Why is red meat able to be served medium rare, eggs (which also come from chickens), can be undercooked, but chicken can’t be?
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It can be in places like Japan where salmonella is rigorously checked for and the spread is managed. In the US, for example, only one out of every 22,000 carcasses need to be inspected. So you have risk of salmonella here, but you can absolutely eat raw or seared chicken in Japan and some other places
Chickens have less dense muscle fiber than cows. With beef, bacterial contamination typically stays on the surface and is killed when you sear it. With chicken it’s more likely to penetrate so you need to cook it all the way through.
With eggs it varies from country to country. Some countries vaccinate their chickens against salmonella. In the US we do not, so it’s not recommended to eat undercooked eggs. That said the risk is pretty low. Only something like one in 10,000 eggs actually has salmonella inside.
Chickens are smaller and more porous than cows allowing bacteria to penetrate deeper into their meat. Additionally, Ecoli and Salmonella are both very common in birds. Factory farms for chickens also pack large quantities of them in very small areas causing larger amounts of bacterial propagation.
Beef is held to a higher safety/cleanliness standard because the FDA knows some people like it a bit undercooked, whereas raw chicken is held to a lower one because it is expected that people will cook the hell out of it.
I’m trying to think of a comparison/analogy, but I cannot. Maybe it’s like why houses right next to the fire department can be made out of more flammable material than the house on the other side of town?
There is also the “how does it taste” factor and the answer is “ehh not so good”
You can easily sous vide chicken at 130 degrees to pasteurize it and try this yourself… I dont think you will find the results enjoyable.
You can do it, nothing’s stopping you from buying a chicken breast, searing it on a pan till it’s medium rare, and digging in. You’re not even going to get sick from it most of the time. But you’re probably not going to like the result. Hence why you don’t see it often.
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)
Salmonella. Cow muscle is thick and dense enough to prevent bacteria from reaching the inner parts of meat when fresh, although they sticks to the surface. Which is why you can just sear a cut of meat, but also why the average ground beef ideally *should* be cooked “at heart” (since the surface and inner muscles are mashed together). Note: This doesn’t take into account potential tapeworm eggs (the risk should be low in rich countries).
Chicken muscle, and more generally avian meat, is quite permeable to bacteria. They get in quickly and spread to the core, thus making undercooked chicken fairly hazardous to eat, as you could catch enough bacteria to make you sick. Cooking it to the core makes sure all hazardous bacteria die.
As for eggs, they’re a different organism so they’re much less exposed to their hen’s microbiote. Plus, chickens are often fed medicine and vaccinated against salmonella to reduce its spread. Thus eggs are “safer” to eat soft boiled eggs. The risk isn’t zero but it’s low enough.
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Rare chicken is served in Japan. It has to do with the quality of chicken. Chickens in the US are kept in cages and literally walk around in their own shit all day.
https://zendine.medium.com/raw-chicken-japans-lesser-known-culinary-adventure-a16044a1fc06#:~:text=In%20Japan%2C%20raw%20chicken%20is,for%20its%20soft%2C%20juicy%20texture.
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