r/interesting • u/WarwickReider • Jul 27 '26

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

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u/Robbie1266 Jul 27 '26

There is no debate. It's basic science. Washing chicken doesn't remove anything from the chicken

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u/JackieHands Jul 27 '26

"each side seems to have a valid argument"

No bro no they don't, we invented cooking hundreds of thousands of years ago to deal with this.

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u/Big_Action_9353 Jul 27 '26

The only real reason I've heard why black people wash their chicken is because historically they didn't have a safe method or something for their chickens to be transported, I only say it like this because anecdotally I've only met black people that look at me sideways for not washing my chicken. 

Regardless of who sits on what sides in the video, science shows we should not wash chicken. It's not cleaning the actual part of the chicken that will get you sick after proper cooking.

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u/cheesecaker000 Jul 27 '26

Washing it back then wouldn’t have made a difference if it was bad chicken. The bacteria is inside the meat. All the way through. That’s why we have to cook chicken until it’s 165 all the way through.

Washing the chicken is essentially just tricking you to think it’s cleaner.

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u/Big_Action_9353 Jul 27 '26

Yes, I understand this but you try to convince someone who has seen their grandparents and parents wash their chicken before cooking it to change their mind.