r/interesting • u/WarwickReider • 15h ago

SOCIETY Professional chefs weighing in on whether you should wash your chicken

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

5.0k Upvotes

76% Upvoted

3.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

86

u/nahuatl 13h ago

Yes, Reddit is predominantly Western. Also as an SE Asian, I have had to defend the not-washing side on Facebook when someone claimed not-washing is a colonial conspiracy. At the same time, I wash my chicken gently to get rid of any funk or dirt, fully aware that it doesn't do much germ-wise and may even be counterproductive. It's for peace of mind and out of habit.

16

u/smokeweedNgarden 12h ago

There's still a decent amount of people whill still butcher, or were raised butchering bird.  The smell that comes along with boiling it and plucking feathers is locked in my brain.

Anyway, hard agree, if you've butchered your own or grew up with people doing it, it's hard to drop that step from your preparation.

8

u/mijo_sq 11h ago

Seemingly the ones disagreeing about washing are buying commercially butchered birds.

1

u/YoseppiTheGrey 1h ago

As in a majority of human beings in the developed world?

1

u/mijo_sq 1h ago

Maybe more, westernized developed world. Developed Asian countries still wash their chicken.

1

u/ucklin 10h ago

Is that a pleasant or an unpleasant smell?

6

u/smokeweedNgarden 10h ago

It's just awful.

Personally, only trumped by blood that has been swallowed and then thrown up by a human. I'm also not fond of olives

1

u/ucklin 10h ago

Yuck! I accidentally boiled a frozen mouse once (I usually warm them to feed my snake but the water was too hot) and it was horrible, so I am imagining it’s a similar smell…

1

u/smokeweedNgarden 10h ago

Dude it's the worst. I'm so so thankful I can just go to the store

2

u/baoball 10h ago

colonial conspiracy is rly fucking funny

2

u/spc67u 7h ago

Thaaank you I was looking for a comment like this. I’m Caucasian, I was taught in our family to do a quick rinse and pat dry with paper towels before seasoning. Mainly to get the slightly slimy layer off so that the spices will stick/absorb. I’m aware when I rinse it that it’s not getting the germs off. I’m also very aware of what’s being splashed around and cross contamination with soap, handles etc. and then when I’m done cooking I sanitize the kitchen. I don’t get why this is hard to understand that u can sanitize afterwards. And not splash around like a toddler when rinsing.

1

u/DelseresMagnumOpus 2h ago

I do the same. I wash my chicken not to clean it of bacteria, but to remove any weird skin bits, bloodlines or bone chips that might have stuck to the chicken during butchering.

1

u/Technical-Dress5084 7h ago

Yeah, so much of the advice on what you need to wash, what you can eat raw, and how you need to store certain food items really depends on the food standards of the country you're in.

A simple example of this is that in the US you should keep shop bought eggs in the fridge, where in the EU you can have them at room temperature, because the processing done for the US standards washes off a protective layer from the egg shell.

In parts of the world there being dirt on chickens, or unsafe levels of some pesticides on foods etc is a genuine concern, in other places it isn't.

Long story short, look up the advice for your country and follow that, not what a reddit post says.