I have friends who are
freaked-out about chicken. It turns out that many people actually think that chicken gets infected with disease-causing bacteria more than, say,
cheese, or avocados; that bacteria specifically seek out chicken to do their procreative dirty work.
I know people who
immediately refrigerate a nice juicy hot roasted chicken they are planning to
have for a meal within an hour or two! It’s sad, really.
So today’s lesson boys and
girls is practicing safe chicken in four simple points.
1.
(Most important)
Roasting a chicken kills every living organism. Roasting anything at 350° to 400° for an hour pretty much kills
everything. It comes out of the oven STERILE. From that point on, with the
exception of drying out, it would take days to weeks at room temperature for
any spoilage to develop, and then it would likely be a harmless mold that,
while unappealing, wouldn’t make you sick. You don’t believe me, I can tell.
Read on.
2.
Since cooking
kills everything, there is no need to worry about leaving an uncooked chicken
out for several hours to bring it to room temperature before popping it into
the oven. Chickens, turkeys, ducks and most meats cook better when brought to
room temperature first.
3.
There is nothing
special about chicken flesh that preferentially attracts bacteria. If you got
sick at the company picnic, it came from the food-handler’s sneeze, not the
chicken. (And not the mayo either, because the acid pH of mayo actually helps
to prevent spoilage).
4.
The Salmonella that occasionally
contaminates raw chicken is real, and justifies separating the surface and knives used for
butchering a chicken from those used for foods you plan to eat raw. But
fortunately, the Salmonella gets
completely nuked by the 160° temperature in the center of a nicely done chicken.
Cheers,
JCS
This blogpost is a long-overdue
accompaniment to the Apr 16, 2009 posting entitled “Food Poisoning: it’s not the mayonnaise!”
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