Rinsing chicken or turkey before cooking it is an ingrained step for many home cooks, passed down through generations and reinforced by cookbooks. Recipes like the “Perfect Roast Chicken” in “The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook” from 1999 advise cooks to “Rinse the chicken inside and out.” But that doesn’t reflect the science. That’s a question home cooks ask experts at the Department of Agriculture’s meat and poultry hotline a lot around the holidays. Or they don’t ask — and end up dispersing food pathogens all over their kitchens, increasing the very risk of food-borne illness they are trying to avoid. Consumers should rinse their fresh fruits and vegetables with cold water, but they should not rinse raw poultry, meat or eggs, according to the experts.

Source: New York Times December 20, 2018 09:56 UTC