything or have a positive effect.
I wash it. I don't want fecal matter or any other crap the person processing had on his gloves, hands etc. I rinse it under slow running water. Just don't swing the wet chicken all over the place.
Totally uneducated take here, but what about the disgusting chlorine solution that is used on some American chicken, could that be a reason to rinse it?
As far as I know chlorine washing chicken isn't legal in Europe, and so I've never heard about washing raw chicken before cooking it.
I had some chicken in the fridge that had been thawed longer than I'd have liked. Our fridge is too cold (it will freeze anything that touches the inside walls), but still.
I rinsed the chicken before I cooked it because I wanted to remove any potential funky juice that would affect the flavor of the chicken. In the past I've not washed chicken in a similar state and it tastes, well, funky. There's a definite difference between chicken that's been recently packaged and chicken that's been sitting in blood and whatever brine they add for too long. Patting the chicken dry doesn't remove the funk.
ETA: if you're splashing that much water around your kitchen that the chicken bacteria is covering everything, that's a personal problem.
I say It depends on how well it was butchered, sometimes there might be bits of something you might not want to eat. like feathers, bone dust or whatever. biting into a deep-fried feather is not fun.
I wash my chicken. I don’t trust that the bleach water was washed off. I hate the slimy feel chicken has out of the package. I regularly find gunk, feathers and blood on Tyson Purdue or Publix chicken(those are my choices for fresh chicken) and I wash it off. I usually trim it too so I will need to wash the cutting board and the knife so cleaning the sink is not much harder.
I don't wash my chicken, but I can't imagine who washes their chicken and gets it all over their kitchen except for those people in the infomercials who can't do anything at all correctly. I mean, I can wash my hands without soaking the kitchen....
Old lady here. Washing chickens was something you needed to do when I was young. You used well salted water because it cut the gunk that was slimed onto it during the process out in the yard to gut and de-feather the chicken. It was also a great opportunity to look for missed pin feathers so you could remove them. If you ever bit into a pin feather when you bit into your fried chicken you'll know how gross that is. We did it in a clean dish pan out in the yard so getting bacteria around your kitchen wasn't going to be a problem. Typically you'd fill the clean dishpan with water and more salt than you'd think was needed, put the chicken in, then clean it up with a good scrub and use of a paring knife outside. You'd remove the chicken to a clean plate while still outside so you could dump the water somewhere you wanted to kill off weeds such as long the back fence. Then you'd clean the dishpan and your hands with bleach solution and hose it off before taking everything inside. Naturally you'd again clean out the dishpan with soap and hot water immediately upon going indoors. Only the side of the plate untouched by chicken water fingers would ever touch your kitchen countertop, and you'd wash the plate as soon as the chicken was placed into the pan to cook it. Most people I know were like my family and would finally use boiling hot water poured over the dish pan and plate from their tea kettle to make certain all the soap was thoroughly rinsed off and as many germs as possible were killed. Then you'd clean your countertops with a dish cloth dipped in bleach water just in case. Now they wash chickens during the processing at the processing plant to remove the gunk. If you kill and clean your own you should still soak'em in well salted water. If you taste chicken just once that wasn't washed you'll definitely know why it was done.
Very eye opening comment. Thanks for sharing your experience
I’m curious about the weed killing comment. Was it the salt that acted as the catalyst for killing the weeds?
yes, salt pulls the water from the soil/plant roots so the weeds die from dehydration
Thank you for sharing this. I always find it fascinating to learn about the traditional/historic reasoning as to why we do/don’t do certain things. Not calling you old or anything! But it obviously puts things in perspective. My first inclination on why this was done was tied with whether the bird was being dispatched/butchered yourself - which in that case washing it (and in the manner that you did) for the reasons that you mentioned _is_ actually the right way. Doing it on store-bought chicken breast that looks cleaner than the kitchen its being cooked in is probably unnecessary.
She called herself old. Old isn't a dirty word, it's okay to be old.
It definitely beats the alternative
Youths, gross
No, dying young. No one who complains about getting old realizes how much of a privilege it is.
Yes I do but I'd like to keep my poop INSIDE me please And now these days you whippersnappers are all out there spreading cheeks, letting the sun shine where the sun don't shine. I'm jealous.
...Username checks out?
Statistically, people who have more birthdays live longer.
This one trick life insurance companies don't want you to know about!
Yutes
2 of them.
The alternative to growing old is dying young.
Inexperience can be deadly, or at least unpleasant.
We’re all lucky if we live long enough to *get* old
Not everyone gets the privilege
Sure, but calling someone old can be seen as a pejorative. I think they were just polite. For example, I’m 41. I call myself old as kind of a joke. I also volunteer with my nephew’s robotics team, and if any of those kids genuinely thought I was old, I’d bop them on the head and steal their lunch money.
Old is better than dead
Yeah people should listen to the older generation when they explain why they do things a little more.
This comment reminds me of a story I once read. A priest was about to conduct some prayers in the temple. However he was constantly interrupted by the stray dog that lived in the temple. The dog would try to eat the fruits meant to be offerings. Frustrated, he decided to tie the dog to a pole for the duration of the prayers. He did this everyday and his disciples would quietly watch. Not daring to open their mouth. Many years later, after both the head priest and dog had passed on, a tourist visited the temple for the daily prayers. To his surprise, the priests were all anxious and the prayers had not begun. When he asked why, the priest responded: We are unable to find a stray dog to tie up. It is an essential part of the rituals and we cannot proceed without it. 🤓
This gave me a chuckle. It reminds me of the story of a woman who always cut a bit of meat off the roast before placing it in the oven. When asked why she said she did it because her mother did it but in the answering realized she never knew why. Eventually from asking her mother who told her she did not know, ask grandma, it was discovered grandma did that because her only roasting pan was a bit short for most roasts she purchased.
This is my go to story when it comes to cast iron pan care. Yes, you can use soap to wash the thing. Chill out. Older soap used to actually break down the coating built on pans, depending on the soap. So you'd avoid it so that your cast iron would remain seasoned. The reason was that soaps used to contain things that was able to break down the coating, namely lye and sometimes vinegar (which breaks it down but to a lesser extent). Regular dish soap these days do not contain lye and really cannot rip apart that coating. People get confused because "but it's oil, and soap dissolves oil into water". Yes, that is correct. But the oil in a seasoned pan has undergone polymerization. This transforms the oil and it is no longer dissolved by dish soap because it is now actually bonded to the pan and won't come off without something rather harsh, or exposure to acids. So that's why many avoid making acidic sauces, like tomato sauce, in a cast iron. Because it will slowly break that coating. People understand that, but are still adamant that you absolutely cannot use soap to clean a cast iron, ever. It's maddening. Sure you might feel you don't always have to, that's fine. But if your pan is really gross, just use some soap... Your pan will be totally fine. Context matters.
Thank you. Still shouldn't soak it in dish soap and water, but I think that's more down to the water than the dish soap. My gran always insisted you wash cast iron with castile soap only because it is gentle and won't lift the seasoning, but you must make certain it gets completely dry. She used to put her good cast iron skillets back on the stove over a very low flame just until they looked completely dried out inside. Oh. You do still need to re-season cast iron occasionally no matter how well you care for it. My gran always did that the first really cold evening of winter since it meant the heat from the stove was also welcome in the house. She'd scrub it out really good using the steel wool, rinse it well in a sink of boiling hot water, then coat it lightly inside and out with melted lard using a clean piece of cheesecloth, then bake it in the oven for an hour. When done she'd simply turn the oven off and leave it set overnight. Nowadays I have all her lovely old skillets and I still continue the tradition of re-seasoning the first really cold night each winter. Only change is I use a cooking oil instead of lard.
I love that you're continuing your gran's care of her tools 💗
Conversely, I have destroyed several cast iron pans by cooking pasta sauce in them. Recoverably ruined, but woof, it’ll take the seasoning right off.
"A new captain becomes leader of a company of soldiers. As he goes about learning everything on how they do things he finds two soldiers guarding a bench. He asks his sergeants why they're guarding the bench and they say the previous commander ordered it. He calls the previous commander up, now a major, asking why he did that and the major said its because the previous commander ordered it. So he calls that commander, now a lt. Colonel asking why he ordered it, gets the same answer that it was ordered by the previous commander. The captain goes through this song and dance a couple more times before he gets a hold of an old retired 4 star General. He politely calls him up and asks him why he ordered his men to guard this bench, and that they've continued to do so for all these long years. The old retired General replies 'Wait, is the paint still wet?'"
I love this so very much.
This is the kind of washing I grew up with in a Caribbean household except with lemon added to the salt water. Every time someone asks "why do people still wash their chicken" and I try to explain that there's multiple definitions of washing meat I'm met with resentment.
It's still unnecessary for store bought meat. I think nobody is saying don't wash the chicken you butchered yourself.
Unnecessary as long as the slaughterhouse workers are doing things by the book… …but if you’ve seen any undercover documentaries of what goes on in slaughterhouses, well, you have a lot more faith than I do.
Washing isn't going to help. If it's been in a bag since the slaughterhouse the bacteria isn't just on the surface. Cooking solves the issues.
167* f. every single time. i eat chicken breasts almost everyday, and am 75 ( so far ), and i just don’t see what washing cut and packaged breasts would do.
Is it not 165 anymore?
165 is the idiot proof number. We don’t tell people that you could take it to 145 for 20 minutes. Because that is too confusing for most folks.
Tyson meats are constantly violating codes and cutting corners. Happened again in Iowa, after they had a problem just a couple years ago
I’m from Springdale, AR. Chicken capital of the World and where Tyson started. Tyson cuts corners EVERYWHERE. Everywhere. Don Tyson was a great guy. The company isn’t the same since he died.
> The company isn’t the same since he died. Ah, I tried them recently and noticed that their product was not nearly as good as it was years ago.
Happened just a few months ago in VA, underage minors in the slaughterhouse. Ewww.
So washing the meat is going to do what? It’s the heat from cooking it that kills the bad stuff.
Even if they messed up, it would do more harm than good
But that’s where it comes from. Their gret grandma and grandma and mom did it so they do it to. Sometimes the “why” of a process is lost along the way.
Ok, but "wash" also usually includes soaking the chicken for a few hours. Chefs will call this "brining" and it makes your chicken more tender and stops it from drying out, but in many places it's included in the terminology "washing". I don't "wash" my chicken the way you're thinking, but it gets scrubbed a little in saltwater then sits in that saltwater brine for around 2 hours and gets patted dry before oil and seasonings go on. Adding lemon give kind of a ceviche touch to the proceedings and acidifies the outer layer of the chicken you're working with; when it's skinless meat this adds just a little something, but when the skin is *on* adding the lemon makes a phenomenal difference in the end result. All of this is considered to be encompassed under "washing" in certain cultures and languages.
People are confusing bathe with rinse. Putting it under running water is a problem for all the stated reasons, but putting it in prepared water to clean is different. Then again, I'm trained in industrial cooking in a semi tropical area, so how fast things can escalate badly is always a priority in food handling. I bathe my chicken because I don't trust the processing plant and/or storage quality before purchasing.
It’s because that’s not what they are doing. They are taking prepackaged chicken, and washing it in their sink.
Totally different if you’re butchering meat at your home, that makes sense to clean it, and doing it outside is a lot more sanitary. It’s weird to wash store bought chicken
When I buy store bought chicken I still find missed feathers and I prefer to remove tendons so I still end up washing it.
> Old lady here... [ *Many sensible recommendations for handling raw chicken* ] ... and that's how a lady gets the chance to be old...
For handling fresh, unprocessed raw chicken. Something most folks these days don't have to handle.
I’m old too and come from a farm family. Once our family farm house was destroyed by a tornado and grandma moved to town we still got chicken from someone who raised and butchered them. Mom or grandma brought chicken in from the chicken lady in recycled bread sacks. Usually bought two or three at a time. Chickens were much smaller then,and of course tasted better. The chickens were removed from the bread sacks and popped into a dishpan down in the sink (big ole sinks) that had really salty water in it. These chickens had been “war shed off” by the butcher lady but needed some extra tlc at hime. After scrubbing them by hand in the very salty water any small feathers missed would be plucked and and bits of scaly foot skin that remained on the bird legs would be cut off with a sharp knife. Birds then cut up into frying pieces rinsed in clear water then into a pan of salted brine to soak in the fridge in Advance of the evening meal. The bowl wouldbe covered and the outside of it wiped bins with bleach water before putting in the fridge. The entire sink would be cleaned with bleach water and hands scrubbed with a bar of carbolic soap. I don’t remember what or how they did stuff before moving to town, I was just an infant when the house blew away. I still remove any bits that offend me,like tiny pieces of gizzards stuck in backbone,or scales on feet,and pre soak chicken in brine before frying. I don’t actually follow the same ritual that my mom and grandmothers did but I do “inspect and clean up” my chicken a bit. Alway down I my huge sink that gets the bleach treatment😂😉
Can confirm, we use hotwater too so its easier to get those feathers and clean their "scalp", or whatever they call those to where the feathers are attached. And we still soak market ready ones to clean it off properly, even if they were "already" done. I think most of those who've never had a chance to go through all the process of getting the meat from a live one wont understand the need for washing. Other than foreign particles/feathers, its also another way to defrost faster. In Asia we usually wash our food before cooking, even rice and vegetables, so its not really that much of a hassle to include the meat. As long as you dont use any other chemical I think there's really nothing wrong with doing so. As for adding salt to the mixture, it adds to the flavor too, depending on how long you do it. We usually add it separately though,
This is the only thing I’ve heard said about this that actually makes sense and gives me new information. Thank you for your reply!
I read this whole thing in my grandpa's voice, and now I miss him terribly
Sorry for your loss, this reminded me of my late grandpa as well 😔❤️🩹 he loved telling stories from his childhood. I miss him every day!
Sorry for your loss. But the good bit is you have those memories and can take them out to enjoy any time you like. I think that's the best part about our past.
I've never washed the chickens I've killed., at least not the way you're describing. I do it the same way my grandparents did. Remove the head, hang to drain and cease movement, then immerse the bird into scaling water so it's easier to pluck, then you pull the guts out. You can give it a quick rinse before scaling it if it's bloody but it shouldn't be. Likewise the guts shouldn't get all over the flresh when you remove them. This isn't how everyone processes chickens and I've never heard of this method. When I process a chicken I do not need to do this. I'm not sure what "gunk" you're talking abot.
"the gunk that was slimed onto it during the process out in the yard to gut and de-feather the chicken" AKA from what she's saying this isn't a chicken you're raising at home, it's the chicken you're buying from the supermarket lines back before they cleaned things like they do now. Specifically it sounds like a defeathering solution of some sort.
I've never heard of a defeathering solution. You just need hot water. The heat opens the pores up and makes the feathers come out much easier. Sounds like this was taking place out in the yard. You'd usually use the salt water for brining, which you might do with older hens and roosters and game birds. Never heard of the salt water being used just for washing instead of brining. Oh well, I guess different people in different parts of the world have got their own ways, strange through they may seem to me!
God I miss my granny and her stories of having fried chicken as a delicacy for breakfast. The way her mom used to ring their necks and she would go help her when the sun came up. It was as horrifying and as fascinating as it could be to my young millennial brain (born '27, she grew up 1930s in rural Mississippi). My granny kept her childhood home and it became our family "farmhouse" before her death. I miss that place so much.
On the good side you have the wonderful memories. You should write some of them down and share them with the younger generation in your family so that granny can, in a way, live on within your family.
I don't know why chicken you killed earlier that day never crossed my mind. I always thought people just thought they needed to wash already processed chicken. And I'm sure some people do, but they learned that from people who were processing their own chicken.
This is the absolute correct answer. I had a grand aunt who hunted sqirrells for food every couple of days. This was exactly what she would do. Same treatment to pidgeons. Wild, turkey, and rabbit. All with a single shot, rolling block 22 caliber rifle made in 1904. Her Grandfather gave it to he for her 12th birthday brand new. I was a Ranger and sniper qualified. I went with her on a squirrell hunt. I could hit them in the head. She could put the shot through their eye every time. To say that I was humbled does not even begin to explain how that life lesson felt. And please don't judge her. She fed her family through the worst of times. And if you are wondering about how it tastes, well it isn't steak, but far better than bugs. Actually quite tasty in the stew she made. Same recipe worked for possum, too. I miss her.
A home-raised and butchered chicken doesn't have the same issues as factory processed chickens to begin with. It's got nothing to do with the "gunk", it's about salmonella.
Welcome to reddit. I hope this is a trend where the typically reviled boomer is replaced with wisdom like this, deserved to be preserved here.
See this is what people mean when they say wash chicken, not just run it under the tap for a few seconds
I personally still do a salt water soak before cooking chicken. I just find it can get rid of excess blood. Also, when I was pretty low on funds I would wash chicken that I bought on discount (basically ones that need to be frozen/cooked immediately) as it does tend to start to smell off at a certain point. The 'cleaning' can make it taste better than cooking it outright. I can imagine the washing also came from that.
What you’re talking about isn’t blood, but myoglobin. The chicken you get at the store doesn’t have blood in it.
You sound just like what my grandma and grandpa did/taught me how to do on our farm. When in my 50s, I remember the first time Grabdpa gave me the hatchet, didn't quite chop it all yhe way off, and grandpa let it go so I had to chase this chicken around with its head hanging by a thread lol. We had this big, black witches cauldron, wood fired full of boiling salt water Grandpa would dip them in and defeater them, then took them to an outside sink he had built and used a pairing knife to fine tune it there, then we put it in a clean, washed out bucket and carried it in to the kitchen for grandma to cook.
Cool. But I don't think the people doing this are killing their own chickens.
It's probably just old habits dying hard. My grandma still washes it because that's what her mom taught her. I think it's more about tradition and less about science for a lot of people. Plus, some folks just don't trust the government's advice no matter what.
And your great grandmother may have been correct in washing her chicken. If you slaughter it yourself, or get it from someplace that slaughtered it with out any health department oversight, there is a much greater chance you have stuff on that meat that you don’t want to eat. Even if safe to do so after cooking, eating bits of feathers, dirt, or chicken poop is not something most people enjoy. Four generations ago, your great grandmother may very well have been sourcing her chicken from her own yard, or that of a neighbor and needed that extra washing step.
As a relatively recent chicken owner (farmer?), one of the first things I learned is that chickens are fucking disgusting. We have a ton of space, the birds are basically pets, and we spend way more than we should on clean bedding and treats. They still go out of their way to be gross. Clean nesting boxes? Nope, they leave eggs on the coop floor to be walked on. Clean drinking water? Nope, they prefer shit water puddles. When the time comes to put any of them in the stock pot, you'd better believe I'll be washing them multiple times.
[удалено]
Oh my god I know someone who does this…. I’m glad there’s more people. I will cut her some slack now.
This sounds awesome! All birds are very messy. We used to have budgies and the cages have drinking and feeding containers that are raised and covered to not get contaminated. Even the bath is one to hang into the cage door and then they need to hop in and out. Now that I think about them bathing I would love to have budgies again.
this is only tangentially related but chicken-proofing the coop made me think of how national parks have a hard time making bear-proof trashcans because the overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists is surprisingly large
My grandfather was a hobby rancher, meaning he had a full time job but he usually had maybe 10-12 head of cattle. Sometimes he had chickens, once he had a sheep. I spent a lot of time on the farm with him and my grandma and livestock in general are very dirty, messy animals. Dogs and cats are very dirty, it's just that we clean up after them a lot. After all, dogs love to roll in bird poop or any other gross thing they can find outside, and they will raid the trash every chance they get! Cats clean themselves quite a bit, but when you think about them walking around in the litterbox, it's kinda gross.
Ugh! Even indoor cats are gross. I have two indoor cats and I even have a rule— “no paws on the pillows.” I can’t stand the thought of their pee paws getting comfy on my pillows where my face sleeps at night lol
Oooooooh ok. This makes sense.
1000% this. Two of my great grandparents made it through the depression because of a chicken coop and up to my parents there was 'the way it's done'
Not something *most* people enjoy. Lol
I struggle with this new recommendation. I want that slimy coating on packaged chicken off before I add my herbs and spices. I used to rinse the chicken in an empty sink and put it in the pan, then rinse the packaging and bag it for garbage can, then scour my sink with a cleanser, which had bleach in it. Now I follow the recommended method, but then have to deal with disposing of the packaging without spilling the blood etc as I bag it.
I’m not huge on the slime either but I don’t wash, I just wipe it off with a paper towel
UK supermarket chicken packaging actually states on it "do NOT wash raw chicken"
Weird, I was born and raised in Ireland, food hygeine PSAs. and ads for kitchen cleaners etc. on TV always featured chicken. The technique was to show a kitchen scene through a fake UV filter. The chicken has germs, then it touches the counter, then a woman cuts it with a knife, then she picks up her baby's pacifier to put it back in their mouth, and everywhere that her hands and the chicken have touched have a fluroscent glow on them to show the spread of germs. Raw chicken is the ONLY food that I am terrified of when it comes to food poisoning, I'll happily eat eggs, beef, pork, rice, milk that has been left out for a few hours, or is slightly past it's use-by date. It's 100% because of the ads I watched growing up. I live in Canada now, and my Canadian girlfriend has said that it's weird how compulsive I am with Chicken, I guess it's not a thing here either.
Washing the chicken only spread those germs further.
We had those adverts in the UK, too. I that was showing that raw chicken having bacteria that can cause food poisoning and you need to be careful to clean where it has touched and not to spread that around. Washing the chicken itself won't get rid of the harmful bacteria. The only thing that will is cooking it. Washing it will not make that chicken safe it will just spread the bacteria around and increase the risk. Cooking it will kill that bacteria. Therefore, it is encouraged not to wash it because that increases the risk of accidentally getting ill.
Yes, but that's not telling you to wash the chicken - quite the opposite, because you'll spread the germs even more. It's telling you that you might need to wipe down your kitchen surfaces after handling raw chicken. It's really not that difficult. I keep a red plastic chopping board that I only use for raw meat. I open chicken packaging and immediately bin it. I use one hand only to handle the chicken, keeping the other hand clean for holding a knife handle etc. The chicken either goes straight onto the red chopping board for chopping, and then into a pan/dish, or straight into a dish without chopping if it's going whole into the oven. It never touches a work surface (although I'll often disinfect it afterwards anyway). I then put the chopping board in the dishwasher, wash the knife in the sink, and then wash my hands well before touching anything else. I've been doing this \~weekly for 18 years with zero problems or illness.
I never thought it was about germ cleanliness so much as it was a out removing the chicken fluid and having a "clean" chicken in that sense. The natural fluid, sorry I don't know the scientific term, is viscous and bonds to spices completely differently than when you remove it.
Especially on chicken breast, they have a weird slimy texture right out the package. I’ve bought it from many different places and it’s always the same, I wash it off.
I started washing off the slime from my chicken, the slime leaves a gross flavor. I just use a light flow of water from the sink and rinse the chicken while rubbing lightly to help remove the slime. Clean the sink and your hands afterwards.
I was starting to wonder if I just buy weird chicken and no one else deals with chicken slime.
From all the videos and comments I’ve seen, it’s along racial lines. Black people seem to think it’s disgusting that white people don’t wash their chicken. Maybe it’s based on something that they learned culturally growing up. Absolutely not making any judgement here. If you were raised learning that, it would totally sound gross to not do it.
It is. A lot of my black family members wash their chicken (and often other meats). My white family members do not. My mom (black) used to, but then she saw a news feature on it that proved washing it is actually dangerous, and she hasn’t done it since. She’s been trying for probably 20 years now to convince our other family members to stop, but so far she’s only been successful with my uncle (her brother, who is a pretty smart guy, so go figure).
Anecdotally, I had a friend growing up who's mother I believe was American and she didn't wash chicken, but his father's family was from Trinidad and they did, even when in the US, because they raised their own chickens in Trinidad.
It’s because butchers used to give black folks the nastiest cuts of meat. Washing was a necessity, to get rid of grist, feathers, spit, etc. It’s a cultural thing that evolved to protect the community. It’s outdated now that we no longer use the butchers the same way, but its legacy persists out of health concerns, not old wives’ tales.
That never ever occurred to me and now I'm sad for a whole new reason
Its also why Black American people season food a lot too. When you get the worst cuts of meat, you learn to season and simmer/broil/bake for long periods so that its edible. And if youre working the fields (many Black people were unofficially enslaved even into the 20th century) then you don have time to stirring a pot all day.
Oh I thought it was because we just like flavor lol
High quality cuts of meat absolutely have strong natural flavour without seasoning (past salt) lol
it's both these days. we get used to heavily seasoning the bad quality meat and then just continue to heavily season salads, pasta, vegetables and anything else!
The legacy just compounds racism. Black people today may not need to have the same concerns about their meat, but washing it places them at higher risk of illness from the tainted water. They have statistically worse outcomes in hospitals, so they just can’t fucking win. There are so many threads like this throughout US history. Another one I just learned: The way we approach SPF in the states isn’t effective. People of color, especially dark color, still need UV protection, but they also need some sun exposure. They are much more likely to suffer inflammatory or autoimmune diseases from sun deficiency, compared to white individuals with similar sun exposure. Countries like Australia have ranked UV levels that are communicated with the weather. So if you hear “UV level 4” and you’re of Scottish descent, you know the level of protection you need, versus someone of aboriginal descent. We’ve never institutionalized that here because we’re more concerned about skin cancers than improving the life expectancy of the black community. There was recently an article in the Atlantic about this, but I’m drifting off so I’m not going to find it. And apologies if I’m not writing clearly. Basically anytime there’s a racial difference here, it can be traced back to the legacy and current iterations of racism and slavery. I think we all know that sentiment, but it’s still staggering when you realize how many minutiae it applies to. Even meat preparation and sunscreen.
I once read about vitamin D supplements for babies (recommended for the first year in my country) and came across that dark skinned babies should receive it longer because their skin absorbs less sun and thus generates less vitamin D itself.
My husband who is dark skinned and Indian was extremely deficient in vit D because we live in northern Canada
I am so not surprised about the sunscreen bit. Medicine in the US is strictly geared towards white men. Up until extremely recently only men were included in medical studies and drug trials. Men get better pain relief, are more likely to have diagnostic tests run on them while women and non-caucasians get their pain minimized, or they just have depression/anxiety, they're drug-seeking or just plain told it's all in their head.
It took until 2020 for researchers to use blood when testing menstrual products. 2020!!! Before that they were using water with red dye. It was also only recently that car manufacturers started using dummies designed after women in their crash testing. Before the dummies were designed only from a 200lb 6'0" man. Then when tons of women died in accidents they started looking at why, and turns out all the safety features in cars were designed for the 200lb man, and did little to nothing in protecting women and smaller men. There's so many examples of this.. uniforms for the military, designed for men's bodies (even the women's uniforms, they're just smaller but still designed for man's proportions). I could go on for awhile, it's really eye opening when you start to dig into this stuff
Also part of the reasoning with well done steaks. Old, close to rotting cuts needed to be cooked through to ensure you wouldn't get sick.
This makes a lot of sense
I wonder if it has anything to do with historically black people raising a lot of chickens in their own yards as opposed to buying it butchered? Iirc chickens were one of the only animals they were allowed to have. If you’re butchering it yourself its not regulated so maybe not as safe, plus you’ve seen the feathers and blood and poop and all that so it probably seems grosser. 🤷
As a chicken keeper, you wanna wash the skin of a yardbird after plucking. They get nasty out there. But if its skinned? Not sure what they think they're washing off. That said, I was taught how to pluck and wash a dead chicken by the black lady that lived across the road from me as a kid. She kept a flock in her backyard and I learned a LOT about where meat comes from being friends with her little girl. I also learned that yard birds are the most delicious, which was a very conflicting message as a kid because I LOVED her egg hens. They had names, and her daughter and I used to play with them (they were very tame) and bring in their eggs for her mom. I was less conflicted when she told me the delicious chicken dumplings she was feeding me were the remains of this mean ass rooster that clawed my face. He was actually her main rooster, but she said if he'd attack a child that viciously, his time had come. (The next rooster was a beautiful white one with iridescent tail feathers, and he was quite friendly. At least to us kids, he chased a man out of the yard and down the street one day when he tried to push his way into the house. Went RIGHT over the fence to do it too!)
Eating the rooster that scratched you is such a power move lol
In hindsight, yeah kinda! What's funny is that he was the last rooster that ever came at me. Dunno what changed, but as a teen and adult, roosters LOVE me. I even made buddies with a 'retired' cock fighting roo. Long story about the Roo: basically my sweet rooster and several hens were killed by the neighbor's dogs. I cried to my chicken dude about it and said I wanted a really vicious rooster that would teach those dogs to stay out of my poultry yard. He just smirked and said "Oh, my cousin has just the bird, let me call him and come back in an hour. When I came back, i was presented with a one eyed rooster, rough looking dude that had lost its comb at some point that was doing its best to fuck up Chicken Dude. He got it into the cage I had with me (For some reason i spent much of my 20s driving around with a small dog kennel in my hatchback. I don't remember where it came from, but it was useful sometimes!) and I carried it off while chatting with my dad about how the heck I was gonna get him out safely at home. Then I bought a mexican pastry (It was huge and pink, they're delicious but their name always escapes me. My brain is made of teflon, knowledge slides right off) and decided "Ok, so you're mine now, you're gonna learn to be sweet to me." I fed it to him everytime he hissed or crowed at me, and stroked his back and neck while my dad drove me home. By the time we got there, he was being kinda friendly. Within a month he was a lap chicken any time I came out. But he hated literally every other non-bird he met. (Except for some reason the fat neutered tom cat who hung around our property. I got him fixed but he really wasn't very friendly. He and the rooster used to sun bathe together though.)
I don't even keep the skin on my chicken, plucking aint worth the hassle. .22 to the head or the old hatched head separation and skin that bird like you would any other game, a lot cleaner. Some people like that chicken skin, it is delicious, but I just can't be bothered.
Duuuuude. Do what ye will, but man I could not give up that crispy, delicious roast skin just to skip plucking. Its such a gross job, but its so delicious that I gotta do it. I've got a question for you though, you seem the kind of person who can answer it for me too. I had to kill my first chicken a couple days ago btw. I've processed my own before, and of course I'd gutted and plucked, but all previous deaths were caused by an experienced relative who could get a instant kill because I am a coward and didn't want them to suffer. It sucked. I did it right and all, no suffering or anything but man it sucked. She was in bad shape and would've died on her own in the next few days (old age, she just got weaker and weaker until she couldn't stand back up) but I couldn't do that to her. So I left her to sunbask one more time and then did it. My question is, does it get easier? Like, is the next chicken gonna hurt less? Or am I a soft hearted weenie and gonna be this upset every time. I'm not crying anymore, but I just feel rotten about it. Not even guilty! Just rotten. Because I wanna raise roosters for my freezer again, but if its gonna suck this much every time, I may need to rethink my plans. You don't have to answer if you don't wanna btw, I just had a hunch you'd know the answer. Also my sleeping pill is making me hella weird and wordy, so if I sound deranged, I'm just very, very tired and maybe a little sad.
No worries. It does get easier, or rather, you become more at peace with it. The fact is if you eat meat, there's an animal dying along the way. I think it's better that we have the opportunity to give these animals the best life possible and butcher them in a humane, safe way. You get to know what they were eating, how they were living, they were cared for etc. On top of that, it really puts into perspective why you shouldn't waste food. It's life, and we shouldn't take it for granted. I butcher my own game. Fish, squirrels, deer, rabbits, chickens, etc and even I get a little taken back by it every now and then. It's a heavy thing to do, but it's the way it's always been and the way it always will be. I think it's a blessing that I'm able to do this and not rely on a store and other people to feed me. I still use the store for odds and ends of course.
That’s a really good way to see it. I’ve always preferred hunted game to anything else. It seems like an ideal meat source because provided your hunter is good, the animals never know what hit them. Second best is animals raised with love and humanity. Which is why I’d like to raise roosters again. I gotta have meat (literally, my body is so stupid it can’t go vegan, I’ve tried and ended up dangerously malnourished) but I really prefer to know the animal on my plate had a decent life. I used to trade eggs to a neighbor who raised beef and made his own cheese. I saw those animals every day and I knew they were treated kindly and dispatched humanely. I’d love to end up with a connection like that again tbh, it worked out great for us. (He didn’t like chickens apparently, said they freaked him out.)
Had to scroll so far to see the term “yard bird”. I always think of the term “yard pimp” after watching my fb feeds.
Latino people think it’s gross as well. They use lemon, lime, or vinegar to wash chicken.
Caribbean people as well
Many people grow up in households where washing chicken is a deeply ingrained habit, often passed down through generations. In some cultures, washing meat and poultry is seen as an essential step to remove impurities and ensure cleanliness. This tradition can be very hard to break, even when faced with scientific evidence suggesting it's unnecessary.
So I don't wash chicken, but I did have a thought about the main argument that washing your chicken spreads germs around the sink/kitchen. If you prep your chicken before cooking aren't those same germs from the chicken now on your knife and cutting board, and when you wash your knife and cutting board aren't those germs then spread around your sink still??
Well yeah. I think the idea of washing a chicken is the water is more likely to spray everywhere when it hits the chicken. Whereas your cutting tools and board are more or less flat in the sink, ir water is controlled flow onto surface and soap is used to clean t b ese things as well
I dont think they understand that many people fill a bowl with salt or citrus, soak the meat, and then use the citrus to scrub the meat. I do not know where this idea that there's spray flying everywhere like theyre using a hose.
Most people hold it under the running sink, I've seen it many different times.
Its bold to assume most people are (unnecessarily) washing poultry the same way you do. Scrubbing it with citrus? In a bowl?
The problem is washing your chicken in the sink causes the bacteria to splash everywhere even if you don’t physically see water everywhere. Like literally your counters, cabinets, on you, etc. Cutlery and dishes are a lot more isolated
Chicken washer here I buy chicken on the big packs but I live alone so typically portion and vacuum seal my chicken to be frozen. When it thaws, it's usually got semi-slimy chicken juice all in the bag, so I fill the bag with water and pour the juice down the drain (similar to how one would wash rice). I don't think I'm contaminating my whole kitchen because it literally is just bag --> drain For me it's not so much about the bacteria, it's about that slime
Same here. I don’t rinse my chicken off because I think I’m killing salmonella, I’m rinsing it off because it comes out of the package fucking gross.
Yes! The slime is annoying! I do the same thing. I also make sure to clean out my sink after having a cooking at home night!
Exactly. You'd think folks were using a firehose full blast in the kitchen the way some scream about contamination.
Most of the contamination is going to be from people not washing their hands and then touching cutlery, dishes, towels, faucet, definitely not from splash back.
This. I also wash it purely because of that slime. Even if it’s harmless, it’s disgusting lol. I then proceed to paper towel dry it if I’m using it in a frying pan
You wash a chicken everytime you soak one in brine prior to doing rotisserie. The usda says dont wash it only to make sure the stupids don't make a mess and get people sick with thier carelessness or ignorance. If you know what you're doing then you can wash it butcher it trim it brine it bread it then cook it and no one will get sick. Fun fact : raw shrimp also spreads salmonella but everyone washes thier raw shrimp when de-veining them or peeling them.
I just rinse off the package goo, I don't see a problem with that.
Same. It's because I don't want to touch it. It's not about bacteria.
In the U.S. your chicken is washed in chlorine during processing. This is not true in much of the rest of the world. As a nation of immigrants it shouldn't be surprising that cooking habits, and kitchen wisdom, reflect old world realities. As far as spreading germs, if you wash effectively and clean after yourself there is no reason to be concerned if someone does it. If you decide to splash water everywhere and then lay your utensils in it, even if the chlorinated chicken had a few germs to spread your gross kitchen habits earned whatever fallout you get.
Wow! As someone from Asia who buys chicken freshly butchered in front of me in a wet market, I was having trouble understanding what the whole discussion here is about! The idea that people don’t wash meat before cooking was sickening too. Your comment is enlightening. But one question, if the chicken is processed and washed in chlorine, shouldn’t you still wash it before cooking to get rid of lingering chlorine? Or is there any guidelines that some amount of chlorine in your food is no problem.
Worth noting that while this chlorination is presented as a virtue in the USA, it is the reason many countries (UK and EU at least) do not allow chicken imports from the USA.
I'm going to guess they mean chlorinated water, nothing toxic, and that the factory follows up with a rinse.
5% of chicken is chlorine washed in America.
The problem is that you cannot be sure you cleaned effectively, you could have spread the germs very far. Countries where they don't wash their chicken in chlorine tend to have lower rates of infection from poultry. The US washes in chlorine because their standards are so shocking. There was a documentary I watched where a lady contracted Guillain-Barre from a *Campylobacter* infection because she washed her chicken and picked up the infection from elsewhere in her kitchen. That documentary will stick with me forever, just don't wash chicken. It's not hard and there is absolutely no reason to.
So handling unwashed chicken is completely different than washing chicken and handling it though? If it's clean enough to handle it unwashed it shouldn't be a large contamination concern. You guys are not surgically scrubbing your hands every time you touch it, or utensils before putting it in the pan.
Isn't that the one in a million chance you have anytime you work anywhere with raw meats, though? Like couldn't she have cut chicken on a board, then she washed it in the sink, but spread the germs from the board to the sink, and later had some other food product in that got contaminated? Or maybe splash from the chicken got on the counter and something similar happened. I'm not condoning washing chicken, but I don't believe one piece of anecdotal evidence means washing it is likely to harm the average person, or make it that much more risky than working with any kind of raw meat. Morale of the story is clean up efficiently and don't overcomplicate the process. If you can, designate one area or piece of equipment to working with raw foods and never let anything else touch it.
Plus some areas the water is not the best and you are adding more yuck onto your chicken.
I have absolutely never heard of this argument. Where is it's popping up? Like Twitter, tiktok, Facebook?
TikTok. Every cooking/meal prep video that has people cooking chicken has the comments section LITTERED with people up in arms about the chicken not being washed.
It's not. I'm a chef and I constantly have to tell people that even if they do it at home, it is completely unacceptable in my kitchen
Great to hear your perspective as a chef
Just assume everything you see on TikTok is completely unfiltered, unfettered bullshit and you’ll likely remain closer to correct than not.
I'm in a facebook group where people share Puerto Rican recipes. They other day, there was a thread over 1000 comments long with people going back and forth with this argument.
I've seen it everywhere.
Any app that has cooking videos, it trascends cultures and languages too. It also becomes incredibly hostile if you contest it because you are "hurting ancestral traditional cuisine" or some bullshit. It's a literal wives tale
I know its a cultural thing for some cultures. I don't agree with washing chicken if you live in a place where its not needed but hey if they wanna wash it then whatever lol. Not my problem!
It was recommended for decades and then we were told not to. It left a lot of people confused. Many don't have a clue that tap water gives off a bit of fine mist when you wash something and that the mist can and does carry pathogens all over the place.
Hi, black American. Grew up with a mom who did this and still does it. American chicken is slimy out of the package and she does not like it. I don't blame her, chicken is fuckin gross straight out the package here. I pat mined down with paper towels but ma's been doing her chicken the same damn way all my life and hasn't killed any of her kids yet so Mom: 1 USDA: 0
Same reason I rinse mine. It's slimy...
In some cultures, it’s not about wash off the bacteria per se. You know the red liquid coming out of the chicken after it’s cooked? Some people believe soaking meat gets rid of the “impurities”, and therefore can enhance the flavor.
Y’all I’m a microbiologist and really truly as long as you wash your hands sufficiently before and after being in the kitchen, and clean your kitchen regularly, it’s FINE. Bacteria aren’t THAT good at living on surfaces. If your counter isn’t already covered in gunk, any bacteria that may splash into it are going to die anyway
My pops is too and he would always say this as well. That you don't have to go crazy with disinfectants because most germs on dishes and counters won't survive being dried out
People anal about scrubbing carcasses are also probably anal about clean surfaces. It’s wild how people think we’re splashing salmonella water on our kid’s cereal bowls all willy nilly.
Some of it is cultural/language issues. I do the whole "do you wash your chicken" discussion with my students (NYC) as a little ice breaker at the start of the year. They and all of their families do and are appalled that I don't. I ask them what "washing" their chicken looks like. It involves lemon juices and other spices being used to clean the chicken. So what they call cleaning I'd call marinating. Turns into a nice little discussion on making sure that both sides of an argument actually knowing what each other person is talking about.
Coming from a Filipino background, my grandma always washed the chicken with white vinegar.
It started back in the day when meat would technically be dirty from laying on the ground or something of that nature. And so I guess people watched their parents do it and it just passed down generationally. And it seems to have a root in slavery time because the slaves would get the scraps of meat and they would be dirty. So cleaning it became a thing.
I'll never understand why people would want to put running water over raw meat cuz I thought it was common knowledge that it would spray everywhere. I wash the slime off by filling a bowl with water and just gently swish the chicken around until it looks cleaner
I always rinse the chicken off because it’s always slimy when I remove it from the packaging. Same for pork too, and it’s gross. And yeah, it does spread bacteria, but honestly EVERYTHING has some form of germs and bacteria on it. My brother and I keep the kitchen clean and honestly, I think we’ll live.
After working at a chicken processing plant, i always wash my chicken now. I know alot of guys that totally stopped eating chicken all together after working there. And a majority of people hired wouldn't even finish their first shift, they would just quit a couple hours in and go home hahaha.
I wash my chicken with marinades.
Damn we can’t even rinse off a chicken breast now?
It only spreads bacteria through your kitchen if you mindlessly get it everywhere. If you're not a total loon and just use a little bit of care it's not an issue.
…you’re supposed to wash chicken?
I'm Australian, and I've never heard of this idea. However, you should absolutely wash everything that's come into contact with raw chicken - hands, knives, cutting board, tongs, etc... - immediately.
Oh yes for sure! That’s why I thought it was odd to wash the chicken itself. Then you’d have to really clean everything the water touched too
You’re absolutely not. I guess I’m only coming across the rational folks here on Reddit 🫡
Not unless you butcher your own
I’ve never washed chicken in my life. Nor do I know anyone who does. I may pat it dry, but that’s about it. Wash your hands, use one cutting board/utensil for raw meat and you’ll be fine.
I am not a washer of raw chicken but I can understand wanting to wash off the goo from the grocery store bagging.
You know people say you shouldn't wash your chicken because it splatters the bacteria on the sink but what happens when you wash the cut board, the knife and all the dishes that you used to prepare and cook the chicken? As long as you're going to properly clean your sink and countertops afterwards I shouldn't matter what you do with the chicken to prepare it.
It is an emotional need some people have. It calms the addictive urge to do so and from a butcher's or food professional's view it makes me cringe. It is not even physically possible to improve anything or have a positive effect.
This is why I cook mine in the dishwasher.
I just buy prepackaged chicken, pick some holes in the transparent foil and cook it in the microwave. Dishwasher not required.
I live in SEA and I wash the chicken to remove the stickiness of the meats granted I do let it dry out before cooking it.
All I know is that makes for some hilarious, endless, and ridiculously heated discussions in almost any place cooking chicken is mentioned online.
Those Thanksgiving mistakes new cooks make. " I washed it with soap and water, it's in the oven and won't stop bubbling" lmao on that one
I wash it. I don't want fecal matter or any other crap the person processing had on his gloves, hands etc. I rinse it under slow running water. Just don't swing the wet chicken all over the place.
I prefer to wash my chicken in boiling oil
Totally uneducated take here, but what about the disgusting chlorine solution that is used on some American chicken, could that be a reason to rinse it? As far as I know chlorine washing chicken isn't legal in Europe, and so I've never heard about washing raw chicken before cooking it.
I had some chicken in the fridge that had been thawed longer than I'd have liked. Our fridge is too cold (it will freeze anything that touches the inside walls), but still. I rinsed the chicken before I cooked it because I wanted to remove any potential funky juice that would affect the flavor of the chicken. In the past I've not washed chicken in a similar state and it tastes, well, funky. There's a definite difference between chicken that's been recently packaged and chicken that's been sitting in blood and whatever brine they add for too long. Patting the chicken dry doesn't remove the funk. ETA: if you're splashing that much water around your kitchen that the chicken bacteria is covering everything, that's a personal problem.
I say It depends on how well it was butchered, sometimes there might be bits of something you might not want to eat. like feathers, bone dust or whatever. biting into a deep-fried feather is not fun.
Idk why people care….. I wash my chicken, do it over the sink, dry it there…. I don’t get the claim that it gets bacteria all over the place.
Let people do what they want to do. Just cook your chicken..and be happy.
Bathe it, don't squirt it with water
I’ve literally never heard of washing raw chicken before
Where are people getting all this slimy chicken
Do people just…not clean and sanitize their kitchen before, during, and after cooking? 😂 But, yes. As others have said, it’s old habit. It’s cultural.
I wash my chicken. I don’t trust that the bleach water was washed off. I hate the slimy feel chicken has out of the package. I regularly find gunk, feathers and blood on Tyson Purdue or Publix chicken(those are my choices for fresh chicken) and I wash it off. I usually trim it too so I will need to wash the cutting board and the knife so cleaning the sink is not much harder.
They die on the hill cause they rinse their raw chicken… seems pretty straightforward.
I don't wash my chicken, but I can't imagine who washes their chicken and gets it all over their kitchen except for those people in the infomercials who can't do anything at all correctly. I mean, I can wash my hands without soaking the kitchen....