I just saw a show on the food network in which the host mentioned how important it is to wash boneless chicken breasts well before cooking. Why? It seems to me that anything you could get off with water would be killed at 190 degrees anyway. Is there another reason to wash chicken that I don’t know about?
In culinary school, we were instructed to rinse chicken in cold water to remove any excess blood and to check the skin for any pin feathers that may still be there.
Also as a note, cook your chicken to an internal temperature of 165° to 170°F. That internal temperature will kill salmonella without drying out your chicken.
Hmmm, nicely worded, informative, correct grammar and spelling!
Welcome to the board!
To expand on the bacteria point, chicken that has been sitting in a package for even a day has a chance to grow large colonies of bacteria on it’s surfaces. Many of these are adaptable to survive at temperarures as low as 33F, so they’ll thrive in your average refrigerator. Rinsing your chicken, even with cool water (which you should use so you don’t start to cook it with hot tap water) will greatly reduce their numbers, as well as remove other debris. Cooking will take care of the rest.
It also keeps the bacteria on the chicken from contaminating everything else you touch. More important, germ-wise, than washing the chicken is washing your hands after you handle the chicken. And don’t use the raw chicken plate to hold the chicken after it’s cooked.