Don't Be Chicken

by Mark R. Vogel

The point is, it doesn't matter. Cooking food to the proper temperature is what destroys bacteria. You can wash your chicken till the cows come home, (with dirty hooves), and you're still not protected from the real threat. Heat kills salmonella, not soap and water.

I even heard about one woman who scrubbed her fowl with Brillo, causing the meat of course to become infiltrated with strands of steel wool. This is almost as crazy as the man I know who will not eat chicken because he's afraid he will take on the chicken's attributes. How the chicken became the object of such paranoia I will never know.

This is not to say that there are no risks with chicken. Rather, it is a matter of applying the appropriate techniques to prevent them. First, check the date on the chicken before you buy it.

Freeze it unless you're using it within 24 hours. Do not thaw your chicken at room temperature. Use the microwave, the refrigerator, or place it in a bag in cold water.

Change the water every half hour to keep it cold. I do rinse my chicken first to remove any grit or other UFO's (unidentified foreign objects) that may be lurking on its surface from handling and packaging.

You must also be leery of cross contamination with all raw meat but especially chicken. Cross contamination is when a raw item touches one surface to which other food items or utensils come in contact.

If you cut your raw chicken into pieces, you cannot use that knife or cutting board for anything else. You must wash it before reusing it.

But wait a minute, isn't that a contradiction? First I tell you washing your chicken does not kill the bacteria but then I advise you to wash the implements that touched it.

That's because most of the salmonella in the chicken is internally imbedded in its flesh, safe from the running water. But any bacteria transferred to your knife or cutting board can be washed off the surface.

The one exception is if your chicken has been in contact with a wood cutting board for a period of time. Wood is porous after all. After washing the board, disinfect it with a bleach or iodine solution.

Or, you can avoid the entire ordeal by only cutting chicken on a plastic cutting board. The final safeguard is cooking it to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. You can even go as high as 170 in the thigh.