Don’t rinse your bird
When it comes to preparing a turkey dinner — or any poultry, for that matter — Aussies and their American cousins share a stubborn habit that food-safety experts are desperate to wash away.
Surveys suggest that around 60% of Australian cooks and nearly 80% of Americans still rinse their birds before cooking. (And no, I’m not talking about brining.)
Experiments show that this well-intentioned ritual doesn’t make meat safer — it just spreads germs. Researchers have found that washing poultry can splatter gastroenteritis-causing Salmonella, Campylobacter, Clostridium perfringens, and occasionally E. coli around the kitchen, contaminating counters, sinks, and even salad greens.
About 1 in every 25 packages of chicken sold in US grocery stores are contaminated with salmonella, according to federal health officials.
The only effective clean-up happens in the oven: 75°C (165°F) kills the bugs far better than any rinse ever could.
“Despite what you’ve been told or seen on social media, you should never wash raw chicken before cooking as this will likely spread bacteria throughout your kitchen,” says Julian Cox, deputy chair of Australia’s Food Safety Information Council. “Chicken already undergoes washing during processing, so further washing in your kitchen is problematic.”
The habit is hard to shake. Many cooks say they wash poultry to remove slime or blood, or simply because it’s what their parents did. But in US kitchen experiments, more than a quarter of participants who rinsed chicken ended up transferring bacteria onto salad leaves. Even after cleaning, 14% still had germs lingering in their sinks.
It’s a classic case of good intentions leading to messy outcomes.
The warning is timely. Americans will roast some 30 million turkeys next week, according to the National Turkey Federation — each one a potential bacterial bomb if handled carelessly. US health authorities estimate that poultry accounts for about a quarter of all salmonella illnesses nationwide, with infections spiking around the holidays.
So if you’re prepping a turkey next week — or a roast chook any other day — the message from hygiene experts is simple: Skip the rinse, and bring the heat. — Jason Gale
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