Oven Fried Buffalo Chicken

A couple of days ago I posted on my facebook page a link to an article entitled The 10 Dirtiest Foods You’re Eating. The first food on that list was our beloved chicken. We love it fried, smothered, barbequed, roasted, stuffed, kabob’d, hot winged, and one of my favorites, broasted – that’s a story for another day. However you like your chicken, if it’s not clean it’s highly likely to make you sick.

One of the most common things people do is rinse the raw chicken in the sink. In case you’ve not yet heard, this is one of the quickest ways to spread contamination. Think about it. Your cold water rinse is only distributing any bacteria that was on the chicken, certainly not killing it or getting rid of it in any way, shape or form. So first, remove the bird from it’s packaging and place it on your cutting board or into the pan you will use for cooking.

Next, your cutting board – have one designated for meats. If not, be sure to spray it, and the knife you use, with a sanitizer or bleach solution after use in addition to washing it.

Finally, if you don’t have a meat thermometer you may want to invest in one. Poultry must be cooked to an internal temperature of no less than 165°F

If you could avoid sick chickens altogether, would you? Free range chicken is far less likely to harbor harmful bacteria that can cause illness. Remember in preschool (or when your child was in preschool) and one person would get sick, then several others would too? It’s the same thing. Chickens that are all cooped up together share their germs like preschoolers. There’s some controversy over how free these free range birds actually are. So with that in mind, even when purchasing free range, still use the same safe handling and preparation precautions.

So go, prepare your bird… and save some for me. 🙂 Lord knows I love me some tasty juicy bird.

For more info on safe handling of raw chicken visit The USDA. For more food safety info in general visit Homefoodsafety.org.