Why does raw chicken have a limited shelf life in the fridge, but if you cook it, it can sit for days and be fine?
In: Chemistry
It comes down to bacteria.
Bacteria in food do two things. They reproduce, and they produce waste. The more they reproduce, the more bacteria there are, which produce even more waste. The waste they produce is what makes us sick in many cases.
Being kept cold limits how quickly the bacteria reproduce, but it doesn’t entirely eliminate that, nor does it do much to slow down how much waste they produce. So they’re still producing waste, just not at an accelerating rate.
Now when you cook food and get it up to a certain temperature, you’re going to kill basically all the bacteria. This means there’s nothing to produce waste. But odds are it is not being moved from the cooking area to the fridge in a perfectly sanitary way, so it’ll pick up some more bacteria, but it’ll be limited to just the surface. This means it’ll take longer for that bacteria to have any significant effect, which is why cooking and then fridging gives it a new lease on life.
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