Never wash chicken before cooking?

Why should you never wash chicken before cooking?

Most of the time people washed a chicken, inside and out, then patted it dry with paper towels (If you want to roast it, not steam it, and moisture is the enemy of a fine roast). Many chefs insisted on this.

But a few years back the FDA released new guidelines, based on scientific experiments that showed the splashing of water through the chicken would spread bacteria to you hands, your shirt, your sink, your countertops, your cutting board….just itta-bitty droplets you’d hardly notice, but you were actually spreading bacteria, and risking the contamination of other foods.

So now the advice is not to wash it, and just assume that by 160 degrees on the inside and higher on the outside, you’ll kill all the bacteria you need to.

But in the larger scheme of things, people washed chickens ever since the advent of indoor plumbing, and we didn’t all die before , or whenever the advice was changed. So don’t get too worked up — just wash your hands thoroughly after handling any raw meat, and never bring it back from the grille or out of the oven onto the plate it thawed on. You’ll be fine.