How to check if your chicken is perfectly cooked
By now, it’s (hopefully) well known that you shouldn’t eat chicken medium-rare. Chicken needs to be completely cooked through, otherwise salmonella could be lurking. How do you check without cutting your chicken in half? Here’s how.
It remains tricky to know for sure how well-done your chicken is without cutting it completely open. A chicken breast, for example, always has different thicknesses and can quickly go from cooked to too dry. Do you really want to be sure? Then get a meat thermometer.
Thermometer
With a meat thermometer, you measure the precise internal temperature of the meat. For breast meat, it should be 72 ºC; for legs and thighs, you want the meat to be 85 ºC. Dark meat is technically cooked at a lower temperature too, but it won’t yet be deliciously tender. Make sure the thermometer doesn’t touch a bone, as that can lead to an incorrect temperature reading.
No thermometer?
Don’t have a thermometer at home? No problem. Make a small but deep cut in the meat with a knife; if the juices that run out are clear, the chicken is cooked. This method is considerably less accurate, though. You’re only checking whether the meat is cooked; it could also be that the breast is overcooked. But hey, you’ve got to do something.
Also read:
