On the Need for "Home Economics" Courses in School

Via Yahoo questions:
My girlfriend cooked raw chicken in the George foreman last night. The next day i wanted to grill my sandwich but she did not clean the foreman grill. I said i would get sick if i placed the sandwich on the grill where raw chicken has been. she insisted that the raw chicken cooked so i would not get sick from raw chicken juices. Whats going on here?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck getting the chicken bits off the grill after this long! That young man is going to need a good sized dollop of elbow grease to help get any burned bits loose. BTDT.

LittleRed1

E Hines said...

That young man is going to need a good sized dollop of elbow grease....

Or the girlfriend will.

Still, she's not far wrong, in principle. Subsequent cooking, to high enough temperatures, for long enough, will kill the salmonella, et al., that have taken up lodging in the grill.

I'd want it cleaned first, though.

Eric Hines

RonF said...

Home economics? Mastery of basic biology would give the answer.

douglas said...

This is the state of education of the young today- what they know they learned from public service announcements- in this case to fully cook your chicken. No underlying knowledge to know why or how, just 'do this, we say it's good for you'. More programmed than educated.

Texan99 said...

Let's see. Is chicken still raw after it's been cooked? It's a knotty existential question. Was this guy worried about eating the cooked chicken, on the ground that it was previously raw? Modern food-processing techniques haven't figured a way around that one yet, though I'm sure we're on the cusp of technology that will extrude cooked chicken directly from factories, like that strange "krab-with-a-K" substance.

His concern shouldn't have been with the raw state, but with the cooked detritus left to spoil overnight unrefrigerated.

I've never gotten sick from chicken to my knowledge, but I did absorb the lesson long ago about caution from one of our old housemates, who was involved in public health in some way as a bureaucrat. He stressed the need to wash up carefully after handling raw chicken, and we've always been pretty vigilant about it.

I had to get a food-handler's certificate from the county to be eligible to help with the fire station BBQ. It was all pretty common-sense stuff. I don't usually pay close attention at home to what temperature food is at or how long it stays there, but you do have to be more careful when you're making up huge batches and letting them sit a long time for public events. A bucket of potato salad doesn't heat or cool anywhere near as fast as a little home-sized portion.

raven said...

We have become a nation of over cautious wusses.
It is to the point now, where any display of actual care free enjoyment- aka- riding a bike sans helmet, seeing a kid with a pocketknife, cooking chicken over a 55 gallon drum with an expanded wire mesh grill and a propane weed burner, having a public beer on the beach around a driftwood fire, etc,is cause for a brief internal celebration.

douglas said...

Out here restaurants have to have a sign in the front window with their 'grade' from the health department. Quite a few people won't eat at a restaurant that doesn't have an 'A' grade, lots will pass on a 'C'. I might think twice about a 'C' (of which there are few), but a 'B'? I guarantee it's much cleaner than just about anyone's home kitchen, but they rarely think about that.

I also find it amusing how people will ask if you think somethings still good because it's been out for a couple hours- I just ask, if we were a couple hours into a picnic, wouldn't you still eat it?

Anonymous said...

Lord forbid what most young people and helicopter parents would do if confronted by the Five Second Rule. You know, if it was on the floor for less than five seconds, it's OK to cook/eat. (For houses without fast-moving dogs or toddlers, that is.)

LittleRed1