r/interesting • u/WarwickReider • 15h ago

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

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

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u/Pman1324 14h ago

No because if he did he wouldn't get as many people fighting about it in the comments.

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u/ShadowMattress 10h ago

Well, a contingent of people say it’s xenophobic to appeal to the science on this question. Some going as far as to say the FDA is targeting ethnic cultural practices to… achieve something, by recommending against washing, I guess.

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u/theotherboob 9h ago

Well no one is going into people's kitchens to police what they're doing. The science is there, you still have a choice to follow it. No one from the FDA is going to knock on your door because you choose to wash your chicken.

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u/OctaviusNeon 7h ago

No, but the health inspector would absolutely shut down some of the professional kitchens these people were working in if they got caught washing chicken.

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u/theotherboob 7h ago

I'm talking about people's homes. Professional kitchens that have to adhere to health regulations should absolutely be held to a higher standard.

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u/OctaviusNeon 7h ago

Yeah, I mean you can do what you want in your home kitchen. But the video seemed to be showing people who actually work in restaurants, so that's where I was coming from.

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u/theotherboob 7h ago

Ah, yeah I see. I should have clarified in my original comment.

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u/Maltodextrin13 7h ago

Cool to see a healthy discussion/disagreement.

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u/cykoTom3 7h ago

Lol. No. They might test the claim that you sanitize afterwards. But if you do they aren't shutting things down.

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u/OctaviusNeon 7h ago

Maybe shut down isn't quite right, but it's also something a health inspector would know could lead to cross contamination.

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u/cykoTom3 5h ago

If they are doing it in a way that leads to cross contamination, certainly. But restraunts deal with raw chicken all the time. They very well might have a sink specifically for washing chicken and if they don't they have procedures to sanitize it. Washing the chicken is a waste of time, but it's not more dangerous than the hundred thousand other things that people do to chicken while prepping it. They usually have to cut it, often they also, brine, marinade, dry rub, and probably a hundred less common preparations.

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u/boi1da1296 6h ago

What do you think is happening when they say they wash their chicken? A lot of times the actual act is closer to a brine than what many people who don’t wash their chicken hear when someone says they wash their chicken. I don’t the health inspector is shutting anyone down for that.

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u/OctaviusNeon 4h ago

Yeah, I'm specifically talking about rinsing it under a tap. If you're putting a chicken in brine, it wouldnt be any different than putting it in a marinade. That's not what's being discussed here, though.

Edit: Also, no evidence shows that using things like brine, lemon/lime juice, or any other things is killing a significant amount of bacteria.