# Julia Childs wrong dont rinse chicken



## TNHermit (Jul 14, 2005)

http://www.wuot.org/post/julia-child-was-wrong-dont-wash-your-raw-chicken-folks





It seems almost sacrilegious to question the wisdom of Julia Child. 
First with her opus _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_ and later with her PBS cooking show, the unflappably cheerful Child helped rescue home cookery from the clutches of convenience food. She taught us how to love â and take pride in â making something from scratch. 
And yet, in at least one important kitchen skill, Child got it dead wrong: rinsing raw poultry. 
"I just think it's a safer thing to do," Child tells viewers in one clip from _The French Chef_ in which she shows us the ins and outs of roasting chicken. 
"Oh, no!" says Drexel University food safety researcher Jennifer Quinlan when I inform her that Child was in the pro-bird-washing camp. "I don't want to take on that." 
Yet take on the doyenne of TV chefs she must. For Quinlan is on a mission to get America's home cooks to drop this widespread habit of washing poultry before cooking. 
"There's no reason, from a scientific point of view, to think you're making it any safer," she says, "and in fact, you're making it less safe." 
That's because washing increases the chances that you'll spread the foodborne pathogens that are almost certainly on your bird all over the rest of your kitchen too, food safety experts say. We're talking nasty stuff like salmonella and Campylobacter, which together are estimated to cause nearly 1.9 million cases of foodborne illness in the U.S. each year. 
Some studies suggest bacteria can fly up to 3 feet away from where your meat is rinsed â though you can't necessarily see it. If that thought alone doesn't give you pause, perhaps this slimy "germ vision" animation will do the trick:


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## Ardie/WI (May 10, 2002)

My opinion of Julia Childs is low.

I have always washed a raw chicken the same way. I fill the sink with barely warm water and submerge the chicken. It gets sloshed around. Then I rinse it well and spray the chicken lightly with vinegar inside and out. It sets awhile and I rinse it again and let it drain. 
Then I do what my grandma did. She soaked it in a salt water solution.

I wash it because God only knows where it has been and who did what to it!


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## Pearl B (Sep 27, 2008)

I stopped rinsing off chicken a few months ago due to that.
Plus if you cook it correctly, the heat should kill the germs.


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## wannabechef (Nov 20, 2012)

Open chicken and cook...I'm still alive.


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## where I want to (Oct 28, 2008)

I really learned a lot from Julia Child's shows besides which she was funny.
But for those of us old enough to remember- didn't they used to coat chicken with this yellow gunk that you washed off? I remember doing that but haven't seen it in a few years. I bet they have changed processing in some way. And there were lots of "extra" bits that had to be cleaned off- the processors did not scour chicken carcasses like they do today.
It may simply be a case of young whippersnappers assuming they know best and not realizing that things have changed. For Julia did not rescue us from convenience foods- convenience foods in the early Child days was frozen vegetables. She saved us from cooking in one, very simple way. Those were the days when spaghetti and elbow macaroni and egg noodles were the only pasta anyone ever saw. 
Beside my mom did it before anyone heard of Julia Child. If my mom and Julia Child did it.............


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## soulsurvivor (Jul 4, 2004)

Alive or not, if there's an intestine and fecal matter then there's at least one of 2300 identified salmonella bacterial strains present. 

I would imagine that the large corporate chicken processing plants will be very happy with the recommendations of this research project.

I personally think this recommendation is one where you have to hang up your common sense at the door and pick it up on your way out.


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## suitcase_sally (Mar 20, 2006)

TNHermit said:


> Some studies suggest bacteria can fly up to 3 feet away


 
Bacteria can _fly_? Did it mutate _again_? Oh, it _is_ chicken bacteria, so that explains it!


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## haunted (Jul 24, 2011)

If you've ever been through a chicken processing plant you know......wash the chicken.


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## where I want to (Oct 28, 2008)

I think the point was probably that splattering water around while washing a chicken would spread bacteria in the water droplets. This could contaminate the surrounding counters, etc. 
So I think the comment on washing like the OP mentioned is a good way. 
Beside anything you read these days is going to be shortly reversed. How can you possibly ever get paid for writing endless articles by an "authority"- you'd soon run out of right ways to do things if you don't keep changing the right way.


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## wannabechef (Nov 20, 2012)

haunted said:


> If you've ever been through a chicken processing plant you know......wash the chicken.


You could dry rub a chicken with feces and it would be safe to eat after cooking so I dont buy the dirty chicken plant...the reason we cook our food is so we kill bacteria.

Now, if you choose to eat raw chicken...all bets are off, besides...do you really think washing a chicken with plain water is really going to do anything other than spread the bacteria around? I am surely not going to wash my chicken in soap or bleach.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2


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## where I want to (Oct 28, 2008)

I do think that washing chicken off will help minimize the bacteria that is on the hand when subsequently handling the chicken. What would be likely to come off easily will have been washed off.


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## wannabechef (Nov 20, 2012)

where I want to said:


> I do think that washing chicken off will help minimize the bacteria that is on the hand when subsequently handling the chicken. What would be likely to come off easily will have been washed off.


I wash my hands after opening chicken and prepping chicken on a large rimmed cookie sheet that prevents juices and blood from contaminating my counter...I wash my hands constantly wh I le prepping food I also bleach my plastic cutting boards, counters and cabinets after a big cook.

Some folks treat chicken like its the plague, just be aware of where you put your non washed hands when handling not only chicken, but any meat...you are far more likely to get sick from ground beef, cooked or raw than an unwashed chicken imho.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2


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## Ardie/WI (May 10, 2002)

wannabechef said:


> You could dry rub a chicken with feces and it would be safe to eat after cooking so I dont buy the dirty chicken plant...the reason we cook our food is so we kill bacteria.
> 
> Now, if you choose to eat raw chicken...all bets are off, besides...do you really think washing a chicken with plain water is really going to do anything other than spread the bacteria around? I am surely not going to wash my chicken in soap or bleach.
> 
> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2


All afternoon, I've had this visual of a cooked chicken covered with feces. It ain't a purty picture. :smack 

I'll keep prepping my chicken as I have for 50 years and I'll be cleaning the kitchen before and after just as I always have. :happy:


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## Karen (Apr 17, 2002)

If someone doesn't know to thoroughly clean the surfaces (sink, counter, etc.) of where ever that chicken has been when washing it, then...... to wash or not to wash a chicken isn't the problem. They need lessons on general kitchen cleanliness/sanitation more than they need a chicken; or cooking anything else for that matter.
:runforhills:

On the other hand, I always find it interesting that generations ago there was no such thing as disinfectants, etc. All they had was soap and water and not necessarily hot water at all times either. Same with many foreign countries today. If we buy into what all the "experts" say today, how in the world did people live as long as they did to keep populating the earth? Everyone should have been dead from canning their canning methods alone. 

I think that just maybe we have become so obsessed with our antiseptic ways of cleanliness that we no longer possess the natural ability to fight off infection and disease; and that's pretty scary if we think about it. At some point, the smallest and most insignificant piece of bacteria could end up doing us all in despite all our cleanliness, disinfectants, and medicines.


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## backwoods (Sep 12, 2004)

I'm still going to wash that chicken, and have a deep sink to help from spattering. Also I know the amish soak their chicken in salt water before cooking, as well. Would the salt not also help to quell the bacteria?


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## nostawmama (Dec 29, 2011)

I am pretty hit or miss. Sometimes I was the chicken sometimes I don't. When I do it is because of grisly bits or something that is on it or sometimes the radioactive goo in the package is a little slimey today. Cook your food, don't leave cheese out on the counter where it could get splashed, wash your hands and surrounding surfaces, use some common sense. I am probably a little lax in the sanitation department but I haven't died yet.


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## oregon woodsmok (Dec 19, 2010)

All I'm getting out of this is:

Don't run water over the bird and then take it by the back leg and swung it around over your head, flinging chicken water all over your walls, cook ware, and counter space.

Store bought meat is very often not pan ready. Store bought chicken certainly isn't. Home raised chicken is pan ready right out of the freezer because I packaged it that way and it hasn't set out for 10 bays in a cooler wrapped in a plastic bag like the store bought bird.

Use some reasonable sanitation in your kitchen and rinsing off your chicken is not going to cause you any problems.


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