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Why is it OK to eat chicken liver medium rare, but not chicken breasts?

torolover

By torolover
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torolover

torolover

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I'm starting to cook Offal and lots of recipes recommend cooking chicken liver, heart, and gizzard medium rare.

 

I buy the whole chicken and inside the chicken has a packet of the heart and liver.

 

Why is it OK to cook chicken liver or the innards medium rare, but not for the chicken breasts?  I understand there are dangers of Salmonella but doesn't that exist in the innards of the chicken?

 

Also what is the shelf life of innards in the fridge?  Is it the same as for the chicken breast?

 

Thanks!

Edited by torolover (log)
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Martin Fisher

Martin Fisher

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You can eat any part of the chicken any way you want but it's recommended that no part of a chicken be considered sterile and therefore no part of a chicken be eaten rare because of possible internal Campylobacter infection.

 

LAWEEKLY: Think That Medium-Rare Chicken Liver Is Safe? Think Again

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~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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huiray

huiray

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Posted

You can eat any part of the chicken any way you want but it's recommended that no part of a chicken be considered sterile and therefore no part of a chicken be eaten rare because of possible internal Campylobacter infection.

 

LAWEEKLY: Think That Medium-Rare Chicken Liver Is Safe? Think Again

 

Well, folks eat torisashi and toriwasa (at least in Japan) and don't drop dead by the multitude...

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Martin Fisher

Martin Fisher

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Well, folks eat torisashi and toriwasa (at least in Japan) and don't drop dead by the multitude...

 

As I said "You can eat any part of the chicken any way you want..."

 

Chefsteps Chicken Tartare

Edited by DiggingDogFarm (log)

~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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torolover

torolover

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Now I'm more confused!! I cook and eat my beef medium rare, I eat my pork medium rare to medium.

I don't eat chicken breast medium rare unless I sous vide and pasteurize it. So do I need to pasteurize the chicken liver or other innards for medium rare? Or I can just pan sear to medium rare?

Edited by torolover (log)
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Joe Blowe

Joe Blowe

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It would be a non-issue if the public could just accept radioactive irradiated meat.

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So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money. But when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness."

So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

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huiray

huiray

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Now I'm more confused!! I cook and eat my beef medium rare, I eat my pork medium rare to medium.

I don't eat chicken breast medium rare unless I sous vide and pasteurize it. So do I need to pasteurize the chicken liver or other innards for medium rare? Or I can just pan sear to medium rare?

 

It depends on where your chicken and innards came from AND how it was processed and handled.  In the USA, large-scale commercially-produced chickens and chicken offal do NOT have a good sanitary record - so the pasteurization approach may be the better one if you get such stuff, speaking in general terms - unless you have good tolerance for slightly iffy stuff.  If you get your chicken and/or chicken spare parts from known providers with known practices - or from other places such as certain parts of Kyushu in Japan - that may be a different story. Or if you raise your own chickens and process them according to the known ways of doing so using best practices.  There is no such thing as a chicken or chicken-parts that is universally the same in hygiene and characteristics (taste/contamination/whatnot) all over the world.  Perhaps that may be an issue that you might reconsider.

 

Here's a picture of a plate of RAW chicken & RAW chicken gizzards and RAW chicken liver, offered for eating AS IS in Japan.

 

ETA: Also, even if you get a pristine batch of utterly properly-raised-and-processed chicken/whatever and then park it (uncovered) for a while next to a piece of decomposing meat that you mean to toss but haven't got round to it yet - that might also change the worthiness of the chicken to be eaten raw...

Edited by huiray (log)
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paulraphael

paulraphael

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It's easy to kill campylobacter at medium-rare temperatures.

 

I can't find a time/pasteurization curve for campylobacter, but what I've found at Douglas Baldwin's site and in this study suggest we don't have much to worry about. Campylobacter is not very heat resistant. At 45C, it dies about 12 times as fast as lysteria, which is what's typically used to determine pasteurization times in poultry. 45°C is a very rare  temperature for poultry. Pasteurization time would be about 50 minutes. 

 

At 60C (I imagine most people would call this medium) pasteurization time for campylobacter is just 8 minutes).

 

What you can do is look at the pasteurization curves for lysteria (use a table or an app like sous-vide dash) and divide the time by 10. That should get you close enough at any temperature between 45C and 60C. 

Notes from the underbelly

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gfweb

gfweb

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The thing to consider is that, as DDF said, no part of the chicken is sterile. The hands that put the liver in the bag are the same ones that cut out the intestines. They try to be clean but.....Anything in there could be anywhere on the bird that you buy.

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Norm Matthews

Norm Matthews

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Several years ago I saw chickens being processed in a commercial facility.  They all went in a large water bath that just about assured that if one chicken was contaminated, they all would be.  Chicken processed individually isn't a s susceptible to making you sick if it isn't thoroughly cooked. I suspect Japanese chicken isn't processed the same way as it is in the U.S.

http://normmatthews.blogspot.com/

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weedy

weedy

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Posted (edited)

 

 

Here's a picture of a plate of RAW chicken & RAW chicken gizzards and RAW chicken liver, offered for eating AS IS in Japan.

I've had it.

and it's good!

 

In fact, I'm going back to Nagoya in January and plan to have it again.

 

The real question is, or should be, why we in the US accept chicken raised in the disgusting, and clearly unhealthy, manner we do.

Edited by weedy (log)
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chefmd

chefmd

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I quickly sear chicken liver in screaming hot pan till still pink inside and eat it as a cook's snack every time I buy whole chicken.  I would not serve it to my guests without asking their permission and definitely not to ones with immune system issues.  Myself, I enjoy it.  Also, there is no such thing as perfectly safe food.  

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scubadoo97

scubadoo97

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I quickly sear chicken liver in screaming hot pan till still pink inside and eat it as a cook's snack every time I buy whole chicken. I would not serve it to my guests without asking their permission and definitely not to ones with immune system issues. Myself, I enjoy it. Also, there is no such thing as perfectly safe food.

I do the same. Cooks treat

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Brian Goodwin

Brian Goodwin

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I don't know about chicken liver specifically, but unspoiled beef is pretty acidic as far as meat goes. It's not a welcoming environment for bacteria to multiply, especially the farther you get from the surface of a cut. Chicken is closer to neutral, so microbes are more at home throughout the entire cut of meat.

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gfweb

gfweb

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I don't know about chicken liver specifically, but unspoiled beef is pretty acidic as far as meat goes. It's not a welcoming environment for bacteria to multiply, especially the farther you get from the surface of a cut. Chicken is closer to neutral, so microbes are more at home throughout the entire cut of meat.

Really? You sure about beef being so acidic that bugs don't grow?  If bugs don't grow in unspoiled meat, what is it that spoils the meat then?

 

I'd imagine that the pH of meat is near the blood pH which is about 7.4 in people.

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EnriqueB

EnriqueB

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It's easy to kill campylobacter at medium-rare temperatures.

 

I can't find a time/pasteurization curve for campylobacter, but what I've found at Douglas Baldwin's site and in this study suggest we don't have much to worry about. Campylobacter is not very heat resistant. At 45C, it dies about 12 times as fast as lysteria, which is what's typically used to determine pasteurization times in poultry. 45°C is a very rare  temperature for poultry. Pasteurization time would be about 50 minutes. 

 

At 60C (I imagine most people would call this medium) pasteurization time for campylobacter is just 8 minutes).

 

What you can do is look at the pasteurization curves for lysteria (use a table or an app like sous-vide dash) and divide the time by 10. That should get you close enough at any temperature between 45C and 60C. 

 

I am not so sure, see this study that challenges heat resistance of Campylobacter and others in chicken under some conditions: Extreme Heat Resistance of Food Borne Pathogens Campylobacter jejuni, Escherichia coli, and Salmonella typhimurium on Chicken Breast Fillet during Cooking

My blog - Dorar no sella los jugos

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huiray

huiray

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$

 

And this is interesting in light of various things - including a recent thread lambasting "Chinese foodstuffs" as the spawn of the devil, while other folks pointed out that food contamination on a LARGE scale also occurred in the USA but seemed to be disregarded or glossed over by some folks.

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