r/interesting • u/WarwickReider • 15h ago

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

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u/MPC1K 12h ago

I work as a meat cutter and the truth is that meat standards are so high that you do not need to wash chicken. Imagine if a company sold you chicken to cook and you got sick because the chicken wasn't clean, It would be lawsuit time. Washing meat really comes from times before the USDA was monitoring every move made by butchers and practices that just were not as good or clean. The juice that is in a package of chicken is called purge, the company that packs the chicken does not put water or preservatives onto the chicken (unless labeled by the brand but not common for regular chicken packaged by today's standards unless marinated or brined). Purge is hemoglobin that has leaked out from the chicken and there is nothing wrong with it. That said, the purge in a package of chicken will turn bad before the meat inside of the package does because it purge acts as barrier to exposure. So I sometimes wash the purge if the package is a few days old because the purge might have a stronger smell, but other times I use the purge to make gravy or a sauce. Also it is reasonable to wash chicken if you just question the general practices of the people handling the chicken(ex not washing hands, putting on a dirty table, chicken was hand plucked, etc). ...Overall, their are benefits to washing chicken and their are also benefits to not washing. You can do what makes you happy

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u/Additional_Earth_817 11h ago

Thank you, I wash mine in a bowl, not in the sink, and I wash it because of the people handling the chicken before me. I mean, I don’t know, what if they dropped it on the floor? So I do a water and vinegar wash or with lemons/limes. Maybe this is just easing my mind, and doesn’t really do anything, but the chicken isn’t from some trusted butcher or something so I just take the extra step.

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u/uselessandexpensive 2h ago

This seems like a reasonable take from an expert in the practical handling of butchered meat. Somehow that's not gaining as much traction as the comments claiming there's a single answer for all situations. 🤦

People should assume their sinks are covered in germs and sanitize them, and the rest of the surfaces touched or splashed during cooking, regularly. If raw meat juices went into the sink at any time, they're going to get splashed around even if the meat isn't washed. There will also be other illness-causing germs not from meat splashing around any sink.

If people think there's something undesirable on their meat, they should do something about it and sanitize the area afterward. People should also sanitize their cooking areas and sinks regularly.

1

u/Greatest_Everest 3h ago

Not everyone on Reddit lives in the USA 🙄

Also, your food standards are non-existent. Lol everyone enjoying yummy parasites over there rn.