Chicken Preparation

At a glance

We looked at how restaurants and whether food workers took steps to stop cross contamination when preparing chicken. We also looked at whether managers knew the right cooking temperature for raw chicken, whether food workers used thermometers for cooked chicken, and whether food workers checked thermometers for accuracy. Learn what restaurant management and food safety programs can do to improve chicken preparation and cooking.

cooked chicken in a pan with a thermometer stuck inside it

Key takeaways

Restaurant management and food safety programs should work to improve chicken preparation and cooking. Efforts should focus on creating training and prevention programs that focus on:

  • Lessening the chances for raw chicken to contaminate other food or equipment
  • Cooking chicken to the temperature recommended by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (165°F)

Why this is important

Chicken is commonly linked with foodborne illness, with most of these illnesses coming from Salmonella and CampylobacterA germs. Illness linked to chicken can come from cross contamination.B

Cross contamination occurs when raw, contaminated chicken touches other foods or kitchen equipment. Steps to stop cross contamination include:

  • Washing, rinsing, and sanitizingC equipment and surfaces used with raw chicken
  • Wearing disposableD gloves
  • Using separate cutting boards for raw chicken and other foods

Illness can also come from cooked chicken not reaching a high enough temperature (165°F) to kill any germs that might be inside it.

We don't know much about how restaurants prepare and cook chicken. If we learn more, we can improve how restaurants prepare and cook chicken and can lower the number of foodborne illness outbreaks.

What we learned

We found that many restaurants do not follow FDA's advice for preparing and cooking chicken.

Preparation

Most managers said their restaurants had a cleaning policy about equipment and surfaces used when preparing raw chicken:

  • Most of these policies included the three steps recommended by FDA: washing, rinsing, and sanitizing
  • About 1 in 10 managers said they wash and rinse equipment but do not sanitize it
  • About 1 in 3 managers said they wipe equipment with sanitizer but do not wash or rinse it first

One in four managers said that their workers do not always use gloves while working with raw chicken.

Four in ten managers said that they do not always have cutting boards assigned for use only with raw meat.

Cooking

Less than half of the kitchen managers we talked to:

  • Knew the temperature to which chicken should be cooked (165°F)
  • Said that their food workers use a thermometer to tell when chicken is fully cooked

In restaurants that use thermometers, about 1 in 3 managers said that their thermometers are checked for accuracy less than once a month.

More information

Journal article this plain language summary is based on

More practice summaries and investigation summaries

About this study‎

This study was conducted by the Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net). EHS-Net is a federally funded collaboration of federal, state, and local environmental health specialists and epidemiologists working to better understand the environmental causes of foodborne illness.
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Content Source:
National Center for Environmental Health
  1. Salmonella and Campylobacter: Germs that cause foodborne illness.
  2. Cross contamination: Spread of germs from one surface or food to another by contact.
  3. Sanitize: Process to reduce germs to levels public health codes or regulations consider safe. Sanitizing is done with weaker bleach solutions, sanitizing sprays, or heat. Clean surfaces before you sanitize them.
  4. Disposable: Designed to be used once and then thrown away.