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Originally Posted by
gobblygook 
I understand the young birds and underdeveloped bones resulting in red meat, but raw chicken is never red anyway.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gobblygook
While I'm bringing up birds, why is it that chicken needs to be fully cooked (not that I want it raw), but duck is served medium rare? I understand that ducks actually fly and therefore, the muscles will be different, but I'm still left with the idea that ducks look a lot like chickens and therefore raw duck would be equally as disgusting as raw chicken. Is there no salmonella concern with duck?
Inherently, wild fowl is not a huge salmonella concern. I'm not sure what the statistics are, but I have heard that domestic duck is also less of a risk. Personally, I don't cook domestic duck or goose, but if I did, I would probably cook it to 165 unless I found out that it wasn't necessary.
Just make sure with chicken, turkey, and most importantly, ground turkey, that you cook to at least 165. The USDA allows up to 23% of chickens and turkeys to leave processing plants with salmonella. That means 1 out of every 4 times you buy a chicken, it likely is infected with salmonella. That allowable level jumps to 50% for ground turkey. So no matter what anyone tells you, it's better to have dry poultry than to have salmonella.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gobblygook I understand that ducks actually fly and therefore, the muscles will be different, but I'm still left with the idea that ducks look a lot like chickens and therefore raw duck would be equally as disgusting as raw chicken. Is there no salmonella concern with duck?
In fact, the muscles are completely different. A wild duck breast is closer in color to beef than to chicken. Likewise, the cooking techniques that can be applied are completely different. When I cook wild duck, I'm shooting for medium-rare.
