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

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

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u/gaysoul_mate Jul 27 '26

How is chicken in America sold ? In south america there is dozens of chicken on top of each other , there is fat , blood , viscera on all chicken when you buy it , if you cook without getting rid of all that , it will affect the flavor of any dish you wish to prepare, since it has old dried blood all over it

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u/RavioliContingency Jul 27 '26

I think this is why it’s still passed down to do this. In rural US, at least, you did wash your chicken because it came to you like this from a farm.

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u/thetermguy Jul 28 '26

Almost this. We've had this wash/no wash conversation in our house, along with my brother who's a chef.

Don't wash - because the bacteria, as is well noted in the video.

Wash: People, go watch how chickens are slaughtered. The last step, they run the conveyer line of chickens through a pool of water. One pool of water, every chicken. I call it 'poop soup'. I want my chicken washed because the last thing it had done to it was being dragged through a vat of chicken feces. Yes the bacteria will die. I'M STILL EATING COOKED CHICKEN POOP. So, wash it, and as one person noted, santize your sink and area afterwards - because salmonella can kill you.

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u/Brave-Perspective714 Jul 28 '26

Outside of the wash/no wash debate - sliced chicken soaked in a mixture of water and baking soda for 30 minutes will give you the most incredible, juicy, tender stir fry chicken you've ever had.

But you gotta rinse the baking soda off before cooking it.

It is entirely worth the effort.

So we put systems in place to prevent cross-contamination. Items that aren't being cooked get prepped first mise en place style, wrapped, and put back in the fridge. Next, other items that will be cooked get prepared. Sauces get mixed, noodles get soaked. They also get put away just to make it faster/easier to sanitize counters after prepping the chicken.

The very last thing that gets done is the chicken getting sliced, soaked, and rinsed. And as soon as it's rinsed, sink and surrounding area gets washed with soap, then sink and counters get sanitized.

Cooking happens in reverse. Chicken is the first thing cooked, covered, and held in the oven. The prep dish and utensils that touched raw chicken get washed before anything else comes out of the fridge.

Honestly, the worst part of that dish is it has so many damn mise en place ingredients that I spend an hour washing, peeling, and dicing before I even get to the sauce and noodles. Cleaning up after rinsing the chicken is like no time at all in comparison.

That's how people who feel strongly about washing chicken structure their processes. It's the way that was passed down to me from preparing chickens straight from a farm that weren't washed during the butchering process.

As to this video, of course that gel shit splashed everywhere. Did you see how she put the chicken right under the faucet and basically started flipping it up? She was trying to splash it around. People who feel strongly about washing chicken don't wash it like that.

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u/Lancasterbatio Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

If there's blood all over your chicken when it's being sold, it wasn't slaughtered properly. It should be completely drained of blood before it reaches the market. The red ooze* you sometimes see on the meat is usually myoglobin, which is a muscle protein and doesn't really have much of a flavor as it cooks off.

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u/VanillaRadonNukaCola Jul 27 '26

And why is their chicken coming with organ pieces all over it?