"AITA for making my wife throw out a whole chicken?"
So, my wife decided she was going to try a new recipe for dinner tonight. It’s a one pot chicken thing with orzo. She ordered the groceries online this morning and then went to collect them around 11am. She got back home around midday and unloaded everything from the car.
Flash forward to 5:30pm and wife returns from an afternoon walk with her friends. After 5 minutes of dinner preparing sounds I hear a loud ‘wtf, where has the chicken gone?’ from the kitchen.
I naturally assume that she forgot to order it but she assures me there is a chicken somewhere. Eventually she tracks it down… it has been in the boot of our car all afternoon.
Now, the chicken wasn’t a frozen chicken. The chicken was a whole, fresh, raw chicken, in a sealed bag. Although it wasn’t a particularly warm day we still had a high of 16 degrees C (60F) and our car was sitting out in the sunshine all afternoon.
I told my wife I was posting this and she wants me to stress that the chicken was still cool to the touch. Personally I wouldn’t say the chicken was warm but I also wouldn’t call it overly cold. It’s safe to say it was somewhere between fridge temperature and room temperature.
After finding the chicken I tell my wife I don’t want to eat the chicken. She tells me we’re going to eat the chicken. I go back to the couch and start Googling how long you can leave a chicken in the car for.
I go back to the kitchen and tell my wife I don’t want to eat the chicken. She tells me we’re going to eat the chicken. I explain that I’ve Googled it and we shouldn’t eat the chicken. She keeps preparing the chicken.
We have a back and forth like this for a while at which point I pitch the idea that she can have the chicken and I can just make something simple for my dinner. She’s not thrilled because she wanted to make this meal for me.
At this point I tell her I’m not gong to eat it and I feel like I’m being made to eat a chicken against my will. She then proceeds to walk out the door, get in the car and head off in search of another chicken from the store. I feel like a bit of an AH about it. I also feel like we may have wasted a perfectly good chicken.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
You know what's worse than throwing out a chicken? Food poisoning. I would not have eaten that chicken either. NTA.
100%. I wouldn’t be eating that chicken either. There is nothing worse than food poisoning. Your body will purge every last drop from the mouth and the anus, usually simultaneously.
NTA - no way I'd be eating a chicken that had sat inside a car for that long. It isn't worth risking salmonella, that is NASTY.
NTA - I have a friend that required anal surgery after eating bad chicken. Their diarrhoea was so bad they ended up with an anal fistula.
I have a realllllllyyy loose attitude towards food safety and I wouldn't eat that chicken.
My bf has been living with me for a year and is super picky about food expiration dates and recently commented on how I must have an iron stomach with how long I'll eat any food after he would be terrified to even think of eating it and yeah, no, I wouldn't eat that chicken. Also if OP used the word chicken one more freaking time, my head would have exploded.
NTA. 2 hours max is the time raw meat is safely able to be kept at room temperature. That time decreases the hotter it is. If meat is kept out longer than this, it allows harmful bacteria to multiply. I would not eat that chicken either.
I tend to sit on the pure practicality of the issue. Consider the cost of one chicken vs the cost and discomfort of dealing with possible food poisoning. It’s not like you can’t replace the chicken. It’s not missed opportunity but pure common sense. You might get away with it, but I like to test my luck on greater rewards than chicken. NTA.
NTA, it sucks to waste meat but the waste already happened when it was misplaced. It's not safe for consumption, and of all things chicken isn't one you should take risks with. I would make sure you let your wife know you appreciate her cooking and are excited to try the dish (with the replacement chicken) though, it sounds like she was excited about sharing it with you.
Chicken has a longer lifespan outside of the fridge than people realise. When it arrives at the shops they can leave it sitting on a pallet for ages before stocking it, and don’t even get me started with what they do in poorer countries. Having said that…I would not eat the chicken. NTA.
It's not like the chicken explodes at the 2 hour mark, but past that point the risk grows exponentially. In poor countries maybe they can't afford to be a careful and people quickly build up a resistance to the bacteria (or, you know... die...) but if you have access to reddit you are probably not so poor that you need to take a risk on 6 hour old raw chicken.
If it's been left sitting on the pallet, that just increases the risk factor, and makes me less want to eat the chicken. Raw chickens are not so expensive that I would not pay the $4-6 per person to NOT get food poisoning.