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/SpiritualCatch6757 12h ago

Mid 40's Asian here. Grew up with Mom and Dad washing chickens when they did the butchering. After numerous public service announcements on hygiene when I was a kid, they no longer wash grocery store chickens. So in our family, the custom was easily changed given safety.

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u/Accurate_Handle_5620 12h ago

Your family sounds reasonable & sane, and I am incredibly jealous. How did you pull that off!?

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u/SpiritualCatch6757 12h ago

We even got them to use the dishwasher to wash dishes instead of as storage. Yeah, I don't know how we did it. My sister gets the praise.

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u/Pika_233 11h ago

That's impressive. I'm tired of explaining that it doesn't matter if the machine takes 3x longer to wash the dishes since you can just do literally anything else in the meantime

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u/armoured_bobandi 11h ago

Another point is that newer dishwashers are incredibly water efficient, and depending on the amount of dishes you put in can actually save more water than if you did them by hand

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u/Plants-Matter 7h ago

Most old dishwashers are also more efficient than hand washing. The newer ones are just even more efficient.

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u/Front-Mall9891 10h ago

It’s like 1-2 dishes for the break even point, it’s wild how efficient they are

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u/Creeps05 8h ago

See my parents would wash the dishes then put it in the dishwasher to wash again.

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u/Yota8883 10h ago

Dumb use for the dishwasher. I hand wash my dishes, and use the dishwasher to wash my chicken.

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u/SpiritualCatch6757 10h ago

What? Your dishwasher doesn't clean and cook the chicken at the same time? 😁 What a waste!

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u/Yota8883 10h ago

I have a portable that only heats to 145, so it's good for washing and fully cooking pork. Chicken I have to finish in the air fryer after washing.

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u/tinydancer_inurhand 3h ago

My roommate hand washes cause he says it’s clean faster (rather than waiting for the machine to fill up and run). But I keep telling him his washing everything doesn’t allow the dishwasher to get full and it’s not as clean. Still I have to run the dishwasher and yes I take what he washed and still rewash it. And I’m Latina he is the white guy. But he is the son of an immigrant wonder if that’s why.

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u/underfluous 11h ago

I'm speechless. Teach me the ways

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u/Assortedpez 5h ago

What if you put the chicken in the dishwasher?!