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I feel the same way. My bf always washes the chicken. I then go in after him and wash the sink!

I only rinse whole chickens/turkeys. All other chicken gets the rubdown with a papertowel.
I've always been slightly paranoid about salmonella, especially since I don't have a dishwasher to sanitize my cutting boards, but I've never been sick from it (knock on wood).

Depends on how slimey it is. If it's all icky, I wash it, if it's not, I don't. Anything in the sink and the cutting boards gets washed with water as hot as I can stand and the best defence is to have dry countertops anyway, so I don't worry about it much.

Rev9, if you're worried about it you can either lay your cutting boards in the sun for a few hours or you can pour boiling water over them. Best option? Use one cutting board for raw meat and one for fruits and veg. If you want to be REALLY paranoid, add a third for ready-to-eat stuff. That's what they (supposedly) do in many food service places and it's easy to find color coded boards now.

yuck yuck ew. this is why i maybe cook chicken 3x/year. too much of a sanitization issue.

I once saw a funny exchange between Julia Child and Jacques Pepin when he said he didn't rinse his chickens. She said people from France always rinsed their chickens and in his heavy French accent he declared "But I am from Connecticut!"

i'm kinda uptight about the whole raw chicken thing. i have a cutting board specifically for chicken and chicken alone. and i wash my hands like 456345 times when working with it.

i don't rinse it anyway, but your reasons mentioned in the post totally make sense to me and now i definitely WON'T rinse it.

Kdkaboom - I'm with you, I'm totally uptight handling chicken and my hands used to be chapped and raw from the constant hand washing. Now I buy dispoable vinyl gloves at BJs and wear them when I need to handle raw meat. It's made sanitation and clean-up much easier. :)

I never rinse chicken - it totally increases your risk of cross contamination.

I don't rinse. I used to, but read a few years ago that it wasn't necessary and could spread yuk. Still do rinse a whole chicken of course.

I also do not rinse and have never rinsed chicken (nor did my family when I was growing up, but my mother cooked everything to leather consistency so there was no risk there). I handle and move meat around as little as possible and prefer not to touch it at all. If I have to do something that requires a lot of meat handling, I wear disposable food-handling gloves.

I did rinse, but no more!

Thanks for this post, I was never sure weather I needed to wash or not!

I rinse chicken because it always seems to have a "film" on it.

I don't rinse unless I've brined and the recipe calls for the brine to be washed off.

Aside from normally being OCD about washing my hands, I don't think I'm too freakish about chicken.

I don't touch anything else while working with it, and wash my hands frequently until it's in the pan. Also I use only one cutting board for chicken and run it through the dishwasher, but I think all of that is just common sense.

Ew! slimy meat?! if my meat was slimy I wouldn't rinse it, i wouldn't eat it!

ew ew ew!

Let's be reasonable here people! If it's slimy or smelly or grosses you out in some way that makes you think you should wash it off before cooking it, you probably shouldn't cook it and you likely shouldn't eat it.

I wash, but always disinfect the sink and nearby surfaces afterwards.

I absolutely rinse all raw chicken. An easy and sanitary way to do so is to place a stainless steel bowl in the sink and fill it with cold water, followed by a couple tablespoons of salt. Soak your chicken in this for a minute or so. Clean up is as simple as lightly spraying the sink and bowl when you are done with a spray disinfectant containing bleach, then rinsing with water.

I rinse raw chicken. I do it because my grandmother taught me to. I know better than to argue with the teachings of my grandmother.

My elderly mother lives with me and seniors are more susceptable to getting sick from food borne germs. I wash my hands and wipe down the counter and sink constantly. I make sure that raw meats and the dishes and utensils I use to handle them go immediately into soapy water and use fresh plates and utensils so I don't contaminate the food. I clean up and wash up as I go.

As much as anything else, it is a matter of being conscious of what you do while you cook. All it takes is touching the handle on the refrigerator after handling raw meat to create a contamination opportunity.

My elderly mother lives with me and seniors are more susceptable to getting sick from food borne germs. I wash my hands and wipe down the counter and sink constantly. I make sure that raw meats and the dishes and utensils I use to handle them go immediately into soapy water and use fresh plates and utensils so I don't contaminate the food. I clean up and wash up as I go.

As much as anything else, it is a matter of being conscious of what you do while you cook. All it takes is touching the handle on the refrigerator after handling raw meat to create a contamination opportunity.

Sorry about the double post. My computer is doing something funky.

As a rule I was my chicken parts with lemon or lime juice in a basin, pat dry and season before cooking. This is a generational thing. I also clean my kitchen sink and counters with bleach water after cooking anything. Guess you can't be too careful

I'm all for food safety, and I wouldn't argue with anyone about taking extra precaution with chicken, but it just makes me wonder how all our previous generations survived if this is such a horrific issue. I know for a fact my parents and grandparents paid no special attention to how they handled chicken and I don't recall anyone in my family ever dying from or even having salmonella. Is factory farmed modern chicken at more of a risk for this sort of thing? Is that the issue? Or are we just more sensitive to it because of the 6 o'clock news expose mentality surrounding health issues similar to this one ?

I wash chicken in salted water, then disinfect with bleach solution and rinse--all surfaces--after contact with raw chicken. I also use food handling gloves, at home and at work, when working with raw meats. I use separate cutting surfaces for raw meats. It probably sounds a bit excessive, but it's just the way I was taught. Also, I have worked in catering, and cross-contamination from raw meats is a concern and something to (obviously) avoid when preparing food for large groups of people.

well drikfan - in the old days people just went outside and killed their chickens. nowadays they're raised in disgusting conditions in order to provide consumers with the meat they demand. so the unclean living conditions, the unclean killing factories, and the trucking across the country and then their time in the grocery store sometimes being left out for too long (trust me it happens!) before going on the shelf ... then it gets gross :)

i'm not vegetarian or anything or jewish but i like the old jewish style of koshering meats - you soak everything in salted water in a basin in the sink and then rinse. i think the salt kills the bacteria and draws blood out. i think the suggestion above about a rinse then a quick marinade of lime juice and spices sounds like a similar idea. plus then it tastes good.