While washing meat and poultry to remove dirt, slime, fat or blood may have been appropriate decades ago when many slaughtered and prepared their own food, the modern food safety system doesn't require it. Meat and poultry are cleaned during processing, so further washing is not necessary.
In general, though, chefs in the U.S. and Europe rarely wash chicken before cooking it for both flavor and safety reasons. “As a private chef, I've never washed a chicken in my life,” says Christina Woodlief, private chef and culinary instructor for Cozymeal.
Wash hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before and after handling chicken. Raw chicken is ready to cook. It doesn't need to be washed first. According to a USDA study, 1 in 7 people who cleaned their sink after washing chicken still had germs in the sink.
Washing or rinsing chicken increases risk.
Salmonella, Campylobacter and other harmful bacteria live on raw chicken. Washing or rinsing doesn't remove this risk, it worsens it by helping the bacteria spread. When you add water through washing or rinsing, you give these bacteria a way to travel throughout your kitchen.
Put simply, if you wash raw chicken, you are cross-contaminating your kitchen. Yes, fresh fruit and vegetables should be washed with cold water before preparation, but raw poultry should not. Don't worry: Properly cooking chicken will destroy any pathogens. In fact, it is the only way to destroy those pathogens.
It is not recommended to wash chicken meat before cooking. This recommendation has the endorsement of the Food Safety Information Council (FSIC). Washing is likely to splash raw meat juices and any bacteria in to the kitchen sink, bench top and utensils and washing will not remove all bacteria.
In some countries, washing chicken with vinegar or lemon juice kills bacteria and removes dirt, blood, and other debris. Jump to: History of chicken washing.
Australian farmed chickens, including organic chickens, are always treated with chlorine. With organic chickens, the final wash spray lasts for 3 to 4 seconds, where chlorine is added at a rate of 20 parts per million (p.p.m.). Then the birds are put on racks for draining and air-chilling.
“Washing raw poultry is a 'habit' for some consumers but for others it may be a cultural practice that is much harder to change,” said Quinlan.
If the meat you get is sticky or straight from the butcher wash it like you've been doing for years just clean the sink after. If you get processed meat that is already clean, cook it straight you don't have to clean it.
Do You Need to Wash Chicken before Marinating? No, you shouldn't wash chicken. Washing raw chicken doesn't clean it, but it can actually spread germs in your kitchen. Raw chicken can have bacteria on its surface, including Salmonella, which can transfer into your sink, on your dishes or even onto nearby food.
Raw chicken can be contaminated with numerous pathogenic bacteria including Campylobacter, Salmonella, and Clostridium Perfringens, all of which can lead to foodborne illness.
Natural way to tenderize
To ensure tender meat, Chinese cooks wash it thoroughly. The meat is tenderized as they rinse the meat and wring it out (via Milk Street).
Despite this, chicken-washing remains common. A survey by Australia's Food Safety Information Council showed almost half of Australian home cooks washed whole chickens before cooking. Dutch research found 25% of consumers washed their chicken often or almost always.
Roughly 90 percent of people say they wash their chicken before cooking it, as recipes have historically called for chicken washing.
Consumers should rinse their fresh fruits and vegetables with cold water, but not raw poultry, meat or eggs, according to the experts. For decades, the Department of Agriculture has been advising against washing raw poultry and meat.
Washing any raw poultry, whether it's chicken, duck, goose or turkey, is unsafe as it can spread bacteria to your hands, surfaces and other foods that may not be cooked. Washing is also unnecessary as cooking poultry to 75°C in the centre of a fillet or the thickest part of the thigh will kill any bacteria.
Aldi will not sell chlorinated chicken or hormone beef.
The results of chicken collected further down the food chain and closer to consumers at retail outlets was not much better: 25.8% of samples tested positive for Salmonella (1.7% of samples with quantifiable levels), and Campylobacter was detected in 89.9% of samples (again 6.4% with quantifiable levels).
According to the USDA, you should not wash raw poultry or any other meat, because you may spread bacteria that's potentially in the poultry juices to other foods, utensils, and surfaces. And in fact, washing it isn't even getting the bacteria off your chicken.
"Washing can spread germs from the chicken to other food or utensils in the kitchen." We didn't mean to get you all hot about not washing your chicken! But it's true: kill germs by cooking chicken thoroughly, not washing it. You shouldn't wash any poultry, meat, or eggs before cooking.
Using lemon juice, lime juice or vinegar to wash off chicken and fish before cooking is a common practice in the West Indies/Caribbean. Before the invention of refrigerators, people applied an acidic solution because they thought it would kill any bacteria on the chicken, and also give a hint of extra flavor.