Cooking Chicken - Some Simple Safety Precautions
Posted: Sunday, March 22, 2009
by Roger Wakefield
R Wakefield
In recent times, the risks of Salmonella, especially from cooking chicken, have been discussed so much in the media most people would have thought that incidences of infection to have reduced significantly. Sadly this is not the case. For people who eat chicken regularly, the risks of getting sick or worse are still there, and hospitals still treat thousands of victims every year.
Salmonella Explained
Salmonella is a type of food poisoning which is caused by a specific bacteria that lives in human beings, poultry and other animals.
If you are infected with salmonella, they may suffer from feverishness, diarrhoea, being physically sick (ie vomiting) and severe stomach cramps. These symptoms can commence within half a day after eating and may last along as three days. Normally, sufferers make a full recovery naturally, but in some cases, it can take a nasty turn, resulting in hospital care and in a few cases, it can even prove to be fatal.
Help! How Can I Avoid This?
The advice given to cooks is :
* Wash your hands AND the chicken before before cooking.
Salmonella can be present on your hands and also on the hands of anybody else how has touched the chicken. Cleaning thoroughly reduces the risks.
* Keep raw chicken away from anything on the kitchen counter.
If getting ready to prepare a chicken meal, cross contamination is a major hazard. To reduce the danger, do not use the same cutting utensils for raw chicken as is used for cutting vegetables. Also, use one cutting board for the chicken and another fo the vegetables.
If you follow these precautions, cooking with chicken is perfectly safe and has benefits fro your general health,
Assuming you are now feeling a little more upbeat about purchasing and cooking chicken, here are a few other things to consider to make your chicken meals more healthy and tasty.
Nowadays there are many benefits to purchasing 'free-range' chickens or even totally organic chickens. Even the high street grocery stores are beginning to sell 'organic' or 'free-range' chicken, so gettiing hold of it is easier than ever. This is a good thing because many of us are unhappy that the larger chicken farms are simply looking for a profit and not looking out for the health and wellbeing of their poultry, or the end consumers. The name, 'free-range' is usually more familiar to people seeking to have a healthier eating lifestyle - it needs the chickens to have access to the open air and be allowed to walk around and eat naturally instead of being confined in a small pen, or crammed into a barn with thousands of others. Free range chickens live a happier and stress free life, and this results in a taster meat, and a cleaner conscience for the consumer.
Organic chickens, which may also be 'free range', have the extra restriction that they are not subjected to antibiotics, hormones, herbicides or pesticides. Many people think that both Free-range and organice chickens taste better and are juicier.
Did you know that organic chicken breasts have only 10 fat calories, 110 thigh calories and a whole chicken only has 130 calories?
If you are dieting, that has to be good news, right?
If you are an athlete or body builder and are concerned about protein, free-range chicken breasts have 22 grams, thighs have 19 grams and the whole chicken has 21 grams - all of that from a meat that is really tasty!
Roger works as a an author and copywriter who offers dietary support and food related content for Recipes 4U, one of the largest free recipe collections on the net. Recipes 4U has over 40K recipes with specific recipe categories for Beef Recipes, BBQ Recipes and Bean Recipes. If you are looking for yummy recipes to cook at home, you can find exactly the right recipe for you at Recipes 4U.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Thankyou...This information will be useful in the future
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