People Are Doing Some Really Gross Things With Chicken On The Internet

Chicken.

It’s a universally tasty meat. No stereotypes here, everyone likes a good piece of chicken. Whether it be the breast or the wing — chicken is pretty much king (unless, of course, you’ve watched What The Health in which case enjoy trying to find something to eat for lunch today).

But this week, we noticed that people were doing some odd things with chicken. And it got us thinking — some of ya’ll are really disrespectful.

First up, chicken sashimi. Let’s just set the record straight — this is not a thing. Why? Because we said so. But according to Food & Wine, some people are inquiring about how safe it is to eat raw poultry.

“For the average American diner, the idea of eating raw chicken—with its seemingly inherent risk of salmonella poisoning—is a nightmarish prospect,” Food & Wine’s Jillian Kramer writes. “But for chef Marc Murphy, chicken sashimi is the stuff (Twitter) dreams are made of.”

It might be a no for us, but raw chicken does pop up on restaurant menus around the world. But, as we already knew, you’re taking some serious risks (salmonella, campylobacter and other harmful bacteria) if you try to eat your chicken like you eat your sushi.

“I would be very cautious with raw chicken, even if it is lightly cooked,” Claire Shorenstein, M.S., R.D., and C.D.N., told FW. She clearly knows what’s up.

But that brings us to the next chicken horror story. Warning, this might be triggering.

This is almost sacrilegious.

But again, apparently this is a thing. To whom, we have no idea. But the New York Times has a whole damn recipe for chicken seasoned with a splash of soy sauce inside a watermelon.

The disrespect.

And never mind that the end product looks like a burnt turtle, this step in the Times recipe is what really took us out:

Place watermelon on a tray and show it to guests. Return it to kitchen: remove chicken and carve. With a ladle, remove juices from watermelon and reduce in skillet until thickened; whisk in cold butter and spoon over chicken before serving.

Do yourself a favor and don’t show this to friends. Don’t reduce the watermelon/chicken juice. NEVER insult butter the way this recipe does. Actually…just forget we ever showed you this.

And if that wasn’t enough, we recently found out that people aren’t washing their slimy chicken when they take it out the package. Buzzfeed even rounded up a bunch of experts that proved that washing chicken was futile.

“Washing chicken does not remove any pathogens,” germ expert and associate professor of environmental health at the University of Arizona Kelly Reynolds told Buzzfeed. And it turns out the ESSENCE office is the minority — a Buzzfeed poll revealed that 64 percent of you all have never washed or rinsed your chicken.

Ya’ll just…

But if you do fall in the minority like us and prefer your chicken washed and cooked to juicy perfection, here are some delicious chicken recipes that you should follow. 

Try not to have nightmares about anything you’ve seen here.