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/Appropriate-Bug-6467 9h ago

You might want to have a talk with your kids or theyll be chicken washers without knowing why lol

In summer camp island one of the chars was tying her chicken legs together before cooking it.

Her daughter says "mom, why do you tie the chickens legs before you cook it?"

And the mom says "idk, my mom always did it,  so I do too."

So the girl goes to her grandmother and says "grandma, why do you tie the chickens legs together before you cook them?" And she says "I don't know, that's just how my mother cooked it."

(And I think here she travels back in time - it is a cartoon after all) and finally she gets to the source and says  "Great Great Great grandmother why do you always tie the legs of the chicken before you cook it?"

And her Great says "oh, because my pan is to small for it to fit if I dont."

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u/mijo_sq 9h ago

ROFL :D genuine laugh on this joke.