You’re telling me a chicken wash 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. 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 Enayati. And Nicole, we are now in 2025. That’s right. 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 controversy. 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. 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. Okay. 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 heavily 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 under water, and then they’ll throw it maybe in some paper towels, marinade, whatever, 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 and it’s packaged right and sealed. You got it from the deli the morning and then you’re eating it at night and it’s a grocery store. Yeah, from a place where most people are getting 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 reason, 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. Yeah, like you can 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. 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. It does not. 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 items as well. So salmonella, it’s basically the big baddie in terms of foodborne illness. You know, uh, 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 getting 100,000 cases and throwing the numbers off? No, I, 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. A little bit more 360? I don’t know how many, 360. I don’t how many it is. One point is more, three 5 million cases. That is, 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. Yeah, it’s important. So there was a study that came out in God, I think it was 2003. Mm-hmm. When the study was done showing how water droplets actually manifest around your kitchen. Mm hmm. And this has been used to cite a lot of anti chicken washing, right? Okay. So when, uh, they, the USDA did a study where they died 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. Yeah, it can live. Okay. However, there was no actual study done on the microbiological compounds of that water. So what was the point of the study? Just to show the water drop. 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? It 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? That’s, uh, this is the breadth of our knowledge. So, that’s been cited a lot, and especially, 2013, they launch a, uh, a marketing campaign to tell people not to wash their chicken. Mm hmm. Okay. And so, that’s cited a lot by the anti chicken washing campaign. Like, when you say don’t wash your chicken, why do you say that? Well, I think, well, the water droplets disperse, and there’s, and I would like to believe there’s salmonella in the water. And that’s a very reasonable. Yeah, yeah, right. Um, but say somebody’s washing their chicken by putting water into a clean bowl And then simply putting the chicken in it taking it out drying it well on paper towels. What is the point of it? Well, so the point of submerging the chicken in water. Why not just put it on a plate season it cook it. So, uh, they’re, and this I think is very reasonable, right, um, 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 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 clean water not like salted water not like yeah straight up. Because if you, um okay, 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’s flavoring the chicken. The water and the salt are entering the chicken cell membranes, etc. Yeah, okay. If you soak, 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, yeah, like tea. So if you think there is, 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 of 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 in in the recipe that it was like triple blanch the pork belly 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 in a pot and I initially was like I’m gonna 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. Do you, does that imply that there is chicken stink? Yes, there is, certainly. 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, uh, chicken parts into an instant pot, and just crank it when you’re making a really lazy soup or broth or whatever? Of course. That, there’s chicken stink coming off of that. Yeah, 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, uh, boneless, um, whenever you sear a bone in 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 I don’t wash my chicken. I mostly 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 piece of chicken, right? You want it to be dry simply because the skin is gonna get crispier and the heat better and you know, 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. Then 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, etc. So, I’ll tell you a story that I saw that really, really resonated with me while we were doing like 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 he starts 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 in the pot that she was cooking in. So, uh, I don’t know if this is the exact like 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. My, the generational destiny that’s passed down to you via food doesn’t always need to happen again. But that’s just me. I feel, 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 takin my own safety into my hands here and trusting that I know how to clean my kitchen properly. Okay, if I want to wash my chicken and I think I’ve been harder on this in the past, but i’ve been like don’t wash your chicken. Don’t you know that the molecules and the salmonella, and then I’m out here eating? I’ve eaten raw chicken breast sashimi from a Japanese restaurant because I wanted to move because I wanted to try it, right? Yeah, 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 oreos from a shopping cart is good. Like you said about modernity, I think probably the people who, who have been like washing their chicken, their great great grandmothers probably like didn’t get chicken from a store, right? 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, um, 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. 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. Do you? Like, I think the most important dish to clean in your, in your house is your sink. Like every single night I Clorox soap and water my whole entire sink. 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! Wait, no, are you unique? Because I do that, absolutely. Oh, oh, you do that too. Are y’all Are you cleaning your sinks? Yeah, I 409 it. Can you clean your sink? With dish soap? Is that not enough? Is a hot water, dish soap? Hot water, warm water. You need to sanitize it. Cause that’s how you get salmonella. Maybe that’s, maybe. Wash your chicken if you want to, but please, please, please always sanitize your sinks. Is that a good sentiment? My phone fell. I can’t bend down cause my pants are too tight. Can you do it for me? Can you get my phone? I got it. I’m gonna kick it over though. 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? Only heat kills salmonella. What soap and hot water can do is, and 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, right? So say, say you are, your sink is covered in raw chicken juice. You are washing that sink with hot water and soap. Hot water increases, uh, 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, right? 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? Right. Yeah, it had something with like ions or magnetism. I read Fight Club. I did. I had watched Fight Club. His name was Bob Hoskins or whatever. If you ever see, I remember my 8th grade science teacher doing this experiment showing us bacteria in a uh, petri dish. Petri dish or something, and then putting a little drop of soap and seeing how it reacted, and it just goes like, WAH! Yeah. So anyways, that can get it to just like, wash safely down the drain. So anything that the soap and water is touching is 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 to 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? Yeah. Um, 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 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. Right. But that’s the only, like, scientifically safe way to consume washing it. If it’s being held. Doesn’t do anything for safety. It can do things for flavor and for, you know, to hell. I don’t know. Cultural preservation, right? If you want to do that. Um, but that that’s the case. Are you saying that I have to fricking blow torch my whole entire kitchen for it to be salmonella free? Yeah, baby, yeah, I don’t wanna do that, a hundred. No I don’t know, that’s crazy. I can’t believe Clorox and all these things don’t kill. It just moves it real fast. Yeah, um, I’m pretty, I’m like pretty sure that’s right. I don’t know. You are the closest link I have to science right now, other than Meggie, who has an actual degree in a science, which is computer science, but still science. How do you clean computers? A computer duster? Yeah. You just dip it in the sink. Yeah. I just put my work laptop in the dishwasher all the time. Ridiculous. Um, so have you ever gotten like a, 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. 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, pat 165 for insta kill. They never like it never like turns you off a little bit. No, I don’t know man. It’s 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. Um, let’s go to the lime cleaning method because this is interesting. Yeah. So I, I know that the acid. Acid does what? Acid like, kills. Acid don’t do shit, bro. Acid cooks. 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, um, 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, the acid. Acid cooks the fish, nay, the acid nay cook, the acid nay cook fish. The acid, the acid nay cook fish, the girl, ye be a witch. 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. Um, 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 bact, it can’t kill no bacteria. What do you, what does it do? It can’t kill no bacteria. What does it do? Tightens up the proteins, makes them safe. Oh, that was right! Why would you it tightens the proteins, but does that mean cook? Because the same parasites that would die with either A. flash freezing, or B. cooking. They, I think they, I believe they actually love acid. Oh, shoot. So it does nothing to, to really you know, make the safety better. But, I’m fascinated with the idea that in the Middle Ages, supposedly, Kings who were so wealthy, right, sent all of their fleets of ships to find spices because all their meat was spoiling and I need cinnamon to make it taste okay. If you had all that money to send fleets of ships, you probably had money to slaughter a fresh cow, ya dummy. It’s a complete myth. The reason people wanted spices is because it made food taste good. 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 neutralized 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 that does a ceviche, but as far as like making it safer to consume not necessarily. So you’re saying whenever we’re making ceviche at home, we should probably have a fish that was frozen from before. Well, most fish, most fish is frozen, it’s flash frozen on boats. You’re not, I mean, you’re not, you’re not getting a fish from like the pond and making seafood. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Don’t, don’t get that fresh river trout. Don’t do that. Uh, yeah, from a polluted lake. Right. No, but, uh, but yeah, that’s one of the reasons for citrus, but. What about in the chicken, um, application, the chicken cleaning application? You know what I think it does? Makes it taste good? Makes it taste good, man! Okay! You ever do that you ever just rub raw citrus on your chicken then 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 like Caribbean vinegar washing. Like acid and protein to me is just great deal I was putting lemon on my steak last night, right, 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. Right. And she made really good chicken. So now we’re gonna 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 from putting their chicken right in there. 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, they say that? Dog look at that washing raw poultry, our science, your choice. So I kind of love that. Same. I kind of love that. I also have maybe upsetting opinions about things. So I’m open to the fact that people don’t like, do I, am I redacting that you should never wash your chicken? That, that. Maybe you can maybe it’s up to you. I, 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 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 is spray in 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. Well as as a person that has a servsafe food handler’s card. I had that at one point, of course, like at least we’ve done we’ve taken the courses like 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. I think everything, 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. 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. Fifteen minutes passed between those two shots. Yeah. And I washed my hands. It’s just how the computer, that’s not real life. And we make sure. You know? And we, we make sure Josh washes his hands. We say, hey, make sure, and he does it himself. Josh is a big boy. Josh is big boy. Josh wash hands. Josh wash 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. 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? I, again, I just use what I learned from my servsafe. I know it’s been a long time. It’s probably expired. What takeaways? Well, the most important thing is I always. Sanitize no matter what, like my whole, I really do sanitize my whole kitchen. I really do too. And I think it’s important for us to impart that like 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 cause football is on Sunday, right? Football, Sunday, Sunday night football, Sunday morning football. So I’m going to make chicken wings. Okay. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to remove, I buy my, a lot of my meats in bulk. So what I do is I take my chicken wings out like this. 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 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. And 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. Um, 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 something. Did you like it? I did like that. That’s what I do all the time when dealing with chicken. Um, other things I’ll throw out there if you really want to eliminate a lot of that, that risk, uh, 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, you do? Okay, I don’t have that. I elbow it. And then, but even if I have to, a big thing also is sanitizing your, the neck of your sink, sanitizing the handle. Everything. Sanitizing the actual bottle of soap. The knife you use to cut the chicken open. I broke down a whole freakin turkey this Thanksgiving. Sick. Like, like Last Thanksgiving? But it was a this Thanksgiving? The most recent Thanksgiving. Yeah, it was, it was like six weeks ago. Okay. I broke down the whole turkey for Thanksgiving ten months from now. Um, just sittin out, open air, dry aged. Uh, no, but I ate a 22 pound bird that, you know, I have big cutting boards and stuff. big prep stations. I set my kitchen up like that. My kitchen’s 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. Um, and that includes especially the sink handle 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 after you chop the raw meat, do you do you then put that in the sink and then when it’s cooked switch to another wooden spoon? I’m gonna 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 raw meat that’s not getting exposed. No, but that’s what I’m saying. Never claimed 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 with the ground lamb. 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 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, right, if you’re cooking it all the way through, your yeah, 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 our ground Is your dinner killing you? Find out on a hot dog is a sandwich. Oh, we should title it that. That’d be pretty good. Oh my god, let’s go 90s news style. Drama. I live for drama. Is your child worshipping Satan while playing D&D? Find out. Josh, 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 gonna start working out. I’m gonna start eating better. But me? I want to learn a new language. I think it’s just gonna 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 or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language you want to learn. They offer Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Arabic, Polish, and so much more. There’s no English translation, so you really learn to speak, listen, and think in that language. It’s an intuitive process that’s designed for long term retention. With Rosetta Stone’s built in True Accent feature, you can get feedback on your pronunciation so you can perfect your accent. Mmm, esta bien. Their lifetime membership as all 25 languages for 50 percent off, that’s a steal! Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach. Today, a Hot Dog is a Sandwich listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50 percent off. That’s a heck of a deal, Nicole. Visit rosettastone.com/hotdog. That’s 50 percent off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50 percent off at rosettastone.com/hotdog today. Alright, 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 Meggie 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, uh, in Futurama. The, the, yeah. 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! No, that would be aquaculture. Oh, you sure? 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, uh, aquaculture, aquaponic farming, uh, really interesting. They use the poop from tilapia to fertilize plants. Really? Tilapia poop. Nice. Which fruit, known as Pomme de Moore in France, was wrongly thought in Renaissance times to be poisonous? Me? I think, I think I know it too on three. Pomme potato. I’d say tomato. Potato. Tomato. Potato. The correct answer is tomato. That’s why they throw tomatoes at people to like, boo them. Is that what it is? That’s like the legend, I don’t know, I haven’t 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 uh, La Tomatina is in Pamplona, Spain. I’d like an additional point for that if I can. I don’t know about that. Can we go? Or wait. 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? Bang. One, two. McDonald’s. Lucille’s. The correct answer is McDonald’s. Oh, three for three, baby. Why am I so dumb today? Three for three. It’s been, it’s been a pretty even trivia overall between us. This is not my mythical best right now. I like it, that’s the ones I knew. Now I’m curious if there’s a difference between aquaponics and aquaculture farming. Which is the one where you gotta grow a pot in your closet? Hydroponics. Hydroponics, alright. Well, we’ve heard what you and I have to say. Now it’s time to find out what other wacky it is around the universe! It’s time for a little segment we call, Opinions are like casserole. You’re so flat. I’m always flat. I’m a buxom man, but I sing flatly. Hey, Nicole and Josh. My name is Joni. My hot take is on Panda Express versus P.F. Chang’s. 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 the orange chicken, the sesame chicken. I think Panda Express just does it better. I had the, the, uh, the pepper steak from P.F Chang’s the other day and it was almost inedible. Panda Express, smash, P.F. Chang’s, pass. Okay. 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, l can’t remember her name, but she actually wrote one of the first Chinese American books. 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, 100 percent Panda wins. I think if you put a majority of entrees. God, even chow mein. I think Panda Express’s chow mein is so good. It’s really, really good. I can taste it. You taste the wadakan of the soy burnt into the noodles. The texture’s really good, man. Uh, I think Panda Express wins in pretty much everything, but ya gimme dem lettuce cups. Oh! Bro, yeah, really good lettuce cups, but still, orange chicken, honey walnut shrimp. If, if Panda Express’s food was served in the same digs as P. F. Chang’s, right? Panda Inn? At the Panda Inn, right there, if you come to, to L. A., there are full service Panda restaurants, the original. Oh yeah. 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 Smoked meat will always be Jamaican jerk Jamaican jerk, baby I love the show. Oh Jamaican jerk chicken is one of the greatest culinary wonders 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, the, 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 ranch. And then you actually watch a Jamaican person make jerk chicken and they’re like, they’re chucking in whole scotch bonnets, stem on, they’re chucking in bundles of thyme, stem on. 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 the the stems the branches all that is indispensable because Jerk chicken has this lovely like there’s a body to the crust that it isn’t just like a marinade. Right, that like penetrates the meat It is a 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 it’s delicious. It’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’ve only had I think very subpar. Jamaican jerk chicken, unfortunately, so I gotta set my game up. I gotta go eat more I gotta eat better and more jerk chicken I will say last time I went I was uh, I was in Brooklyn and I went to get um 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? She was like, um. No, I was like, what do you mean? No, I see the jerk. I would love to check it by the Jamaican. And then she goes fine. She gives me jerk chicken best best freaking jerk chicken. Oh my gosh, but no Yeah, listen, and i’m just very grateful that I got jerk chicken. Lucky you wouldn’t give me oxtails and that’s fine. That’s fine It’s probably reserved for somebody else Uh, 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? Why? Hold on. It’s not bad. It’s not bad. The pot .Why is a child I’m guessing it’s a child. Why does the 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 like a luncheon spread situation, right? It’s like deviled meat. Deviled meat, it’s meat that’s been blended. Spreadable meat, spreadable, pate. What’s wrong with adding that to cream cheese? There’s nothing, it’s, it’s the fact that it’s in the house. You’re making meat flavored cream cheese. I’m into the meat cheese. 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 grub with cans and cans of pork liver pate in the house. 79 cents a can. Delightful. Vietnamese brand. I put that on everything, man. I might grab a hot dog. I might grab a cheese steak hot dog and put some pork liver pate on that bad boy. Fine, fine, fine. Fine, fine. I’m hollowing out. Let’s get to this. Okay. What do you mean by hollowing out? Like, I want to know, is it a Persian cucumber? Is it an English cucumber? Is it a hothouse cucumber? How deep are we going? You know what I mean? Like, how big is this cucumber? How much damn pot do you need to create? 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, and you take the mix and you put 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? I’m weird. It’s a child? Are you sure they said it was a child? A daughter. This daughter, just uh, if they’re walking around with 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 of meat. I would eat, 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, 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 Cocoa Melon with this? Or is she driving to the DMV? We need to know more about the perp, you know? Oh yeah. Food crime. Hollowed out meat, cheese, cuke. Oh, that should be, that should be another section. That should be another section. Food crimes. That was fun. That was a great opinion call for a call with more food crimes, please. Yeah be a narc, be a rat. 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? I think your daughter should go to a juvenile detention facility, but just for one day like a scared straight situation. So I’m gonna stop doing that. Uh, 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 Meggie, one more. Come on Meggie, give me one. 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? What was it? Taco, pizza, what? Taco, pizza, burger. F mary kill. Okay, you want to go first? He said it. What did he say? He said the exact thing that I was gonna 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 a hamburger you kill hamburgers. I think I can get that satisfaction elsewhere Uh, and then pizza for me, you’re effing it. I’m effing that because i’m having the pizza I did have sexual relations with that pizza. Um, and i’m not mad about it pizza to me. There’s there’s no more like fun indulgent food than like I’m gonna get a pizza today, more so than I’m gonna get a hamburger. Wow. You know, I’m gonna marry burgers because it’s a constant in my life already, so why not just put a ring on it, you know? 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. Wait, Tacos are hot. Hold on. In, in, in F Mary kill. Uh huh. Are you implying that you can just have like a sort of like a French situation? Like you have a mistress who lives in a Pieter Yes. In Paris of while your wife lives in suburb. Yes, of course. Pay for the pie tear. You pay for the Pieter, so you have, yeah, well it’s my Piet. You don’t own the the burger, the, I don’t own people, the taco. I own the location where the taco, the taco hang out to where you have, you have. Correct. Yeah, and assume sort of access to the taco, okay. Yes, it’s, I can, I can have the taco whenever I want. What is this thought experiment? Isn’t the idea that there’s exclusivity, right, in the f marry 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 time. Pizza experience so I had to go have better pizza experiences. Go to Connecticut. Ok. So but you’re like building a life with the burger I am building a life with the burger and taco is okay with the relationship that you have with taco? Taco does it no doesn’t care? Have you ever seen Last Tango in Paris? No me either Okay I think yeah, 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 Meggie have you seen it? No, fantastic. Go go ahead. Where’s yours? So, like, we don’t ask questions, you know? It’s just, 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 shut up, man. Spicy love affair. Tacos. Josh thinks I’m a whore. I, that’s not what I said. I certainly, Josh thinks I’m whore. I let the record show. I did not say that. No. I wanna know, I wanna make sure that tacos okay with this scenario. Why are you so worried, taco? 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 tacos feelings. Um, just saying, listen, life’s messy. Relationships are messy. Life can’t be so, Josh, life can 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. Uh, on that note. I went to the same school as Monica Lewinsky, did you know that? She went to Beverly High, so did Jimmy O. Yang and David Schwimmer. And, uh, who’s the guy that’s, uh, 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. 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 Paysinger. That’s his name. Uh, yeah, we have a podcast. You know, the deal is. I want to say it. Say it. If you want to be featured on opinions are like casseroles. Hit us up at 833-DOG-POD1. And if you really like watching videos of us doing things, you can check out Mythical Kitchen. We had tons of other concepts out there. Last Meals, Nicole, tell them, tell them what we got coming up in the channel. I’m gonna have sex with a taco. Follow the onlyfans.