Excerpt from You’re Doing It Wrong

Rinse the chicken before it goes in the pan. Remove bacteria, remove the residue from the packaging, get it clean. Your grandmother did it. The recipe might even call for it. Washing raw chicken before cooking feels like basic food hygiene.

Food safety agencies across the world now specifically advise against it.

The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, the UK Food Standards Agency, and public health authorities in multiple countries have all moved to actively recommend not washing raw chicken — not because cleanliness is bad, but because of what washing chicken actually accomplishes.

Salmonella, Campylobacter, and other bacteria on raw chicken are not removed by rinsing. They are redistributed. Water droplets bouncing off the surface of chicken under a faucet travel remarkably far — studies have found bacterial contamination up to three feet from the sink in every direction. The sink basin, the faucet handle, the surrounding counter surface, nearby dishes, food, and preparation surfaces all receive bacterial contamination that a single rinse does not concentrate in one place but instead broadcasts across the kitchen.

The bacteria on the chicken surface do not pose a risk if the chicken is cooked to the correct internal temperature — 165 degrees Fahrenheit throughout. Heat kills the pathogens that rinsing merely relocates. The rinse does not make the chicken safer; it makes the kitchen less safe.

The sensation that rinsing is cleaning something is real but misleading. You can feel the water moving over the surface. You cannot feel whether bacterial cells — microscopic, odorless, invisible — are present or absent. The sensory feedback is false reassurance.

Skip the rinse. Cook to temperature. Wash your hands and the surfaces that touched raw chicken. That is the actual food safety protocol.

Excerpt from You’re Doing It Wrong