Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

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Identical chicken breasts show the
changes in color and texture that occur
with overcooking. At 55 °C / 131 °F, the
breast meat has a slight pink cast and is
tender and moist. By 60 °C / 140 °F, the
additional heat has caused some contraction
of muscle proteins, and the pink
cast has disappeared. In our taste tests,
we preferred chicken in this temperature
range. At 80 °C / 176 °F, the chicken is
tougher, and contraction of muscle
proteins has forced the juices out of it.
In the authors’ experience, convincing chefs
that pork has no special cooking requirements
compared with those for beef or other meat can be
a difficult feat. Showing them the FDA Food Code
provokes statements such as, “But that must be
wrong!” Cookbook authors have less of an excuse
for perpetuating this travesty. Many have repeated
the silly claims about 71 °C / 160 °F for years
without bothering to check technical sources to
verify the facts.
Misconceptions About Chicken
The misconceptions surrounding chicken are in
some ways similar to those that plague pork but are
arguably even more confusing because of conflicting
standards and widespread blurring between
fact and fiction. First, the facts: chickens can
indeed host asymptomatic Salmonella infections,
and it is not uncommon for chicken feces to
contain high levels of the pathogenic bacteria.
Moreover, chickens are typically sold whole, which
means that they may carry remnants of any fecal
contamination of the skin or interior abdominal
cavity that occurred during slaughter and processing.
That’s why chicken and chicken-derived
products are considered such common sources of
foodborne Salmonella.
As with Trichinella and pork, however, the link
between contaminant and food has been exaggerated.
Many people believe, for example, that
chicken is the predominant source of Salmonella.
That’s not necessarily the case. In a 2009 analysis
by the CDC, Salmonella was instead most closely
associated with fruits and nuts, due in part to an
outbreak linked to peanut butter in 2006. Indeed,
the tally of outbreak-linked foodborne illnesses
attributable to produce was nearly double the tally
of such illnesses associated with poultry, and the
foodborne pathogen most commonly linked with
poultry was not Salmonella but the bacterium
Clostridium perfringens.
If the link is overblown, the cooking standards
for chicken are truly convoluted. As the table on
the next page shows, the FDA 2009 Food Code
lists the same cooking standards as the USDA’s
Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) web
site, and both concord with conventional wisdom:
the meat should be cooked to a minimal
internal temperature of 74 °C / 165 °F for 15
seconds. Unbelievably, the FSIS notes: “For
reasons of personal preference, consumers may
choose to cook poultry to higher temperatures.”
That ridiculous recommendation is far from the
final word on the subject.
For ready-to-eat food products, including
rotisserie and fast-food chicken, the FSIS calls for
a 7D reduction in Salmonella levels. In 2001, the
FSIS developed a corresponding set of time-andtemperature
tables for chicken and turkey
products according to their fat content. The
tables, based on the research of microbiologist
Vijay K. Juneja, Ph.D. and colleagues at the
USDA Agricultural Research Service, include fat
contents as high as 12% and recommended
temperatures as low as 58 °C / 136 °F. As we’ve
previously discussed, that set of standards has
been challenged as overly conservative by an
advisory panel, which instead suggested a 4.5D
reduction, allowing a 36% decrease in cooking
times from the FSIS 7D standard.
In 2007 Juneja’s team published the results of
a study directly examining Salmonella growth in
ground chicken breast and thigh meat. The data
show that cooking chicken meat at temperatures
as low as 55 °C / 131 °F for much shorter times
produces a 6.5D reduction. The researchers’ curve
is quite similar to the FDA’s 6.5D reduction curve
for whole-meat roasts, except for a sizeable divergence
in time at the 60 °C / 140 °F temperature
point (see What to Believe?, page 189).
So who’s right? Technically, destruction of
Salmonella can take place at temperatures as low as
48 °C / 120 °F given enough time. There is no
scientific reason to prefer any one point on the
reduction curve, but the experts who formulated
the FSIS ready-to-eat standards arbitrarily decided
to go no lower than 58 °C / 136 °F. Likewise,
officials preparing the FDA Food Code and other
reports chose 74 °C / 165 °F as an arbitrary cut-off.
The choice seems to have been based not on science
but on politics, tradition, and subjective judgment.
Health officials have admitted as much. In
a January 2007 report published in the Journal of
Food Protection, a panel called the National
Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria
for Foods conceded that, on the basis of preconceived
notions of consumer taste, the FSIS recommended
higher cooking temperatures to consumers
than to makers of processed chicken products:
The temperatures recommended to consumers
by the FSIS exceed those provided
to food processors, because poultry pieces
cooked to 160 °F are generally unpalatable
to the consumer because of the pink
appearance and rubbery texture.
Cooked at 55 °C / 131 °F Cooked at 60 °C / 140 °F
Cooked at 80 °C / 176 °F
Officially Recommended Times and Temperatures
for Cooking Chicken
Source
USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service
website, “Focus on: Chicken”
Elsewhere in the same report, the authors
suggested that a final temperature of 77 °C / 170 °F
for whole-muscle breast meat and 82 °C / 180 °F
for whole-muscle thigh meat “may be needed for
consumer acceptability and palatability.”
These are amazing admissions! In effect, the
authors are saying that FSIS consumer regulations,
which are ostensibly based on safety considerations,
are in reality based on bureaucrats’
be liefs about consumer preference. That is hardly
their charter! Shouldn’t chefs and consumers be
the ones to decide what they would prefer to eat?
Perhaps the most galling aspect of this stance is
that the advisors are just wrong about the culinary
facts. Chicken cooked at 58 °C / 136 °F and held
there for the recommended time is neither rubbery
nor pink. In our opinion its texture and flavor are
far superior to those of chicken cooked at the extremely
high temperatures the experts recommend.
Regulators’ misguided and patronizing attempts to
cater to consumer preference have served only to
perpetuate the tradition of overcooking chicken.
Temperature
(°C)
(°F)
Time
74 165 no time given
FDA 2009 Food Code 74 165 15 s
U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, readyto-eat
chicken; example times for 10% fat
content
FSIS recommendations (based on Juneja,
2001) for 7.0D reduction in Salmonella
for ready-to-eat chicken; example times
for 10% fat content
Juneja, 2007
6.5D reduction in Salmonella for ground
chicken breast meat
Juneja, 2007
6.5D reduction in Salmonella for ground
chicken thigh meat
58 136 81 min
60 140 35 min
63 145 13 min
74 165 <10 s
58 136 76 min 42 s
60 140 32 min
63 145 11 min 18 s
74 165 <10 s
55 131 39 min 31 s
57.5 135.5 31 min
60 140 19 min 30 s
62.5 144.5 4 min 17 s
55 131 1 h 15 min
57.5 135.5 34 min 8 s
60 140 20 min 56 s
62.5 144.5 5 min 28 s
180 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
FOOD SAFETY 181