ThermoBlog by Martin Earl
The number of dinners in America that include chicken is astonishing. From freezer meals to BBQ chicken to fried cutlets, from restaurant chefs to college-dorm cooks, chicken is truly one of America’s favorite meats.
And yet chicken is too often woefully overcooked. Fearful of contracting a food-borne illness from undercooked poultry, many Americans roast, fry, bake, or grill their chicken until it is dry, tough, and rubbery. Overcooked chicken doesn’t “taste like chicken†anymore, it tastes more like chalk.
Why is that? Read on to learn!Cooked chicken temps: safety concernsAll poultry, chicken included, have Salmonella bacteria endemic to their bodies—meaning that every single chicken has some Salmonella in it. The truth is that the chance that there is Salmonella in the particular portion of raw chicken you are preparing to cook is extremely high.
Of course, you needn’t necessarily freak out about that, because Salmonella, just like other harmful bacteria, can easily be killed by cooking food to a high enough temperature.
The USDA publishes critical food safety temperatures for all foods, including chicken, that reflect the heat needed to kill the bacteria commonly associated with those foods. And most people know that the recommended doneness temperature for food-safe chicken is 165°F (74°C).
The mistake most people make is not bothering to check the actual temperature of their chicken! Instead, they rely on physical indicators of doneness from a pre-technological era. Many people will check their chicken’s doneness by checking to see if it is firm when pressed, if it is no longer pink inside, or if the juices run clear when the chicken is cut.
But those methods are seriously flawed! By the time chicken is “firm,†the proteins in the meat will have squeezed out much of their water, making the chicken dry. (As the proteins in the chicken breast denature and curl up, and, if they cook far enough, they squeeze out the water molecules that cling to them.) The color of meat is also a bad indicator of doneness because pinkness can be caused by non-temperature related factors, such as pH. As for cutting the meat to see how the juices run, I suppose it could be a good doneness indicator if you want to eat chicken that has had its juices literally drained out of it before it reaches your plate.
Below we’ll cover three thermal paths to getting better chicken.
Beginner solution: check the chicken tempThe first—and most basic—solution to under- or over-cooked chicken is to use a thermometer when you cook your chicken! (A Thermapen® Mk4 is ideal for this task, as you’ll see shortly.) Yes, your grandmother checked it with her thumb, but she learned to cook before computers were invented! Now we have fast, accurate thermometers that can give us far more information about our meat’s doneness than a tactile push could.
To use a thermometer correctly in temping chicken, you’ll need a thermometer that is fast enough to show the differences in thermal gradients in the chicken.
More:
https://blog.thermoworks.com/chicken/chicken-internal-temps-everything-you-need-to-know/