why is red meat able to be served medium rare, eggs can be medium (soft boiled), but chicken can’t be medium rare

Question

Why is red meat able to be served medium rare, eggs (which also come from chickens), can be undercooked, but chicken can’t be?

In: Other

Answer 1

The comments so far are correct but another factor is how easy it is for salmonella to get into the meat. Salmonella lives in a chicken’s gut, just like how E. coli lives in a cow’s and different bacteria live in ours. During the butchering process, if you accidentally cut into the gut you risk infecting the meat with whatever bacteria lives in there.

Since cows are much bigger, there’s a lot more margin for error when butchering. With chickens, because they are so small it’s a lot easier to accidentally cut into their gut.

Also not to be pedantic, but you can eat raw chicken, it’s just much more likely to make you sick (and also doesn’t taste good raw)