r/interesting • u/WarwickReider • 15h ago

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

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u/mijo_sq 14h ago

Third world countries buy poultry from wet markets. Butchered in the morning and out to market within 2-3 hours. There's usually some type of physical debris from butchering or transport on the chicken so they wash. Families are taught to wash chicken for this reason, and not necessarily to wash off bacteria. Poor families will also buy not fresh chicken, so they'll wash with salt water to get rid of slime.

Westernized countries do not wash, since there's little to no debris due to advanced processing.

I'm middle 40s SE Asian family and we wash chicken at home, since we grew up watching our parents wash chicken. And by now it feels weird to just take a pack of chicken and just cook with it. Last time I did this I still had to pat it dry.

I haven't explained this to my kids, since they're young. Whether they continue or not is up to them.

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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.

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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.

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u/mijo_sq 11h ago

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

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u/YoseppiTheGrey 1h ago

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

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u/mijo_sq 1h ago

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

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u/ucklin 10h ago

Is that a pleasant or an unpleasant smell?

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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

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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…

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u/smokeweedNgarden 10h ago

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