Why can we eat duck meat medium rare, treating it like red meat, but chicken, which is white meat, has to be fully cooked, even though both are types of birds?

Question

Why can we eat duck meat medium rare, treating it like red meat, but chicken, which is white meat, has to be fully cooked, even though both are types of birds?

In: Other

Answer 1

Both duck and chicken can have eg salmonella. Temperature of 165F / 74C kills the potentially dangerous bacteria, including salmonella.

If you briefly bring the inner temperature there, there is going to be some juiciness left. Perhaps the reason you don’t see chicken done like that is more due to tradition or e.g. only having duck in restaurants?

Also, meat can be cooked to a lower temperature, but then it needs to be e.g. tested and controlled, or you need to trust that the potential bacteria would be on the surface of the cut, where it’ll die to searing. Poultry tends to have much higher amounts of salmonella and e coli than e.g. cattle.