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
Raw chicken has bacteria living throughout the meat. This bacteria will grow and eat the meat as food, which produces toxins, which is what makes the meat rotten. When you cook the meat, you kill that bacteria. Some of that cooked meat could get a few microbes of bacteria, but it would only be on the outside of the meat, and will be far less than whatever was in the chicken to begin with. Storing the chicken in the fridge will also help to inhibit the bacterial growth. This is great for the cooked chicken with just a few bacterial cells in it, but with the raw chicken with the bacteria already present, it’s still enough that growth is possible.
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