Should You Wash Your Chicken?
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You're telling me a chicken washed this meat? No, I did. This is A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What?

Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Scherer. And I'm your host, Nicole Inaidi. And Nicole, we are now in 2025. That's right. It is a new year. It is the same us. New year, same us. But all new debates. And today we are actually taking on a debate that does get genuinely heated among a lot of people online. That is very, very true. This is touchy subjects. We are not afraid of touchy subjects.

Not anymore. We love controversy. Bring it. We have our wings made of wax and we are flying towards the sun. Like Icarus. That's the reference. You got it. God, you're smart. Thanks. Should you wash your chicken? Huh?

The only thing that's more controversial is should you wash your legs or just let the soapy water run down? Now, I know where I stand on that. You should not wash your chicken. Hello. Hi. How are you? Starting off the year.

Don't wash your chicken. Why do people wash their chicken? There are a lot of reasons people would wash their chicken. I can go back to why a lot of people say they wash their chicken, which is simply to clean it, right? Sure. People wash things to clean it. And when we're describing washing chicken, we're describing many things. When you say don't wash your chicken...

Everything, and this doesn't just go for the wash your chicken debate, this goes for everything in life. It is so much more nuanced than you think. Life is nuanced. Life is absolutely nuanced. But is this debate nuanced? This debate is indeed nuanced. So when people say, I wash my chicken, that can mean many things. Some people take chicken, say, out of a package, and they will run it underwater, and then they'll throw it maybe in some paper towels, marinade, whatever, and then they'll

Okay. And then cook it. Some people will fill a bowl full of water and submerge their chicken for an extended period of time. And this is, we're talking about chicken that's ready to eat out of the pack. Let's imagine a bone-in skin on chicken thigh. Okay, fair. Which I eat, God, do I eat 50 chickens worth of those in a month.

I just run through them. And it's packaged, right? And sealed. You got it from the deli the morning and then you're eating it at night. It's like a grocery store. Yeah, a raw chicken. It is raw chicken. Not frozen. Not frozen. Okay.

Another method people will do is they will fill a bowl with sitting water and they will submerge it for an extended period of time. Another thing that people call washing chicken, this is especially popular in Caribbean households. Yes, I've seen it where they take the lime and sometimes they use vinegar to clean it. You can soak it in lime water, vinegar water. I've even seen some people take fresh lime, cut it in half and rub it on the chicken. I've seen that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so if you are doing that in an effort to make your chicken safer to consume by eliminating bacteria, I will say that does not hold scientific water. I agree. Your chicken holds water. But that does not hold scientific mustard. The bacteria you can...

potentially get some germs to run off. But any... And when we're talking about bacteria in chicken, we're talking about salmonella. Of course, yes. Salmonella is the leading cause of foodborne illness. Actually, I think technically norovirus has it beat, but I think norovirus is transmitted through non-food...

as well. So Salmonella, it's basically the big baddie in terms of, you know, hospitalizations. 26,500 hospitalizations per year, 420 deaths in the U.S., 1.35 million cases. Oh my gosh. Is that... Do you think there's just one person that's getting 2 million cases? Not 2 million. One person's getting 100,000 cases and throwing the numbers off? No, I think... So there's what, 350 million in the U.S.? I think this is...

I don't know how many people live in the United States. Am I supposed to know that? Yeah, it's like, what, 350 right now? I don't know how many. A little more than 360? I don't know how many. The point is, 1.35 million cases. There's a lot of salmonella. That's too much salmonella for people to be having. And the CDC and the USDA, they are incentivized to try and get people to not come to the hospital with salmonella. Food safety is important.

It's important, yeah.

So when the USDA did a study where they dyed water red, ran it through a sink, put it over like a piece of meat that you'd be washing to show how far the water droplets that could feasibly have salmonella on them could travel in your kitchen. And the radius was much bigger than you expected. It was several feet wide radius. And the salmonella will live in those super small microscopic waters? Well, that's so, so, so. Oh, my God. Yet it can live.

However, there was no actual study done on the microbiological compounds of that water. So what was the point of the study? Well, they just showed the water drop. Just to see how far it would travel? They wouldn't do the extra work to see if actually there was salmonella in the water? Effectively, yeah. Why am I, a podcast host, thinking of doing this and the scientists aren't? Can you explain that to me? Sure.

It might be. There might be methodological reasons that we don't know. We're too dumb to be scientists. All we can do is yell about washing your chicken to you. Right? This is the breadth of our knowledge. Sure. So that's been cited a lot, especially 2013. They launch a marketing campaign to tell people not to wash their chicken. Mm-hmm.

And so that's cited a lot by the anti-chicken washing camp. Like when you say don't wash your chicken, why do you say that? Well, the water droplets disperse and I would like to believe there's salmonella in the water. And that's a very reasonable fear. Yeah. Right? But say somebody's washing their chicken by putting water into a clean bowl and then simply putting their chicken in it, taking it out, drying it well on paper towels. What is the point of it?

What's the point of submerging the chicken in water? Why not just put it on a plate, season it, cook it? So, there... And this, I think, is very reasonable, right? I think a lot of the reasons people do things are not actually the reasons they're doing things. So, when you say, I'm washing my chicken because it, like, makes it safer or it's unclean and there's bacteria and I'm getting it off, what you might actually be doing is just, like, getting some of those juices off that were on...

on the chicken in the packaging. And I think there is a shot. I've never done a blind side-by-side. It might make it taste better. Okay, really? So I never... Like clean water? Not like salted water? Not like... Yeah, straight up.

Because if you think about it, right, like you are getting, if you ever brine chicken like that, you know, the chicken's flavoring the water, the water is flavoring the chicken, the water and the salt are entering the chicken cell membranes, etc. Yeah. If you soak any meat in water for especially an extended period of time, works better when you boil it, some of that flavor is transferring out into the water.

Sure. So if you think there is bad flavor on the chicken, you want to get that off. You want to get that into the water so then when you cook it, it's a cleaner chicken flavor. What is bad flavor? What is this bad flavor you're talking about? I'll tell you an experience that I had that changed my mind on a lot of things. I was making...

God, it was some Chinese soup, and I can't exactly remember what it was, but it was like a pork belly-based soup. Okay. And I saw in the recipe that it was like triple blanch the pork belly. Okay. Blanch it, and it was like soak it in clean water, blanch it in clean water, pull it, more clean water, blanch it again, rinse it, then boil it in a pot. And I initially was like...

I'm going to just boil this pork belly in the pot. I like the flavor of pork. Some scum comes up, but you rinse it off, whatever. I triple blanched it, and you got such a better, clean, what I can only describe as a clean pork flavor. Well, you're heating the water. And it eliminated what I call pork stink.

Well, which I understand. Yeah. Does that imply that there is chicken stink? Yes, there is certainly chicken stink. There is. Sometimes when you make soup, there is chicken stink. There's chicken stink, right? You ever just like chuck a bunch of like chicken parts into an Instant Pot and just crank it when you're making a really lazy soup or broth or whatever? Yes, of course. There's chicken stink coming off of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't, like, mind it, especially if I'm lazily making a chicken broth and not really caring what I'm doing. You know, when I make Persian stews, I always blanch my meat, and then I toss it out, and then I put clean water in there. But I would like to think, what is it? Maybe the slow cooking process that—

extracts this chicken stink that we're talking about? Or is it maybe just when you sear like a chicken boneless, whenever you sear a bone and skin on chicken thigh and you're searing it, is there chicken stink that matters? Does the chicken stink coefficient consider the cooking time? Like, what are we talking about?

Totally unclear because I haven't tested it. No, but for real, like I haven't tested these things back to back to back. But like I'm trying to really put myself – I don't wash my chicken. I mostly – I don't wash my chicken. I will mostly dry my chicken off on paper towels because I'm likely – If you're searing it, even if you're roasting, say, a bone-on skin on a piece of chicken, you want it to be dry simply because the skin is going to get crispier. It's going to cook better and all that. That said –

there is reason that I would believe that if you soak that chicken in water and then dump out that water safely, sanitize all your stuff afterwards. You should always be sanitizing your kitchen. Go ahead. And then you cook that chicken. I think it would taste different than chicken coming straight out of the package. And I think that is mostly the reason why someone washed their chicken, especially if you grew up with your mama washing the chicken, with your grandma washing the chicken, with her mama washing the chicken, et cetera. So I'll tell you a story that I saw that really, really resonated with me while we were doing research for this.

So there's this guy and he's making a Christmas ham for his family. Okay. And he cuts like two inches off of the back of the ham, puts it in his pan and then cooks it. And then you start to think, why am I cutting two inches off of my ham? Like I've always been taught that way to do it. It's the right way to do it. My mom did it. My grandma did it. My mom, exactly. Like you said, everyone in my family did it.

I'm going to do it. But let me ask why. He calls his mom and says, hey, mom, why do we take two inches off of the Christmas ham before we put it in the oven? She's like, oh, I did that so your great-great-grandma did that so it would fit in the pot that she was cooking in. So...

I don't know if this is the exact one-to-one, but sometimes whenever you just dig a little deeper and do a little bit more research, I think you find answers instead of just accepting like, oh, my mom did it. My grandma did it. The generational destiny that's passed down to you via food doesn't always need to happen again. But that's just me. Listen, I feel that. I hear that. The other side of that argument for me is that

modernity has done so much to erase tradition and culture. And food is so much about connection, right? And so I think when you try and completely sort of sterilize everything, and you're like, hey, there is a chance that that water molecule is going to end up on your microwave handle after you've washed the chicken. Ergo, you should not do the thing that has maybe connected you a little bit to the technique that your grandma used. I'm like, piss off.

I'm taking my own safety into my hands here and trusting that I know how to clean my kitchen properly if I want to wash my chicken. And I think I've been harder on this in the past when I've been like, don't wash your chicken. Don't you know that the molecules in the salmon – and then I'm out here eating – I've eaten raw chicken breast sashimi from a Japanese restaurant because I wanted to try it, right? But I'm somebody who I'm fine –

taking those risks when it comes to my personal safety. Yeah. And I know what I'm about. I'll eat oysters from a shopping cart. It's good. Like you said about modernity, I think probably the people who have been, like, washing their chicken, their great-great-grandmothers probably, like, didn't get chicken from a store, right? Yeah. Like, for example, my mom, she didn't grow up on a farm, but, like, she had chickens. And they would kill chickens and pluck the feathers and do the whole thing. Yeah. So maybe because...

She was washing chicken. It makes sense to wash chicken now. But I would like to think that the grocery stores are doing their due diligence, passing their health code standards and stuff like that. And what they're presenting to me is safe to eat and is okay to use straight out of the package. Sure. And to be another statement is I don't think everybody cleans as well as you think, Josh.

I don't think people like, for example, whenever you're done doing dishes, do you? I'm not a good example for this. Do you? Like, I think the most important dish to clean in your house is your sink.

Like every single night I Clorox soap and water my whole entire sink area when I'm done I clean every single surface with a Clorox wipe soap and water make sure it's clean clean my floors So it can start anew am I a little bit of a unique story in that probably no are you neat because I do that Absolutely. Oh, you do that too. Are y'all? Your sinks are you cleaning your yeah, I 409 it every cleaner sink. Oh

Dish soap? Is that not enough? Is it hot water? Hot water? Warm water. Hot. You need to sanitize it. Because that's how you get salmonella. Okay. Maybe that's... Maybe... Okay, so wash your chicken if you want to, but please, please, please always sanitize your sinks. Is that a good sentiment? Does that hear you? My phone fell. Oh my gosh. I can't bend down because my pants are too tight. Can you do it for me? Can you get my phone? Where'd it go?

I got it. I'm going to kick it over, though. Okay, we'll go back to the sink. Sorry. What was that? The other big elephant in the room is that even if you're washing your chicken really well, even if you are sanitizing your sink, none of that kills salmonella. What are you talking about? Only heat? Heat. Only heat kills salmonella. Wait, wait, wait. What soap and hot water can do is, and I'm,

I've researched this a little bit. I've written about it in the past. I'm pretty sure I'm right here. What soap and hot water can do is they can take the molecules, the germs that have salmonella on them, and they can sort of like move them elsewhere out of that general vicinity. What? So say you are – your sink is covered in raw chicken juice. You are washing that sink with hot water and soap. Hot water increases molecular movement, right, kinetic energy. Sure. So things just move around freely with hot water.

Think about washing fat off of, you know, a dish. Hot water does it better than cold. And soap will actually like bind to those molecules to get them to. Soap is from fat, right? Yeah, it has something with like ions or magnetism. I read Fight Club. I did. And watched Fight Club. His name was Bob Hoskins or whatever. If you ever see, I remember my eighth grade science teacher doing this experiment showing us bacteria in a. Petri dish. Petri dish or something and then putting a little drop of soap and seeing how it reacted. And it goes like bleh.

Yeah. So anyways, that can get it to just like wash safely down the drain. So anything that the soap and water is touching, it's just moving that bacteria out of there. So that'll do it. The only way to kill bacteria, salmonella, insta-kill temp, 165 degrees Fahrenheit, all dead. No matter how dirty your chicken that you got, as far as salmonella goes, there's other bacteria that can live. That can live.

But salmonella, 165 degrees, which is what the USDA says you should cook your chicken to, it will be dead. You can also cook it to a lower temp and hold it there for a certain amount of time. Carry over cooking. Carry over cooking, right? Well, not even carry over cooking, just the way that heat and time function in terms of bacterial viability. So if you're at like – you can safely eat chicken at 145 degrees if it has been held there for, say, half an hour. If you're sous-eating chicken for a long, long time –

I wouldn't even recommend it. I think eating chicken at like 150, 155...

is great when you have white meat, at least, when you've held it for a long time. But that's the only, like, scientifically safe way to consume. If it's being held. It doesn't do anything for safety. It can do things for flavor and for, you know, hell, I don't know, cultural preservation, right? If you want to do that. Yeah. But that's the case. Are you saying that I have to freaking blowtorch my whole entire kitchen for it to be salmonella-free? Yeah, baby. I don't want to do that. No, I don't know.

That's crazy. I can't believe Clorox and all these things don't kill it. It just moves it real fast. Yeah. It moves it over there. I'm pretty sure that's right. I don't know. Josh, you are the closest link I have to science right now, other than Maggie, who has an actual degree in science, which is computer science, but still science. How do you clean computers? A computer duster? Yeah, you just dip it in the sink. Does that make sense? Yeah, just in the water. I put my work laptop in the dishwasher all the time. Ridiculous.

I think 2025 is a year for personal growth. How do you feel about that? Speak that into existence, sister. Yeah, I mean, like everyone's like, oh, I'm going to start working out. I'm going to start eating better. But me, I want to learn a new language. I think it's just going to expand the way that I see the world and the way that I can communicate with other people. I think it's really important.

Well, how do you plan on learning that new language, Nicole? Rosetta Stone, obviously. Obviously. The thing I love most about Rosetta Stone, listen, I took foreign language in high school. Same. You did. You listening out there probably did. I'm not great in a classroom setting. I need an actual immersive experience, and that's what Rosetta Stone gets you. You can actually practice as if you were a native speaker. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop,

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Today, a Hot Dog is a Sandwich listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's a heck of a deal, Nicole. Visit rosettastone.com slash hotdog. That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com slash hotdog today.

Hey, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott. And we make a TV show called Severance. On January 17th, Severance is back for season two on Apple TV+. And we can't wait for you guys to see it. And before the premiere, Ben and I are going to be binging season one and putting out daily recap podcasts. Yep. Each weekday beginning January 7th, we'll be dropping an episode featuring exclusive behind-the-scenes tidbits and brilliant insights from our cast and crew and us.

Patricia Arquette, Britt Lauer, Zach Cherry, John Turturro, the list goes on. All your favorite Lumen employees, their friends, families, enemies, in your feed every single weekday. And here's the best part. After that, we're going to keep going. Tune in weekly as we recap every episode of Season 2. The podcast drops on the same day the episode comes out.

It's the Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam. On Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. So have you ever gotten like a piece of chicken or like a breast that still has wings on it? Not like wings, like feathers on it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you do in that situation? Oh, I just kind of like take them off with a paring knife, but I'm relatively fine with that. Again, you just cook the feathers 240 degrees or, you know, 165 for insta-kill. It never like turns you off a little bit? No, no.

I don't know, man. Is it just me? I just get kind of turned off. I don't love it. I'd rather. I get mostly wings that have feathers attached to it, you know? Cool. Yeah. So I'm not too worried about that. Let's go to the lime cleaning method because this is interesting. Yeah. So I know that the acid. Acid does what? Acid like kills. Acid don't do shit, bro. Not in this application, though. What does cook mean to you?

Because, no, truly, that's what's at play here. What does cook mean to me? So when people say the lime in ceviche cooks the fish, what does that actually mean to you? Cooks the fish. I think what it does, it tightens all the proteins together. And it—oh, my gosh. Let me think about this. I know. It's a tough thing to actually process when you think about it. The acid cooks the fish. Nay. The acid nay cook—the acid nay cook fish. The acid nay cook fish. The girl, yea, be a witch. Okay.

Is it that the, okay, I'm going to go with it. The acid kind of seizes up all the proteins and gets rid of the, how does it get rid of the rawness? What does raw mean to you? Is it an internal temperature situation? Raw means uncooked. You're the dictionary definition. Philanthropic is the ability of doing philanthropy. What? Thank you, dictionary.com. What, what?

Wow, this is such a brain buster. Welcome to the new year. Cooking, I don't think it cooks. I think it just seizes the proteins. And maybe it kills some sort of bacteria that's going on in there. The acid kills the bacteria. It ain't killing no bacteria. What does it do? It ain't killing no bacteria. What does it do? It tightens up the proteins. Oh, that was right. It tightens the proteins, but does that mean cook?

Because the same parasites that would die with either A, flash freezing, or B, cooking, I believe they actually love acid. Oh, shoot. So it does nothing to really make the safety better. But I'm fascinated with the idea that in the Middle Ages, supposedly...

Sure.

Right? And so I think that, and then spices, a lot of them are also antimicrobial, right? And so a lot of those, onion, garlic, whatever, they can help with that. Citrus, what it does with fish specifically, it can actually like tame or neutralize sulfuric compounds. So it makes your fish taste less fishy, which a lot of people associate with freshness in certain ways. Interesting. And so that's one of the things it does with ceviche, but as far as like making it safer to consume fish.

Not necessarily. So you're saying whenever we're making ceviche at home, we should probably have a fish that was frozen from before? Most fish is frozen. It's flash frozen on boats. You're not getting a fish from the pond and making ceviche out of it. Yeah, exactly. Don't get that fresh river trout from a polluted lake. But yeah, that's one of the reasons for citrus. What about in the chicken application, the chicken cleaning application? You know what I think it does? What?

Makes it taste good? Makes it taste good, man. Okay, fair. You ever do that? You ever just rub raw citrus on your chicken and cook it? Do you think... You're getting all those essential oils on there. It tastes like a lime. Lime is great. I don't think I've ever done that before. Do you think the rubbing of the acid on the skin helps tighten the skin a little bit or anything? Oh, I'm sure it does. You think so? I'm sure it does. I don't know what it would do per se in the cooking process, like differently. Interesting. But I think a lot of these...

especially in that Caribbean vinegar washing. Acid and protein to me is just a great deal. I was putting lemon on my steak last night. I'm a big fan of just acid and protein, especially with fat, like chicken skin. So I think a lot of these things are really coming from places of... Someone did this 150 years ago, and she made really good chicken. So now we're going to keep doing this. You know what I mean? And as far as the...

health risk of you doing that. I don't think you have access to the amount of variables to know that, oh, somebody who is washing their chicken keeps a dirtier kitchen than somebody who isn't washing their chicken. So a lot of these online attacks of people being like,

You're putting your family in danger by washing your chicken. We don't know if that person's typing those with unwashed hands from putting their chicken right in the... Yeah, or going to the bathroom. But we don't know enough to say. And I think even like the USDA does not know enough to say. There's even on the USDA, they say washing raw poultry, our science, your choice. Because they're like, hey, here's... They say that? Dog, look at that. Washing raw poultry, our science, your choice. So it says...

I kind of love that. Same. Love that. I also...

Have maybe upsetting opinions about things. So I'm open to the fact that people don't like that. So maybe I do. Am I redacting that you should never wash your chicken? That maybe you can? Maybe it's up to you? I think that's such a reasonable thing to say. And I think a lot of people, specifically online, food is so much about culture and identity. Yes. And online people. That's very true. They want to be right and they want to dunk on people so they know they're right.

So many people, I'm sure I've done this in the past, so many people go and be like, did you know that the water droplets are spraying an eight-foot radius around your kitchen? And then there's somebody calmly being like, all I did was rub a lime on my chicken. Right. And then I put that in the trash, and then I cooked it, and I sanitized everything. What the hell are you yelling at me? We don't know enough things to say. I think it's also, well, as a person that has a surf-safe food handler's card...

I had that at one point. Of course. At least we've taken the courses. We've learned. So whenever we're sitting down and we're watching a screen say, do not do this with your chicken, what are we supposed to do as food professionals, as experts, as people who feed two very prolific people, even ourselves? What do we do at that point whenever the information we're being given is like, this is a big no-no. Don't do this. Then what do we do? I think every...

As I said earlier, everything is more nuanced than it seems. But at the same time, everything's a little bit simpler than it seems as well. And when I say simpler, I mean there are very –

few things you have to do. Cook your chicken to the right temperature. Correct. Sanitize everything in your kitchen. Wash your hands very often. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know people have said that I don't wash my hands when I'm doing cooking videos. It's like very different when you're cooking on camera. Cooking on camera. And a lot of it's like editing. People like don't understand that like they're watching me season chicken and then in the next bit I'm like making pasta and they go, he didn't wash his hands.

15 minutes passed between those two shots and I washed my hands. It's just how the computer, it's not real life. And we make sure Josh washes his hands. And he does it himself. Josh is a big boy. Josh is a big boy. Josh washes hands. Josh washes hands because Josh wants to wash hands. And if there's ever more like, hey, go wash your hands, he'll do it because guess what? He's on a cooking show. Thank you. It's a cooking show. Thank you.

Well, what do you do in your own personal life to ensure food safety for you and your loved ones? Like, do you have things that are either like science-backed or non-science-backed that you do? Again, I just use what I learned from my ServSafe. I know it's been a long time. It's probably expired. What are your biggest takeaways?

Well, the most important thing is I always sanitize no matter what. I really do sanitize my whole kitchen. I really do too. And I know people wouldn't expect that. And I think it's important for us to impart that little bit of wisdom is how important it is to use hot soapy water and cleaning solutions to make sure your kitchen is clean so you do not spread illness. When it comes to raw foods, like for example, if I'm making...

What am I making this weekend? I'm going to make chicken wings because football is on Sunday, right? Sunday I have football? Sunday morning football? Yeah, I did. Look at you go. So I'm going to make chicken wings, okay? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to remove... I buy a lot of my meats in bulk. So what I do is I take my chicken wings out like two hours before and I put it in a bowl and I put a stream of water on to make it like defrost, okay? And then after that, I remove my chicken from there and...

And then I put it in a new bowl. I take the old bowl, sanitize it, wash it with hot water and soap. And then I sanitize that area. Then I take my bowl that has the chicken in it. And then I season it. And then I use, sometimes I use gloves. Sometimes I don't. Depends how long my nails are. I put them on a sheet pan. And then I spread it out and I cook it in the oven. I make nice crispy chicken wings in the oven. And then after that, I take my bowl that I marinated my chicken in. And I clean it with soap and water. And then I sanitize it. And then that's it.

That sounds like a hell of a Sunday. Did you like it? I did like that. That's what I do all the time when dealing with chicken. Other things I'll throw out there if you really want to eliminate a lot of that risk, make sure you have a soap dispenser that you don't have to touch with your hands. That's not to say like a robot one. Oh, interesting. But I have one that's like a really big thing that I elbow. Oh,

Oh, you do. Okay, I don't have that. So I elbow it. But even if I have to, a big thing also is sanitizing the neck of your sink, sanitizing the handle, sanitizing the actual bottle of soap. The knife you use to cut the chicken open. I broke down a whole freaking turkey this Thanksgiving. Sick. Last Thanksgiving? This Thanksgiving? The most recent Thanksgiving. Yeah, it was like six weeks ago. Okay.

I broke down the whole turkey for Thanksgiving 10 months from now. Just sitting out, open air, dry-aged.

No, but I had a 22-pound bird that, you know, I have big cutting boards, big prep stations. I set my kitchen up like that. My kitchen is also half my living room because of all my equipment. But it was a 22-pound bird. And so, yeah, it was spread out everywhere. Right. But afterwards, I mean, I went through with 409 and hot water and I blitzed everything and I packaged it up to make sure. And that includes especially the same candle that you're likely touching. Right, right, right.

A weird thing that nobody talks about. This is the last. This is the last thing I'll say. No, no, please, please. You're cooking like a pot of ground beef for like bolognese or tacos. Correct. And you have a wooden spoon and you're chopping up that meat. Yeah. With the wooden spoon. Do you switch out wooden spoons? Oh, I don't. After you chop the raw meat, do you then put that in the sink and then when it's cooked, switch to another wooden spoon? I'm going to be really honest with you. I let it sit on my sink. I make sure that none of the raw meat is touching it and then I just go back and forth.

Yeah, same. That's how everyone cooks it. That has to be a cesspool of bacteria. You're probably right. You're touching the wrong meat that's not getting exposed. No, but that's what I'm saying. Never claim to be. I don't think people should. Let me talk. Let me speak. You're so impassioned. Let a woman talk.

I think that we have been trained to think salmonella is the big bad guy with chicken. That beef, let it be. Let the ground beef and the ground meat. What if you're cooking ground turkey in the pot? But you know what's so crazy? Ground meat is like more dangerous bacteria-wise than a piece of chicken, right?

I may, potentially, depending on how you're cooking it. Because it goes through the machinery and there's a higher likelihood that it's being ground, that the machine might have not been cleansed all the way. But that's only if you're making like a medium rare burger. Yeah. If you're cooking it all the way through, you're safe and cool. But you are correct. Yeah, yeah. Instead of like a chicken breast that's just been cut with a knife a few times and then put on a package. So we should be more concerned with...

Is your dinner killing you? Find out on a hot dog as a sandwich. Oh, we should title it that. That'd be pretty good. Oh my God. Let's go 90s news style. Is your child worshiping Satan while playing D&D? Find out.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Nicole, it's a brand new year. You know what that means. I have no idea. Tell me, Josh. It's a brand new opportunity for us to finally be the people we want to be. And I am starting this year as a married man. And so now, I'm not just trying to better myself for myself, but for my partner, for my future. And I have found a ton of value in therapy. I'm trying to stop living just for the now, and I'm trying to actually...

plan long-term, and I found therapy has been super, super useful in helping me actually get to those long-term thinking goals. Gosh, that is so incredible. I'm so proud of you and Malzahar, by the way. Hey, thank you so much. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 50

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash hot dog.

All right, Nicole, now it's time for everybody's third favorite segment here. That's right. We are putting our food trivia knowledge to the test. It's time for our very own trivia segment called... Yummy in my tummy got some trivia for you. That's right. Robot Maggie has three questions prepared. Nicole, you and I will wait until the question is complete. Then we will answer. If wrong, the other person will get one chance to steal and earn the point.

Let's hear that first question. We're keeping track throughout the whole year. Do you like my shirt? It matches the background. See? I didn't even know you were here. I thought you were a floating head. I thought you were like in Futurama. Ronald Reagan floating head? That's me. You give off heavy Reagan vibes. Reagan! What food growing system uses fish as biofilters for water that can then be given to plants? I know. Nicole doesn't know. That would be aquaculture. You sure? Yeah.

Isn't that called aquaculture farming? Wait, wait, wait, wait. You're not talking about aquaponics, are you? The correct answer is aquaponics. Okay, yeah. Aquaculture, aquaponics, same thing. Good job! But yeah, yeah. How do you? No, aquaculture, aquaponic farming, really interesting. They use the poop from tilapia to fertilize plants. Really? Tilapia poop. Nice. Which fruit, known as pomme de mor in France, was wrongly thought in Renaissance times to be poisonous? Hmm.

I think I know it too on three. Pompote... Potato. I'd say tomato. Potato. Tomato. The correct answer is tomato. Oh, man. That's why they throw tomatoes at people to like boo them. Is that what it is? Because I thought it was poisonous. Is that what it is? That's like the legend. I don't know. I've double checked the research. I want to go to the tomato festival in Italy where they throw tomatoes at you all over the place. Italy or is that Pamplona, Spain?

I don't know. Pamplona, Spain, tomato festival? I want to go to the tomato festival. Can you find it in the budget for us to go to the tomato festival together? Yeah, that's Lata Martinez in Pamplona, Spain. I'd like an additional point for that if I can. I don't know about that. Can we go? Can we just vlog it? It's in Buñol. Wait, no, it's in Buñol. What's Pamplona?

Is that where the Running the Bulls is? That's the Running the Bulls. Josh got his facts mixed up. Take my point away. Take my point away. Okay, go, go, go. What fast food restaurant, whose original mascot was named Speedy, opened as a barbecue by brothers Dick and Maurice in San Bernardino, California in 1940? Bing. Bing. One, two. McDonald's. Lucille.

The correct answer is McDonald's. Oh, three for three, baby. Why am I so dumb today? Three for three. No, it's been a pretty even trivia overall between us. It's just not my mythical best right now. I like it. I got some ones I know. Now I'm curious if there's a difference between aquaponics and aquaculture farming. Which is the one where you got to go pot in your closet?

Hydroponic. Hydroponic. All right. Well, we've heard you and I have to say, now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are right out there in the universe. It's time for the segment we call Opinions Are Like Casseroles. You are so flat. I'm always flat. I'm a buxom man, but I sing flatly. Hey, Nicole and Josh. My name's Joni. Hi, Joni. My hot take is on Panda Express versus P.F. Chang's. Oh. I'm taking Panda Express hands down every day. Hear me out.

I don't know if you've ever had the pepper steak from both or you've compared their orange chicken, the sesame chicken. I think Hand Express just does it better. I had the pepper steaks from P.F. Chang's the other day and it was almost inedible. Hand Express smashed P.F. Chang's past.

That's my take. Have a good day, guys. Both very formative restaurants in how Chinese-American food is viewed in America. Like, they are both the matriarch of P.F. Chang's, like, I can't remember her name, but she actually wrote one of the first Chinese-American cookbooks. Right? Yes, yes, yes. And so I have, like, actually a lot of respect for both, especially what they've done. Yeah. I...

Do I have an opinion on this? I am a diehard Panda Express person. I think that their food is phenomenal and easily accessible, delicious. Anybody can eat Panda Express and enjoy it. P.F. Chang's has, sometimes it hits, sometimes it misses. I don't think it's as consistent. I don't think the consistency is as heavily beaten into their heads the way it is with Panda Express. I think their standards at Panda are higher than P.F. Chang's.

I think if you put orange chicken for orange chicken, a hundred percent Panda wins. I think if you put a majority of entrees, God, even Chow Mein, I think Panda Express is Chow Mein. Chow Mein is so good. It's really, really good. I can taste it. You taste the wok hay of the soy burnt into the noodles. It's incredible. The texture is really good, man. Uh,

I think Panda Express wins in pretty much everything. But you gimme them lettuce cups. Oh. Bro. Yeah, really good lettuce cups. But still, orange chicken, honey walnut shrimp. If Panda Express's food was served in the same digs as P.F. Chang's, right? Yeah.

Panda Inn? At the Panda Inn, right there. If you come to LA, there are full service Panda restaurants, the original called the Panda Inn, where it is like that and you kind of realize how good the food actually is. I know a lot of people have had like bad Panda Express experiences in like a mall in Rochester, New York or something. And I believe you, but in its best case scenario, Panda Express really, really does good work, man. I agree with you. That's a great opinion.

Hi, Josh. Hi, Nicole. I'm Jay. I'm from Jamaica and I want to say that Jamaica, the best smoked meat will always be Jamaican jerk. Jamaican jerk, baby. I love the show. Aww.

Jamaican jerk chicken is one of the greatest culinary wonders of the world, man. Especially when you get it like proper, proper. We were talking about this in the kitchen the other day. We were. What were we talking about? We were talking about what I believe the thing that differentiates like you'll see like a Food Network written Jamaican jerk chicken recipe and it'll be like one teaspoon of thyme leaves that have been stripped from the branch. And then you actually watch a Jamaican person make jerk chicken and they're like,

They're chucking in whole scotch bonnets, stem on. Stem on. They're chucking in bundles of thyme. Bundles. Stem on. Yeah. And you blend it up until it's a delicious black slurry. You have the soy sauce. You get the scallion, all that in there.

It's actually like the stems, the branches, all of that is indispensable because jerk chicken has this lovely like there's a body to the crust. Sure. That it isn't just like a marinade, right, that like penetrates the meat. It is a thick layer that sits on it and then you mop it. And I fully agree that like proper wood grilled jerk chicken, all I want to eat in life is spicy grilled chicken.

I can eat that 365 days out of the year. Right? It's healthy. It's also healthy. It's delicious. What's not to love about it? It is utterly perfect. I fully agree with you. I need to eat more jerk chicken in my life. I've only had, I think, very subpar Jamaican jerk chicken, unfortunately. So I've got to set my game up. I've got to eat better and more jerk chicken. I will say, last time I went, I was in Brooklyn, and I went to get jerk chicken from a Jamaican restaurant.

And I walked in, and the woman said, we don't have any jerk chicken. And there was a giant pile of jerk chicken waiting there. And I was like, what about that? And she was like, mm.

No. I was like, what do you mean no? I see the jerk chicken. I would love jerk chicken. Josh got disrespected by the Jamaican chicken lady. And then she goes, fine. And she gives me jerk chicken. Best freaking jerk chicken I've ever had. Was it so good? Oh my gosh. Lucky. Yeah, listen. And I'm just very grateful that I got jerk chicken. Lucky you. She wouldn't give me oxtails and that's fine. That's fine. It's probably reserved for somebody else.

My name's Chris. I'm from Kentucky. I need to actually report a food crime. Oh, God. My daughter likes to take potted meat and then she mixes it with cream cheese. Your daughter? And then inserts it into a hollowed out cucumber and calls it a snack. Me personally, I find it revolting. What are your takes on this? At least it's keto.

Why am I not mad about this? Wait, hold on. It's not bad. It's not bad. Why is a child... I'm guessing it's a child. Why does a child have access to potted meat in the first place? What child reaches for potted meat? Yeah, why do you have potted meat in the house? Yeah, I only see that on the shelves of like...

Piggly wigglies and stuff. Potted meat is like a, it's a bit of like a luncheon spread situation, right? It's like deviled meat. Deviled meat. It's meat that's been blended. Spittable meat. Spittable meat. What's wrong with adding that to cream cheese? There's nothing, it's the fact that it's in the house. You're making meat flavored cream cheese. I'm into the meat cheese. You need to re-examine, maybe you need to re-examine your own biases here. That sounds like someone. I'm joking. I really, I really earnestly see nothing wrong with this.

You're seeing things wrong with this. I'm just upset that it's in the house. I can't be upset that it's in the house. I grew up with cans and cans of pork liver pate in the house. 79 cents a can. Delightful. Vietnamese brand. Everything, man. I'm like, give me a hot dog. Give me a cheese steak hot dog and put some pork liver pate on that bad boy. Fine, fine, fine. Fine, fine.

Let's get to this. Okay. What do you mean by hollowing out a cucumber? I want to know, is it a Persian cucumber? Is it an English cucumber? Is it a hot house cucumber?

How deep are we going? You know what I mean? Like, how big is this cucumber? How much damn body meat and cream cheese are you piping? I know what you're doing, you sicko. You take a piping bag. No, you don't. You take a Ziploc bag and you take the mix and you put it in there and then you tie it off and you slip it off and then you...

shove it inside of the hollowed out cucumber and then you just pipe it in and you eat it? How old do you think this child is? It's a child? Are you sure they said it was a child? Oh, a daughter!

This is daughter. Just if they're walking around to the one, be glad she's eating cucumber, man. That's great. Wow. Child eating vegetables. That's perfect. I would slice it then put the pot. Oh, you said as a dip. Yeah, as a dip. But yeah, the act of hollowing it out and then maybe just sort of walking around with it, going around about her everyday daughter life, depending on how old she is between, let's say, seven and 26. Like you think she's like on the computer like. Yeah. Is she like watching Cocomelon with this or is she driving to the DMV? We need to know more about the perp.

You know? Oh, yeah. Food crime. How about meat, cheese, cuke? Oh, that should be another section. That should be another section. Food crimes. That was fun. That was a great opinion. Call with more food crimes, please. Yeah, be a narc. Be a rat. Yeah, yeah. Officer Josh and Nicole are reporting for duty, sir. Does the daughter go to jail?

Oh, do we give them a jail time or get out of jail free? I think your daughter should go to a juvenile detention facility, but just for one day, like a scared straight situation. Someone goes, stop doing that. No, I truly don't believe the daughter should go to jail. I don't believe this is a food crime. I believe this is a healthy-ish, but also slightly indulgent snack. Good job. I think you should go to juvie for a day and just see what it's like.

Think about it. All right. One more, Benny. One more. Come on, Maggie. Hey, Josh and Nicole. Keith from Connecticut. My F. Mary kill is tacos.

Pizza, hamburgers, or cheeseburgers. You want to kill the cheeseburger because you can get that at other places. You want to marry the taco because there's so many variations. You can eat them every day. And you want to have relations with pizza because it's fun once in a while, but you can't have it every single day. Thoughts? Okay. What was it? Taco pizza what? Taco pizza burger. F marry kill. Okay. You want to go first?

He said it. What did he say? He said the exact thing that I was going to say. What was it? You should marry tacos because tacos come in like an infinite amount of varieties, different proteins, right? Different salsas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Different tortilla structures. I could eat tacos every single day. I also – tacos like fit my nutritional goals pretty freaking well. That's awesome. More than something like a hamburger. You kill hamburgers. I think I can get that satisfaction elsewhere.

And then pizza for me. You're effing it? I'm effing that pizza. You're effing the pizza up? I did have sexual relations with that pizza. And I'm not mad about it. Pizza to me, there's no more like fun, indulgent food than like

I'm going to get a pizza today more so than I'm going to get a hamburger. Wow. You know, I'm going to marry burgers because it's a constant in my life already. So why not just put a ring on it? We've been friends for years. Why don't we just have a kid together? Exactly. That's me and burgers. I think I would...

Damn. I think I would F tacos all day, every day. I love tacos. Tacos are hot. Hold on. In F marry kill, are you implying that you can just have like a sort of like a French situation? Yeah.

Like you have a mistress who lives in a pied-a-terre. Yes, yes. While your wife lives in the suburbs. I pay for the pied-a-terre. You pay for the pied-a-terre. Yeah, well, it's my pied-a-terre. You don't own the taco. I don't own people. I own the location where the taco hangs out. The taco stays to where you have an assumed sort of access to the taco. Yes, I can have the taco whenever I want. But as this thought experiment, isn't the idea that there's exclusivity right in the F. Mary Kill game?

I know there's different relationship structures, you know, polyamorous, whatever. Go ahead. So I would marry the burger. I would have relations with the taco and I would kill pizza. But that's only because I don't think when I went to Italy, I really didn't have that much of a good pizza experience. So I had to go have better pizza experiences. Go to Connecticut. Okay.

But you're like building a life with the burger. I am building a life with the burger. And Taco's okay with the relationship that you have with Taco. Taco doesn't know, doesn't care. Have you ever seen Last Tango in Paris? No. Me either. Okay. I think you can move on to the next point then. Okay. Unless you really want to go down this rabbit hole. The movie neither of us have seen. Maggie, have you seen it?

Fantastic. Nicole, go ahead. The floor is yours. So, like, we don't ask questions, you know? It's just, it is what it is. We lock eyes from across the room. And it just happens. But in perpetuity. All you need to know is my name. And what else do you need to know? Wow, you show, man. Spicy love affair. Tacos. Josh thinks I'm a

That's not what I said. Josh, he's a whore. No, I want to know. I want to make sure that Taco is okay with this scenario. Why are you so worried? That Taco doesn't want more from you secretly. Taco is an inanimate object that I eat. That you're having relations with, Nicole. So what? Consider the Taco's feelings. I'm just saying, listen, life's messy. Relationships are messy. Josh, life can't be so emotional. Sometimes you need to take your emotions out from the things that you do in order to continue, okay?

I did have sexual relations with that pizza. You already made that joke. I did not inhale. On that note. I went to the same school as Monica Lewinsky. Did you know that? She went to Beverly Heights. So did Jimmy O. Yang and David Schwimmer. And who's the guy? Betty White. The show All-American is based off of him. What's his name? Football player. All-American. Show. Come on. USC 400-meter runner Alex Rohani. Yeah.

Alex Rohani? Did he graduate a year, was he 2013? Maybe. I ran the 400 at USC. Alex Rohani. Sounds familiar. And on that note, thank you so much for stopping by Hot Dog is a Sandwich. We got new audio-only episodes every Wednesday. Spencer Pasinger, that's his name. Spencer Pasinger. Spencer Pasinger. Yeah, we have a podcast. You know what the deal is. I want to say it. Say it.

If you want to be featured on Opinions on our Castros, hit us up at 833-DOGPOD1. And if you really like watching videos of us doing things, you can check out Mythical Kitchen. We got tons of other concepts out there. Last Meals. Nicole, tell them what we got coming up on the channel. I'm going to have sex with a taco. Oh, criminy. Follow the OnlyFans.