Chicken is America's most popular meat. Many people assume chicken follows a simple rule-of-thumb: Pink chicken turned white means "done." It's similar to how we cook other meats. But is this true? To study how cooks at home follow safety recommendations, researchers filmed 75 households in five European countries. From a random but nonrepresentative sample, they also conducted an online survey of nearly 4,000 households in the same countries that say they cook chicken.
Worried that chicken would dry out, most home cooks determined doneness by color and texture (口感) inside the meat, they found. Few bothered with thermometers (温度计), claiming they took too much time, were too complicated to use, didn't fit in the chicken or weren't necessary (although easy-to-use thermometers are inexpensive and widely available).
In additional lab experiments, the scientists injected raw chicken breast with bacteria (细菌), which cause millions of sicknesses, thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths each year in the United States. They cooked the breasts until they reached core temperatures ranging from 122 to 158 Fahrenheit, and they discovered something surprising. At 158 degrees, but not lower, bacteria inside the chickens' cores was reduced to safe levels, and when cut open its flesh appeared dull and fibrous, not shiny like raw chicken. But meat began changing from pink to white far below this, and most color change occurred below 131 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes, the chicken's core would be safely cooked, but unsafe levels of bacteria still existed on surfaces that hadn't touched the grill plate.
So what are you supposed to do?
Dr. Bruno Goussault, a scientist and chef, recommends buying and cooking breasts and legs separately. Bring the breast's core to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, he said, and the leg to between 168.8 and 172.4 Fahrenheit. If you really want to safely measure temperature for a whole chicken, insert a pop-up thermometer into the thickest part of the leg before roasting it, Dr. Goussault suggests. By the time it pops, the breasts will have long cooked. They will likely be dry and far from his standards of culinary (烹饪的) perfection. But you'll be sure to, as Dr. Goussault says in French, "dormir sur ses deux oreilles," or, figuratively, "sleep peacefully."
