Disclaimer: I haven’t eaten raw chicken. Not looking for Reddit quips telling me to go to an emergency room.
Was just wondering if salmonella is pretty much guaranteed when eating raw chicken or if it’s something like 50/50 and an easy preventative measure like throwing out expired/damaged cans of food or washing fruits and vegetables before you eat them. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people in TV shows and movies eating raw eggs.
Pretty much guaranteed. Don’t do it, unless you’re on a desert island with no food, no fire, and no hope of rescue.
This is simply not true
Modern meat is generally pretty safe and chicken tartare is definitely a thing. Is it something you should do if you are immunocompromised, a child, or elderly? Probably not. Is it something you should do if you are unsure of how the meat was handled? Probably not
But if you buy quality chicken from a trusted butcher, freeze the surface, blanch it for a few seconds, you can pretty safely eat it raw assuming you’ve done a good job keeping your surfaces and hands clean. You could probably do it with grocery store chicken tbh but the risks are much greater because you have no clue if the $12/hr kid packing chicken breasts properly washed their hands (handling is overwhelmingly where foodborne illness is going to come from in this scenario)
Is it going to be safe 100% of the time? No, of course not. But neither is eating medium rare steak, or eggs with runny yolks. But could you do this every day for a year with issue? Probably.
Although I wouldn’t necessarily consider this the same over the next 4 years of american deregulation
Raw chicken is kind of like scallops btw
Most of the risk comes from the processing and handling of the meat. If the chicken isn’t perfectly healthy, and the butcher isn’t very careful about keeping the intestinal tract from spreading, bacteria from the intestinal tract could spread to the meat.
This is the same reason that you need to cook ground beef to a much higher temperature than you need to cook a steak, more surface area, more points of possible contamination.
Is it possible to process and eat raw chicken safely? The Japanese certainly think so, it’s a dish that’s available widely in Japan.
It’s up to you, and your risk tolerances. But if you’re going to do it, you have to make sure you source the meat cleanly, it’s processed very cleanly, it’s stored very cleanly. It’s a high bar
We went to Japan and on the advice of the locals, tried the raw chicken dish. Everyone got crippling explosive diarrhea. They’re more confident about it than they probably should be.
“Just” explosive diarrhea? Likely wasn’t salmonella. So it could have been any number of causes. Which is why even when salmonella isn’t a risk, you gotta be careful with raw meat.
Might just be used to it, and you weren’t. Your tolerance can get pretty high if you’ve been eating it your whole life.
This is the same reason that you need to cook ground beef to a much higher temperature than you need to cook a steak, more surface area, more points of possible contamination.
I didn’t know this.
If I raised my own chickens and treated them well would it be an issue to eat them raw? It kind of sounds a bit like a mad cow disease situation where it’s more a byproduct of the industrialized nature of the industry
In your scenario, you would know the health of your chicken, so you could make your own risk calculation.
You would still have to be incredibly careful, and be very clean, when processing the chicken, and when preparing the meal.
I think as with all other raw foods, such as sashimi, it’s something to try only if your immune system is working really well.
The FDA actually requires that raw fish be frozen prior to consumption to kill parasites. Food Code 3-402.11-12.
