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I'm new to frying chicken. When I grill it, I use an instant thermometer to check the temperature and get it to an internal temp of 165.

However. When trying this on a cast iron pan it gets way too tough. I filet the chicken so it's not too thick.

If I were frying by simply looking at the chicken (as I imagine most people do) then I would take it out much sooner.

So this question is for anyone who actually has measured the internal temp as they cook, and ends up with a delicious product. Did you actually get the chicken to 165 throughout?

BVernon
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  • Hi,your question has no objective answer ("real" cooks is not a defined category) and even if it is defined more strictly in somehow, there is still no way for answerers to know how a bunch of individuals chooses to act. We certainly don't take poll-style questions. So I'm afraid your question is not a good fit - if you want to learn about human behavior, you have to probably find an agency who did a representative survey, not ask us. – rumtscho Jul 17 '20 at 07:30
  • @rumtscho Thank you for the feedback. I've updated the question to more accurately depict what I wanted to know, and while it's true that any restaurant chef who does always cook to 165 may not be able to answer this question definitively , any chef who doesn't do this would definitely be able to answer no. I hope that this is good enough to have my question reopened, or if not maybe you could help me fine tune it a little more? Thanks! – BVernon Jul 17 '20 at 21:22
  • I'm at a loss how we could change the question to be on topic. What you suggest is a poll question, where everybody answers what they are doing, as in a survey - and this is a type of question we don't take. If you need this information, I am not sure where you can find it - maybe in scientific research on work psychology in restaurants, or records of food safety violations in restaurants, if there is a jurisdiction which mandates this boundary and makes the violations a public record - but we don't have it and can't create it. – rumtscho Jul 17 '20 at 22:13
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    If you look at the answer, you can easily see that you don’t _need to_ get to 165F for a food safe product - and therefore there are many cooks who _don’t_. Provided the [temperature over time] is correct, the bacteria will be significantly reduced (simplified: “all dead”) to give you a safe dish. Everything beyond that is probably unanswerable and like rumtscho I struggle how we could edit this to make it a better question. – Stephie Jul 18 '20 at 13:01
  • @Stephie yes I saw that, though it talks about doing this using an alternate cooking method. – BVernon Jul 18 '20 at 15:04
  • @rumtscho you're in charge so it is what it is, but I will say I respectfully disagree. It's neither a poll nor opinion based. It's confusing I suppose because it can only be definitively answered in the negative (only by those who don't, or those who know of people who don't). So you simply leave the question up and if someone can answer no then we'll have the answer. If no one answers no then we can reasonably assume (given the crowd who frequents this site) the answer is almost certainly yes. That's not a poll; that's not opinion. – BVernon Jul 18 '20 at 15:12
  • @BVernon we might have different definitions of what a "poll" question is, so I will restate. As I understand your suggestion, you want a question which has the possible answers "yes, I do that" and "no, I never do that" and one answer is potentially true for a subset of people answering (or reading) and the other answer is true for a different subset. This is a question structure that the site (and the network) does not take - years ago, they even had their own closing reason in the menu for closing questions. This makes it a bad fit, regardless of what else it might or might not be. – rumtscho Jul 19 '20 at 11:22
  • @rumtscho If you want to disallow the question I've asked, fine. But it's ridiculous and, frankly, ignorant that you do so under pretense that it's a poll. Perhaps you should look up the definition of the word. – BVernon Jul 22 '20 at 05:51
  • @rumtscho I can see that you have a bias here, which is why I feel it's necessary to add another comment to explain that a poll, however reasonably defined, has to do with registering votes so to speak. But this is nothing of that sort whatsoever. Either there are restaurants who regularly cook chicken under 165 degrees or there aren't. This has absolutely nothing to do with popularity or preference, but it's purely a matter of fact... yes or no. And if you call a question that can be answered with a yes or no a "poll", then you probably shouldn't have the privileges you do, in my opinion.. – BVernon Jul 22 '20 at 05:55
  • @BVernon We don't have to get hung up on the definition of "poll". I described two types of question which we don't take. One of them is, "do you, personally, as a chef, cook under 165 F", expecting yes/no answers. It doesn't matter if we call this a "poll question" or something else, we don't take this type of question on main sites in the SE network (on Metas, we do). The other possible form, asking answerers to make a statement about the world as a whole, as in "I read a study in which X percent of restaurants serve chicken under 165 degrees", is out of scope for the site - we are very... – rumtscho Jul 22 '20 at 07:32
  • ... restrictive about taking only questions on how to improve your own cooking, plus a few others (the full whitelist is on the [help]). Other questions around food and the behavior of cooks, eaters, or packaged food manufacturers are not taken. I agree that, if you word your question in that way, it will have an objective answer - but its topic is not covered by our site. – rumtscho Jul 22 '20 at 07:36

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Serious eats has a detailed explanation of chicken cooking temperatures available https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast.html

The short answer: if you are pan frying, grilling, or roasting a chicken to 165F, it will be guaranteed to be pasteurized to US safety standards, no matter what else you do, and entirely over cooked in the process.

Lower temperatures for longer times also meet US safety standards without overcooking, but are not as easy to measure.

I've sous vide cooked chicken to 136F infusing flavors and making it safe, then finished on an open flame for less than 30 seconds. Besides the very surface, the great bulk of the meat was never anywhere near 165F.

Phil
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  • I guess this will be the answer since it's the only one that was allowed before the question was closed. Thanks! – BVernon Jul 22 '20 at 05:48