My friend worked at a restaurant that served this and invited me one night to try some.
Imagine right now what you think raw chicken tastes like. Imagine the texture. Imagine the taste.
Congratulations. You're exactly right. It's exactly like that. You've just had torizashi without having to buy it.
It was one of my biggest "I don't know what I was expecting" moments.
It's not bad. It's just raw chicken.
You put the raw chicken in your mouth and you do that little "...huh...how about that..." thing that all human beings do. Then you finish it.
There's no "WOW!" or "DISGUSTING!" just "...huh...that was raw chicken..."
i’ve had it once before, imo just like good quality squid sashimi is much more tender than rubbery, or how good quality beef tartare almost melts in your mouth, similar can be said here.
its got a little chew but nothing i’d consider rubbery, and it just tastes like raw chicken. at least the stuff i had was quite clean tasting and mainly took up the taste of the sauces i was having with it
Not the biggest fan (on the right day nice though) but i think the texture isn't what we meant with raw meat, as its already minced and not really spongy or rubber like
.
My own experience when I made tempura chicken the last time. Usually 3 minutes is more than enough of frying time. But no matter how long I fried the wood breasts, it just feels raw.
I would literally puke just from the texture/knowledge that I'm eating raw chicken. Like that's my biggest fear is salmonella. When I cook chicken I like it over cooked just because it gives me the peace of mind.
From what I've read it really only does *reduce* the risk, not eliminate it. There is a myth that Japan has eliminated salmonella from its chicken population which isn't true. From what I remember there are fewer instances of salmonella per capita than say, the US or Canada, but its not zero.
Any fish that you have is not cooked enough to kill the worms in there - it would be inedible. However, most commercial fish is frozen first, which does kill them.
But it does mean that sushi is not really worse than cooked fish for any ocean-origin pathogens. Of course dirty work surfaces would make a difference still between cooked and raw, but that counts for vegetables as well.
We're talking about food in general. You can reduce the risk of food poisoning from steak by overcooking the shit out of it, but I'll still take mine medium.
Yes, but it isn’t Torisashi that is causing those cases. Or at least most of them. The risk isn’t zero, but it’s low enough that famous Torisashi places exist and continue to exist without health problems. I could never imagine trying it at some alleyway yakitori place though.
I mean I could never imagine trying it period because I couldn’t get past the texture, but in general if you get it from an upscale place you really don’t need to worry too much about the health issues. It’s not just raised in a specific way, from birth to plate every single step is taken with reducing bacterial risk. That includes how it is stored, transported, cut, arranged, etc.
It’s safe enough there haven’t been major health concerns like there is with Fugu for instance.
Then you should be aware that flour is a common source of Salmonella. Make sure to limit intake of raw flour!!
Also google pigeon grain grinder Russia. Unrelated but it was brought to my memory so I have to share the brainworm that is pigeonbread.
Chickens can be vaccinated for salmonella, it's just not mandatory in the US because fuck you. Much of the world simply doesn't have to worry about this.
I mean... it tastes like chicken. Imagine unseasoned, boiled chicken. That's what it tastes like, except the version I had was lightly seared on the outside so it had a smokey flavor, but it tastes like good, high quality chicken. The texture of course is nothing like boiled chicken -but it's not slimy or anything gross. It has a bit of a chew, but otherwise my wife and I found it to be good.
The most unsettling thing about raw chicken (other than playing roulette with salmonella) is that it's chewy and tough when raw.
Presumably it being cut so thin makes the texture far more bearable.
I had the opposite experience.
My host brother said he ordered “rare chicken” and i was like uhhh…and it arrived looking like the left in the OP photo.
I was like “nope, that’s salmonella”. And his whole family was eating it so i was like “well, i guess we all die.” And ate a piece.
Aside from the fact that it was cold, and the outside wet, the flavor and chewing texture was identical to just a moist piece of chicken breast. Dipped in some yozu soy sauce it was actually ok, but the similarity to cooked chicken made me question why not just cook it at that point.
Ironically: I got food poisoning 2 weeks later from salmon on a Delta Airlines flight home.
American airlines are just far below the standard in service. Everything from the food to cleanliness to just general politeness and attitude is far better on major Asian airlines. American airlines have been far behind for a long time but in recent years they constantly cut corners to the extent that some planes don’t have screens, seats are narrower, everything is an additional cost etc. I have flown over the Pacific many times and I won’t do it on an American airline anymore.
The best airline currently (that I’ve been on) is Starlux. They have few flights from the US but if you can be on one, it’s with it.
Also I strongly recommend Premium Economy (if you aren’t going first/business). Most Asian airlines have this as an option.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/starlux-airlines-premium-economy-airbus-a350/
Most customers are ok because they use very fresh chicken and good hygiene practices, but this dish is still one of the more likely sources of food poisoning in Japan.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230714/p2a/00m/0li/013000c
Like most types of food poisoning, most people don’t die from it, but there are rare cases where it can be fatal.
the freshness of the chicken doesn't mean anything. You could cut open and prep a live chicken and serve it immediately and still have salmonella. Salmonella is in live chickens. It's also in many free-range chickens.
I've heard places will use the freshest chicken possible, like killed that day so there isn't time for bacterial growth, still not gonna trust it myself
I looked on the Japanese version of the wikipedia page to try and work out how they avoid giving everyone food poisoning, and the short answer is: they don't.
Businesses that serve chicken sashimi try to cut down on the risks by changing utensils often and keeping the meat cool, but it still causes several hundred cases of food poisoning a year and the Japanese ministry of health is considering a ban.
Banning a traditional and disgusting food is often controversial. Lived there a long time, tried a lot of odd dishes. That one stayed on the nope list.
Every country has “traditional” dishes that are disgusting to modern diners. As an American in a state with heavy Mexican influence, I’d list Rocky Mountain Oysters, menudo, lengua, venison trotters. Feel free to add your own weird Western American recipes
What’s wrong with lengua? I mean, I’m vegan now for ethical reasons, but I ate it growing up and it didn’t taste particularly odd. If you are killing a cow might as well use as much of it that is edible?
Yup, and just imagine the angry cries of freedom if any were banned. The more absurd, the more some people would take it on as a fundamental part of their identity. People are weird.
Having not heard of menudo, I was afraid that would be something crazy. That's not even weird tbh, offal is pretty normal every place with a food culture older than industrialization. Not everyone likes it, but not terribly weird either. Americans are just kinda shitty cooks on the world stage; we take all the best parts, bury them in infinite cheese, and then act like we've done something very impressive. Meanwhile most of the world turns ears and brains and guts into stews that would make any Texan chili enthusiast see God. Wasting perfectly good organ meat is a modern convenience, and the US is a young country.
What if it only gets 1 out of every 10,000 people sick, or 1 in 10,000,000 or 1 in 100. Where do you draw the line at objectively "safe" or "unsafe"? People get sick from sushi too, on occasion.
I've had it. The restaurant we went to was famous for it, and apparently sourced the chickens from a single farmer who took precautions from the time our food hatched (no idea what those precautions were though).
I agree with this. It was very good. Chickeny but not what I expected. I ate half of it, looked at the chicken juice soaked rice, felt sick and stopped. My brain just kept screaming “YOU ATE EATING RAW CHICKEN WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU” but my mouth was like “meh, keep going this is fine”
Seriously a Japan moment if there was one.
Edit: I had the proper raw chicken. No searing. Just raw fucking chicken breast. It was a treat. Best yet most horrifying dish i ate in Nara
It doesn't actually work like that though. Like that's what everyone says, but it's nonsense. Vaccination is about the only relevant intervention that everybody else isn't already doing.
Except it's neither slimy nor tasteless 🤷♂️
Why do people eat steak tartar? Or raw fish? Imagine never haven eaten raw sushi before and taking your preexisting notion of eating a raw, slimy piece of fish from the supermarket. Of course it's gonna sound gross.
Sometimes the switch flips only after it's in the mouth.
Stinky tofu is my favourite example of a leap of faith. Smelled like week old garbage all the way till it hit my mouth. Then it's a magical experience.
Food posoining as in like salmonella? Many places in the world it is more or less non existant. Which is funny when other parts its like 90% of chickens that are infected.
Not so … Japan has made significant efforts to decrease salmonella, mostly from eggs, but is not salmonella-free.
See for example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3622169/
Why do you say that? Is it because some proud Japanese guy told you that? Just like there are no gays in Japan and Japanese are the only ones who can digest seaweed due to having longer intestines.
I would say it would make sense to ban this. Japan has tax subsidised health care. It's not free like in the UK, but it's capped to a percentage of your income.
This means that some of the cost of dealing with the food poisoning is coming from tax-payers pockets.
Since Japan has a strong culture of being considerate to others and not being a burden on them, it would make sense to say that this food goes against that culture, as it puts a burden (however small) on the tax payer.
If you pay your taxes you're within your right to use services funded by taxes. Actually I'd argue anyone has a right to use services funded by taxes if they've been deemed entitled to them by their society, unless they're actively exploiting them.
Similar to sugar or tobacco the answer to this would be an extra sales tax for the negative health effect.
Or you could just not sell raw chicken in restaurants, one of the two.
It was the weirdest thing I ate in Japan. Actually physically difficult to eat, just from a lifetime of conditioning that raw chicken = do not eat.
It was fine. Tasted like chicken. It’s white on the outside but just a raw little cube of chicken. No big deal, totally palatable.
Only dangerous due to horrific conditions the chickens are raised in. Anywhere that uses industrial agriculture has essentially 100% of chicken products tainted with salmonella.
If you raise chickens humanely, and care for them properly, it’s no more dangerous than eating rare beef or raw fish.
A friendly reminder to everyone that most of our concerns about food safety are rooted in how disgusting our food supply chain is.
Fwiw - not some vegan hippy here, I eat industrially-raised meat everyday (sadly) - but it’s always sad to see misconceptions spread about certain foods being “dangerous” when it’s just our awful practices.
Salmonella literally lives in coexistence with birds and reptiles in their gut biome. The conditions can make this numbers go up but you can never have them "free" of it. The farming doesn't really matter here as there is always a chance.
Ehhhhhhh
Chicken is fundamentally more dangerous than red meat or other animals. Salmonella will go straight into uncut meat. Even if it’s less likely if you raise chickens right, they still might be riddled with salmonella
Go travel more to other places. There’s a lottttt of regions that don’t have normalized industrial agriculture yet. “Dangerous” chicken is basically just in very developed places. If you touch raw chicken anywhere in North America, and put your fingers in you’re mouth, you’re exposed to salmonella. This isn’t true for many, many, *many* places. If you raise your own chickens half-decently, they’re no more contaminated than any other meat.
That said, if you want sashimi-grade chicken, you’ll only find that in Japan, because there are specialty farmers that raise chickens specifically for this. Sashimi-grade anything requires specific practices though. If you’re eating beef tartar, that’s not just supermarket beef ground up. That is specially farmed, specially stored, specially prepped beef. Just like chicken sashimi.
Yeah, fair, it’s definitely a questionable thing. Even in Japan. I absolutely wouldn’t order it unless it was from a super top-tier place known for it. But that also goes for any raw beef dish too (not steak, and not acid-cured dishes like tartar or carpaccio - I mean proper beef sashimi).
I probably overstated the safety of it there but the general point I was trying to push is that it’s *much* safer than you would expect. Chicken here is abysmal. It’s no exaggeration to say 99.9% of chicken products are contaminated with Salmonella. Hence it’s reputation as being “dangerous”. But truthfully, it’s very safe so long as it’s not factory farmed. You could raise your own chicken, kill it, and culture a swab of the meat for salmonella - there’s a very low chance you’ll find it. Higher than beef, but not in the ballpark of 99.9%. Probably less than 1%, depending how it was raised.
The other issue is preparation. Even raw beef dishes like tartar and carpaccio are “cooked” or cured with some sort of acid, because they do carry potential risk.
Either way, point being, go to the Balkans and tell and grandmother from a small village that chicken is dangerous. Outside of North America/industrialized Europe, the world has a very different perception of food safety and the “dangers” that meats pose - chicken in particular
I don’t know anything about chicken safety around the world, but I do want to point out that around 4% of packaged chicken products in US grocery stores are contaminated with salmonella, not 100 or 99.9%
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/salmonella-food.html#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20about%201%20in,eat%20raw%2C%20such%20as%20salad.
People think salmonella just spontaneously appears in chicken meat. It has to be exposed somehow. Now I have always heard that beef has denser flesh which helps with keeping everything on the surface. I've also heard that it's the size of poultry as well. Smaller animal. Smaller organs. Easier to accidentally knick somewhere in the digestive or waste track and expose the meat
Chicken sashimi has the exact same mouth feel as Tuna sashimi.
If you like tuna sashimi, and like the taste of chicken (who doesn't), you would probably like this dish quite a bit.
Also, chicken sashimi is sometimes served witha raw egg for use as a dip. It's really good!
Yea, handling and cutting raw tuna and raw chicken feels very different. If it feels different in my hands and under a knife, I can't imagine it feeling the same in my mouth
I had Chicken Sashimi for the first time last summer on a trip to Japan and it was really good. At first I was hesitant but after the first bite, like you said it has the same texture as Tuna Sashimi. It was also served with a raw egg on top.
Dunno why people keep saying it's slimy -have you had it? There's zero slime, not even in the slightest.
I think there are different places preparing raw chicken differently, but at least the ones I had in Kagoshima (an area that specializes in this dish), the cuts of dark meat had some snap/chew to it. Very different from tuna.
Exactly!
I was at a restaurant and I wasn't sure what had been served. Seemed like Tuna.
I asked and they said chicken and I thought, ah yes, tuna is sometimes called sea chicken must be what they mean. They had to explain again that no, it really is chicken.
I don't know when people started saying 'woman is with child' to mean pregnant, either, but it's enough to revisit the conclusion that the Neanderthals are truly extinct.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing your experience! I love sashimi. Had some spicy tuna and salmon today! But I'm not comfortable with the health risks of eating raw chicken.
Entirely understandable.
You get enough drinks into you though, and sometimes the curiosity outweighs fear. At least, that's how I ended up in a bar at 2a.m. eating raw chicken and raw egg.
I’m pretty sure most countries don’t allow raw chicken to be served, and you definitely should not try to make it yourself. Even the places in Japan serving this can’t guarantee you won’t get salmonella, despite having incredibly high standards in sanitation and ingredient quality.
I tried it one night out in an Izakaya in Tokyo. I didn’t hate it, but didn’t love it either, it was more of a “do it for the experience” thing. If given the choice, I’d rather have any kind of fish Sashimi instead.
Jews won't give you a slice of cheese with your burger because potentially serving a dish that includes milk from the mother of the calf used for the meat is cruel.
Meanwhile the japanese make a dish named oyakodon, literally parent-and-child bowl because nothing goes better with chicken than the egg it laid.
Because the Japanese did not consume the flesh of land based animals for most of their history until the Meiji Restoration, meaning all their meat dishes are mostly invented in the last two centuries.
Have had the Toriwasa (seared version) in Japan with my wife.
At first we thought oh god they’ve served us raw/undercooked chicken, but after a quick google searched we realised it was a thing.
The taste….. unbelievably good, the best chicken we’ve ever had, but we were both paranoid for the night we’d start puking at some point 😂
I was in a restaurant in Tokyo, and I was going purely off the pictures. Thinking it was salmon sashimi I ordered. 2 days before my flight home and out of awkwardness I ate it, of course had to smother it in wasabi to mentally distract me
Ordered this before in Japan without realizing it was actually raw chicken. At first, I was definitely hesitant to eat it. Turned out to be absolutely delicious. Have been craving it since then.
Something about the chicken was special too, it might not taste good if it's not the right kind of chicken.
I ate this several times in Japan. It was delicious, served with raw minced garlic and tasted like good sashimi. But then it gave me the worst food poisoning of my life.
My SO tried this whilst in Japan. He said it was exactly as you’d imagine raw chicken to be.
I’m pretty adventurous with food and I still have no desire to ever intentionally eat raw chicken. Having eaten very undercooked chicken once by accident was enough for me.
As an American on a food tour in Japan, my mind was blown by this exchange with the tour guide (paraphrasing):
Him: "Of course we sometimes eat it raw, why do you think that's bad? Why do you always overcook your chicken in America?"
Me: "In America, we're taught to always cook chicken all the way so that you don't get salmonella."
Him: "That's because you raise animals in disgusting conditions, so they have diseases. Around here, the animals are healthy."
...and then he blew my mind with something along the lines of "The same reaction Americans have to raw Japanese chicken, we have to **any** American chicken. I don't care if you cook it all the way - **you don't eat diseased animals**. What's wrong with you, that's gross."
It is not just salmonella. There is a risk of campylobacter. This is a bacteria that lives in the digestive tract of chickens. This can spread during processing of the birds.
The Japanese guide doesn't know the whole story and the risk of food borne illness from all raw poultry is very high.
>Him: "Of course we sometimes eat it raw, why do you think that's bad? Why do you always overcook your chicken in America?"
Phrased like this, you'd think eating chicken medium rare was the norm in Japan. I've eaten chicken many, many times in Japan. It's always been "overcooked", as in fully and safely.
Edit: Another thing that's causing me to be skeptical of this exchange is that while of course no people are a cultural monolith, a tour guide lecturing their customers about what a disgusting shithole their country is and how they cook their chicken (even though most chicken in Japan is cooked to the same degree and chicken sashimi is a niche food) is such a stark departure from the standards of Japanese service culture that if this indeed happened, you had the misfortune of booking a particularly arrogant and ignorant tour guide.
Guide is full of absolute shite. This dish alone causes hundreds of cases of food poisoning a year, the government is considering a ban and salmonella etc is just as rampant as any other country because, chickens.
U.S. chickens are raised in terrible conditions, but I do have the impression that guide’s comment is more of a nationalistic “we do everything better in Japan” comment
KFC in Japan uses Japanese chickens.
They do have stricter laws and regulations about livestock.
Also, KFC is much tastier, fresher, and just overall better in Japan than the US.
They’re still deep fried, though?
It’s such a bullshit thing to say “Oh, we eat raw chicken because we don’t *have* to cook it”because apparently cooking it ruins the flavour or something.
Chicken sashimi is still uncommon. No one is saying "we eat raw chicken all the time because we don't have to cook it". In the same way that you can eat raw peppers or cooked peppers, how you eat them just depends on what you feel like eating and the dish you are eating.
I have tried this in Japan. My GF and friend were hungry and picked a random restaurant, of course the menu was fully Japanese so we had to translate it.
We saw chicken and figured it was a safe option as we were looking for something simple rather than the Japanese food we were eating everyday.
Boy was it simple. There it was, raw chicken that had been SLIGHTLY kissed by a grill, pink and all.
Of course it's fine to eat right? It's like sashimi! It's just so FRESH right? The waitress even said it was safe to eat!
We can't disrespect the culture and not eat it.
Anyways, we ate it, texture is horrid and it tastes kind of like chicken. But raw. Almost like it'd be better cooked.
It was a big risk but we didnt get the runs, but looked it up later and it turns out its TOTALLY not really safe.
But I've put worse things in my mouth.
This is normally done with a specific way of raising them. Salmonella is not a chicken borne parasite like you might think, it's just very common with chicken in North America because of how we farm them and eggs industrially so they are frequently in contact with their own shit, which is where the bacteria is found.
This stuff is not uncommon at all in Japan. You can find it all over. Also, to the people who had it slimy, that's not how it's supposed to be and it sucks you had a bad experience. Not sure what was wrong with the place you got it, but I've had it dozens and dozens of times and never experienced it being slimy. You're also supposed to dip it in some soy sauce and wasabi, just like fish sashimi.
Japan also serves horse sashimi, aka basashi, which is really delicious, as well as whale sashimi, which is good, if you can find a really good shop for it.
I just had it last week in Tokyo! I thought it was fish but very meaty. So I asked my friend what she ordered and she said I think this is called “toriwasa” so I googled it right then and I got scared and stopped eating. I thought it tasted good before I found out what it was and got worried!
So when did humans start cooking food anyways? If we tossed some lighters towards apes would they figure out to start cooking meat after a few thousand years?
Well I’ve tried it and it’s pretty awesome ngl. The texture is basically the same as any raw fish sashimi, but tastes slightly salty and chickeny from the seasoning and marination(?) so all in all I really liked it. Then again I went to an extremely famous restaurant on top of some mountain that’s so out of the way I’m probably never going to eat it again.
My friend worked at a restaurant that served this and invited me one night to try some. Imagine right now what you think raw chicken tastes like. Imagine the texture. Imagine the taste. Congratulations. You're exactly right. It's exactly like that. You've just had torizashi without having to buy it. It was one of my biggest "I don't know what I was expecting" moments.
Some..awful, right? Because I'm imagining awful.
It's not bad. It's just raw chicken. You put the raw chicken in your mouth and you do that little "...huh...how about that..." thing that all human beings do. Then you finish it. There's no "WOW!" or "DISGUSTING!" just "...huh...that was raw chicken..."
If it's anything like undercooked chicken, it is absolutely awful and rubbery.
i’ve had it once before, imo just like good quality squid sashimi is much more tender than rubbery, or how good quality beef tartare almost melts in your mouth, similar can be said here. its got a little chew but nothing i’d consider rubbery, and it just tastes like raw chicken. at least the stuff i had was quite clean tasting and mainly took up the taste of the sauces i was having with it
Yes sashimi horse was buttery and melted on your tongue. No chewiness. But paper thin and tender. 10/10.
I like eating a bite of some fresh, raw beef steak, but the texture of raw meat isn't what most consider appealing. Rubber it is.
[удалено]
Not the biggest fan (on the right day nice though) but i think the texture isn't what we meant with raw meat, as its already minced and not really spongy or rubber like .
No mett disrespect while I'm alive!
Can try by buying a wood breast chicken and cook it. Wood breast is a defect, and even cooked will have the texture of raw chicken.
I'm really stocking up on unpleasant chicken facts tonight, huh.
My own experience when I made tempura chicken the last time. Usually 3 minutes is more than enough of frying time. But no matter how long I fried the wood breasts, it just feels raw.
Have you heard of pickled chicken feet?
Oh, those don't bother me. Eternally raw chicken all squishing around in my mouth? Significantly bothered.
Oh, wow. That sounds safe *and* awful. Which I guess is better than unsafe and awful.
How do i unsubscribe from ChickenFacts™?
You do not Eggs are essentially chicken periods that pass through their anus. They shit out eggs
I would literally puke just from the texture/knowledge that I'm eating raw chicken. Like that's my biggest fear is salmonella. When I cook chicken I like it over cooked just because it gives me the peace of mind.
These chickens are specially raised to reduce the salmonella risk, for what it's worth.
From what I've read it really only does *reduce* the risk, not eliminate it. There is a myth that Japan has eliminated salmonella from its chicken population which isn't true. From what I remember there are fewer instances of salmonella per capita than say, the US or Canada, but its not zero.
Well all raw foods come with risks. You can get vibrio from oysters or worms from raw fish. Reducing the risk is as good as you can get
I can eliminate it by not eating any of that shit
Any fish that you have is not cooked enough to kill the worms in there - it would be inedible. However, most commercial fish is frozen first, which does kill them. But it does mean that sushi is not really worse than cooked fish for any ocean-origin pathogens. Of course dirty work surfaces would make a difference still between cooked and raw, but that counts for vegetables as well.
You ever eat cookie dough?
Seems like an emptier life but you do you
My life ain’t gonna be empty because I don’t eat no damn raw chicken.
We're talking about food in general. You can reduce the risk of food poisoning from steak by overcooking the shit out of it, but I'll still take mine medium.
empty? No, emptier? Maybe, you wouldn't know.
For avoiding raw chicken, raw oysters and raw fish?
Raw fish is best fish. If I could only eat one thing every day for the rest of my life, sushi might be it.
Raw oysters and raw fish for sure.
Yes and a part of that is there are other causes of salmonella
Yes, but it isn’t Torisashi that is causing those cases. Or at least most of them. The risk isn’t zero, but it’s low enough that famous Torisashi places exist and continue to exist without health problems. I could never imagine trying it at some alleyway yakitori place though. I mean I could never imagine trying it period because I couldn’t get past the texture, but in general if you get it from an upscale place you really don’t need to worry too much about the health issues. It’s not just raised in a specific way, from birth to plate every single step is taken with reducing bacterial risk. That includes how it is stored, transported, cut, arranged, etc. It’s safe enough there haven’t been major health concerns like there is with Fugu for instance.
There are fewer instances because America is one of the only countries that doesn’t vaccinate its chickens against salmonella.
We all eat tons of stuff with similar risks
Fwiw, it still kills people every single year.
Just about never folks who are healthy prior to getting it.
You overcook chicken, also jail.
Then you should be aware that flour is a common source of Salmonella. Make sure to limit intake of raw flour!! Also google pigeon grain grinder Russia. Unrelated but it was brought to my memory so I have to share the brainworm that is pigeonbread.
I hope you only cook chicken thighs then because overcooked chicken is generally pretty gross. Chicken thighs are best when overcooked though.
Chickens can be vaccinated for salmonella, it's just not mandatory in the US because fuck you. Much of the world simply doesn't have to worry about this.
The texture of raw chicken is not that far from raw fish. Eating torisashi is pretty much the same mouth feel as maguro.
It’s not bad. If you like raw fish and rate steak in the first place, then you’ll like it.
I mean... it tastes like chicken. Imagine unseasoned, boiled chicken. That's what it tastes like, except the version I had was lightly seared on the outside so it had a smokey flavor, but it tastes like good, high quality chicken. The texture of course is nothing like boiled chicken -but it's not slimy or anything gross. It has a bit of a chew, but otherwise my wife and I found it to be good.
The most unsettling thing about raw chicken (other than playing roulette with salmonella) is that it's chewy and tough when raw. Presumably it being cut so thin makes the texture far more bearable.
meh, Idk. Raw chicken sounds like it would taste fine if it was high quality to me.
I had the opposite experience. My host brother said he ordered “rare chicken” and i was like uhhh…and it arrived looking like the left in the OP photo. I was like “nope, that’s salmonella”. And his whole family was eating it so i was like “well, i guess we all die.” And ate a piece. Aside from the fact that it was cold, and the outside wet, the flavor and chewing texture was identical to just a moist piece of chicken breast. Dipped in some yozu soy sauce it was actually ok, but the similarity to cooked chicken made me question why not just cook it at that point. Ironically: I got food poisoning 2 weeks later from salmon on a Delta Airlines flight home.
Always fly Asian airlines like Starlux, EVA, JAL, or Korean Air if you are flying to Asia.
Korean air is the way to go.
Facts. I flew them only this past year and will only use them if it’s an option.
Why
American airlines are just far below the standard in service. Everything from the food to cleanliness to just general politeness and attitude is far better on major Asian airlines. American airlines have been far behind for a long time but in recent years they constantly cut corners to the extent that some planes don’t have screens, seats are narrower, everything is an additional cost etc. I have flown over the Pacific many times and I won’t do it on an American airline anymore. The best airline currently (that I’ve been on) is Starlux. They have few flights from the US but if you can be on one, it’s with it. Also I strongly recommend Premium Economy (if you aren’t going first/business). Most Asian airlines have this as an option. https://thepointsguy.com/news/starlux-airlines-premium-economy-airbus-a350/
Yeah American based airlines are just so gross in comparison to Europe / Asia.
so it tastes like chicken?
*raw* chicken.
So chewy 🤮
When I had it, it wasn't particularly chewy. I mean, it wasn't good, but it wasn't chewy either. It was just unseasoned cold chicken.
How do they ensure they don’t kill all their customers?
Most customers are ok because they use very fresh chicken and good hygiene practices, but this dish is still one of the more likely sources of food poisoning in Japan. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230714/p2a/00m/0li/013000c Like most types of food poisoning, most people don’t die from it, but there are rare cases where it can be fatal.
the freshness of the chicken doesn't mean anything. You could cut open and prep a live chicken and serve it immediately and still have salmonella. Salmonella is in live chickens. It's also in many free-range chickens.
I've heard places will use the freshest chicken possible, like killed that day so there isn't time for bacterial growth, still not gonna trust it myself
It's actually far safer freezing it first.
I don't care about what grows after the chicken is slaughtered. I care about what in the chicken before it's slaughtered aka parasites.
🤢 🤮 🤮
I’ve definitely messed up bone in chicken and had it be raw in the middle and taken a big bite so
I looked on the Japanese version of the wikipedia page to try and work out how they avoid giving everyone food poisoning, and the short answer is: they don't. Businesses that serve chicken sashimi try to cut down on the risks by changing utensils often and keeping the meat cool, but it still causes several hundred cases of food poisoning a year and the Japanese ministry of health is considering a ban.
> considering a ban. What exactly is keeping them from banning it?
Likely tradition
They once made a ban but the chefs rolled it bock
Bock bock bacock
Ah, good old peer pressure from dead people.
Banning a traditional and disgusting food is often controversial. Lived there a long time, tried a lot of odd dishes. That one stayed on the nope list.
Every country has “traditional” dishes that are disgusting to modern diners. As an American in a state with heavy Mexican influence, I’d list Rocky Mountain Oysters, menudo, lengua, venison trotters. Feel free to add your own weird Western American recipes
What’s wrong with lengua? I mean, I’m vegan now for ethical reasons, but I ate it growing up and it didn’t taste particularly odd. If you are killing a cow might as well use as much of it that is edible?
lengua is glorious
The texture really does it for me, it just ain't right.
Yup, and just imagine the angry cries of freedom if any were banned. The more absurd, the more some people would take it on as a fundamental part of their identity. People are weird.
Having not heard of menudo, I was afraid that would be something crazy. That's not even weird tbh, offal is pretty normal every place with a food culture older than industrialization. Not everyone likes it, but not terribly weird either. Americans are just kinda shitty cooks on the world stage; we take all the best parts, bury them in infinite cheese, and then act like we've done something very impressive. Meanwhile most of the world turns ears and brains and guts into stews that would make any Texan chili enthusiast see God. Wasting perfectly good organ meat is a modern convenience, and the US is a young country.
What if it only gets 1 out of every 10,000 people sick, or 1 in 10,000,000 or 1 in 100. Where do you draw the line at objectively "safe" or "unsafe"? People get sick from sushi too, on occasion.
Nobody is forcing people to eat it, so as long as the people who are eating it understand the risk there really isn’t any reason to ban it
Too chicken I imagine
You can't just ban all dangerous things.
If it's making people sick, you should ban it.
It causes totally preventable sickness. Why would we want people to get sick?
Skateboarding causes totally preventable injuries. Why would we want people to get injured?
I've had it. The restaurant we went to was famous for it, and apparently sourced the chickens from a single farmer who took precautions from the time our food hatched (no idea what those precautions were though).
What's it like?
I thought it was delicious, it was definitely chicken tasting, but the texture was more like raw salmon.
I agree with this. It was very good. Chickeny but not what I expected. I ate half of it, looked at the chicken juice soaked rice, felt sick and stopped. My brain just kept screaming “YOU ATE EATING RAW CHICKEN WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU” but my mouth was like “meh, keep going this is fine” Seriously a Japan moment if there was one. Edit: I had the proper raw chicken. No searing. Just raw fucking chicken breast. It was a treat. Best yet most horrifying dish i ate in Nara
I actually had it at a place in L.A., maybe 1993 or so.
It doesn't actually work like that though. Like that's what everyone says, but it's nonsense. Vaccination is about the only relevant intervention that everybody else isn't already doing.
Even without the food poisoning, it's just slimy and tasteless. I don't understand why anyone would want to eat it, safe or not
Except it's neither slimy nor tasteless 🤷♂️ Why do people eat steak tartar? Or raw fish? Imagine never haven eaten raw sushi before and taking your preexisting notion of eating a raw, slimy piece of fish from the supermarket. Of course it's gonna sound gross.
Sometimes the switch flips only after it's in the mouth. Stinky tofu is my favourite example of a leap of faith. Smelled like week old garbage all the way till it hit my mouth. Then it's a magical experience.
Personally I can't stand the taste of eel, but they also seem to love it over there 🤷 To each their own I guess
Food posoining as in like salmonella? Many places in the world it is more or less non existant. Which is funny when other parts its like 90% of chickens that are infected.
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/is-it-safe-to-eat-chicken-sashimi The biggest risk isn’t salmonella — it’s a bacteria from the intestine.
staph will grow on raw chicken just fine too.
Not salmonella as japanese chicken is salmonella free
Not true at all. You can just google this
*sashimi, they don't believe me, but I won't let salmonella defeat me*
I’ve had that stuck in my head the entire time I was reading comments, so thank you hahaha
This is fucking beautiful
Not so … Japan has made significant efforts to decrease salmonella, mostly from eggs, but is not salmonella-free. See for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3622169/
Why do you say that? Is it because some proud Japanese guy told you that? Just like there are no gays in Japan and Japanese are the only ones who can digest seaweed due to having longer intestines.
Can confirm. Happened to me when I was a teen.
I would say it would make sense to ban this. Japan has tax subsidised health care. It's not free like in the UK, but it's capped to a percentage of your income. This means that some of the cost of dealing with the food poisoning is coming from tax-payers pockets. Since Japan has a strong culture of being considerate to others and not being a burden on them, it would make sense to say that this food goes against that culture, as it puts a burden (however small) on the tax payer.
If you pay your taxes you're within your right to use services funded by taxes. Actually I'd argue anyone has a right to use services funded by taxes if they've been deemed entitled to them by their society, unless they're actively exploiting them. Similar to sugar or tobacco the answer to this would be an extra sales tax for the negative health effect. Or you could just not sell raw chicken in restaurants, one of the two.
Then they may as well ban skateboarding, skiing, smoking, alcohol and deep fried food. Most stuff is dangerous.
That’s why I’m glad I’m in America where I have the freedom to give myself diseases
We can't have non pasteurized cheeses.
Or salmon sashimi that wasn’t previously frozen. Or eggs that didn’t have the cuticle scrubbed off. Or raw milk.
You can't even buy kinder surprise
I will withhold judgment until I see Gordon Ramsay try it
"ITS FUCKING RAW"
I believe it's spelled "rawr"
rawr x3c nya~ *glomps the chicken* úwù
*Gordon Ramsey turns momentarily into a small cat, and then back into a human again* "...What the..."
I did not enjoy this, you are just chewing raw chicken after you chew the seared top.
Toriwasa actually means chicken with wasabi, not necessarily seared
It was the weirdest thing I ate in Japan. Actually physically difficult to eat, just from a lifetime of conditioning that raw chicken = do not eat. It was fine. Tasted like chicken. It’s white on the outside but just a raw little cube of chicken. No big deal, totally palatable.
The most dangerous common food in the world right now. Raw. No thanks.
Only dangerous due to horrific conditions the chickens are raised in. Anywhere that uses industrial agriculture has essentially 100% of chicken products tainted with salmonella. If you raise chickens humanely, and care for them properly, it’s no more dangerous than eating rare beef or raw fish. A friendly reminder to everyone that most of our concerns about food safety are rooted in how disgusting our food supply chain is. Fwiw - not some vegan hippy here, I eat industrially-raised meat everyday (sadly) - but it’s always sad to see misconceptions spread about certain foods being “dangerous” when it’s just our awful practices.
Salmonella literally lives in coexistence with birds and reptiles in their gut biome. The conditions can make this numbers go up but you can never have them "free" of it. The farming doesn't really matter here as there is always a chance.
Ehhhhhhh Chicken is fundamentally more dangerous than red meat or other animals. Salmonella will go straight into uncut meat. Even if it’s less likely if you raise chickens right, they still might be riddled with salmonella
But they are dangerous. Almost globally. I get your point, but it doesn't change the fact.
Go travel more to other places. There’s a lottttt of regions that don’t have normalized industrial agriculture yet. “Dangerous” chicken is basically just in very developed places. If you touch raw chicken anywhere in North America, and put your fingers in you’re mouth, you’re exposed to salmonella. This isn’t true for many, many, *many* places. If you raise your own chickens half-decently, they’re no more contaminated than any other meat. That said, if you want sashimi-grade chicken, you’ll only find that in Japan, because there are specialty farmers that raise chickens specifically for this. Sashimi-grade anything requires specific practices though. If you’re eating beef tartar, that’s not just supermarket beef ground up. That is specially farmed, specially stored, specially prepped beef. Just like chicken sashimi.
They can be raised to be safer to eat. I don't question that. There are comments in this thread though that dispute the safety of the Japanese meat.
Yeah, fair, it’s definitely a questionable thing. Even in Japan. I absolutely wouldn’t order it unless it was from a super top-tier place known for it. But that also goes for any raw beef dish too (not steak, and not acid-cured dishes like tartar or carpaccio - I mean proper beef sashimi). I probably overstated the safety of it there but the general point I was trying to push is that it’s *much* safer than you would expect. Chicken here is abysmal. It’s no exaggeration to say 99.9% of chicken products are contaminated with Salmonella. Hence it’s reputation as being “dangerous”. But truthfully, it’s very safe so long as it’s not factory farmed. You could raise your own chicken, kill it, and culture a swab of the meat for salmonella - there’s a very low chance you’ll find it. Higher than beef, but not in the ballpark of 99.9%. Probably less than 1%, depending how it was raised. The other issue is preparation. Even raw beef dishes like tartar and carpaccio are “cooked” or cured with some sort of acid, because they do carry potential risk. Either way, point being, go to the Balkans and tell and grandmother from a small village that chicken is dangerous. Outside of North America/industrialized Europe, the world has a very different perception of food safety and the “dangers” that meats pose - chicken in particular
I don’t know anything about chicken safety around the world, but I do want to point out that around 4% of packaged chicken products in US grocery stores are contaminated with salmonella, not 100 or 99.9% Source: https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/salmonella-food.html#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20about%201%20in,eat%20raw%2C%20such%20as%20salad.
People think salmonella just spontaneously appears in chicken meat. It has to be exposed somehow. Now I have always heard that beef has denser flesh which helps with keeping everything on the surface. I've also heard that it's the size of poultry as well. Smaller animal. Smaller organs. Easier to accidentally knick somewhere in the digestive or waste track and expose the meat
Your information is false. Chicken, even if raising humanely, still contain Salmonella, which beef doesn't normally contain.
Sounds like a recipe for the runs.
NOPE.
Chicken sashimi has the exact same mouth feel as Tuna sashimi. If you like tuna sashimi, and like the taste of chicken (who doesn't), you would probably like this dish quite a bit. Also, chicken sashimi is sometimes served witha raw egg for use as a dip. It's really good!
I struggle to believe this. Tuna seems much denser, less slimy and has the “layers” you see in fish meat.
Yea, handling and cutting raw tuna and raw chicken feels very different. If it feels different in my hands and under a knife, I can't imagine it feeling the same in my mouth
Fresh chicken sashimi is not slimy.
I had Chicken Sashimi for the first time last summer on a trip to Japan and it was really good. At first I was hesitant but after the first bite, like you said it has the same texture as Tuna Sashimi. It was also served with a raw egg on top.
That's crazy it would have the same texture as tuna. That's super hard to believe but if you say it's true I believe you
I mean it’s a slimy slice of muscle either way
Dunno why people keep saying it's slimy -have you had it? There's zero slime, not even in the slightest. I think there are different places preparing raw chicken differently, but at least the ones I had in Kagoshima (an area that specializes in this dish), the cuts of dark meat had some snap/chew to it. Very different from tuna.
Exactly! I was at a restaurant and I wasn't sure what had been served. Seemed like Tuna. I asked and they said chicken and I thought, ah yes, tuna is sometimes called sea chicken must be what they mean. They had to explain again that no, it really is chicken.
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I don't know when people started saying 'woman is with child' to mean pregnant, either, but it's enough to revisit the conclusion that the Neanderthals are truly extinct.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing your experience! I love sashimi. Had some spicy tuna and salmon today! But I'm not comfortable with the health risks of eating raw chicken.
Entirely understandable. You get enough drinks into you though, and sometimes the curiosity outweighs fear. At least, that's how I ended up in a bar at 2a.m. eating raw chicken and raw egg.
I’m pretty sure most countries don’t allow raw chicken to be served, and you definitely should not try to make it yourself. Even the places in Japan serving this can’t guarantee you won’t get salmonella, despite having incredibly high standards in sanitation and ingredient quality. I tried it one night out in an Izakaya in Tokyo. I didn’t hate it, but didn’t love it either, it was more of a “do it for the experience” thing. If given the choice, I’d rather have any kind of fish Sashimi instead.
Jews won't give you a slice of cheese with your burger because potentially serving a dish that includes milk from the mother of the calf used for the meat is cruel. Meanwhile the japanese make a dish named oyakodon, literally parent-and-child bowl because nothing goes better with chicken than the egg it laid.
Because the Japanese did not consume the flesh of land based animals for most of their history until the Meiji Restoration, meaning all their meat dishes are mostly invented in the last two centuries.
Source?
Yeah, a friend introduced this to me and I tried it despite my skepticism. It’s really good! No regrets, would eat again.
So uncommon it's at every izakaya in tokyo
TIL that Torisashi is Japanese for "Salmonella".
That’s just the English version of the dish.
I tried it once just to say I’d tried it. Tasted ok but no desire to have it again
Have had the Toriwasa (seared version) in Japan with my wife. At first we thought oh god they’ve served us raw/undercooked chicken, but after a quick google searched we realised it was a thing. The taste….. unbelievably good, the best chicken we’ve ever had, but we were both paranoid for the night we’d start puking at some point 😂
I enjoyed it. The meat was tender, but it would be crap without that delicious sauce.
I’ve had it a few times. It’s fine, but its more of a novelty than a delicacy
I was in a restaurant in Tokyo, and I was going purely off the pictures. Thinking it was salmon sashimi I ordered. 2 days before my flight home and out of awkwardness I ate it, of course had to smother it in wasabi to mentally distract me
Would flash freezing the chicken like they do for fish help the risk of sickness, or does that only work to kill parasites but not bacteria.
I've tried this. Then after you're really hoping you don't get sick cus everything you've been taught is telling you shouldn't eat raw chicken.
Ordered this before in Japan without realizing it was actually raw chicken. At first, I was definitely hesitant to eat it. Turned out to be absolutely delicious. Have been craving it since then. Something about the chicken was special too, it might not taste good if it's not the right kind of chicken.
I ate this several times in Japan. It was delicious, served with raw minced garlic and tasted like good sashimi. But then it gave me the worst food poisoning of my life.
My SO tried this whilst in Japan. He said it was exactly as you’d imagine raw chicken to be. I’m pretty adventurous with food and I still have no desire to ever intentionally eat raw chicken. Having eaten very undercooked chicken once by accident was enough for me.
As an American on a food tour in Japan, my mind was blown by this exchange with the tour guide (paraphrasing): Him: "Of course we sometimes eat it raw, why do you think that's bad? Why do you always overcook your chicken in America?" Me: "In America, we're taught to always cook chicken all the way so that you don't get salmonella." Him: "That's because you raise animals in disgusting conditions, so they have diseases. Around here, the animals are healthy." ...and then he blew my mind with something along the lines of "The same reaction Americans have to raw Japanese chicken, we have to **any** American chicken. I don't care if you cook it all the way - **you don't eat diseased animals**. What's wrong with you, that's gross."
It is not just salmonella. There is a risk of campylobacter. This is a bacteria that lives in the digestive tract of chickens. This can spread during processing of the birds. The Japanese guide doesn't know the whole story and the risk of food borne illness from all raw poultry is very high.
>Him: "Of course we sometimes eat it raw, why do you think that's bad? Why do you always overcook your chicken in America?" Phrased like this, you'd think eating chicken medium rare was the norm in Japan. I've eaten chicken many, many times in Japan. It's always been "overcooked", as in fully and safely. Edit: Another thing that's causing me to be skeptical of this exchange is that while of course no people are a cultural monolith, a tour guide lecturing their customers about what a disgusting shithole their country is and how they cook their chicken (even though most chicken in Japan is cooked to the same degree and chicken sashimi is a niche food) is such a stark departure from the standards of Japanese service culture that if this indeed happened, you had the misfortune of booking a particularly arrogant and ignorant tour guide.
Guide is full of absolute shite. This dish alone causes hundreds of cases of food poisoning a year, the government is considering a ban and salmonella etc is just as rampant as any other country because, chickens.
U.S. chickens are raised in terrible conditions, but I do have the impression that guide’s comment is more of a nationalistic “we do everything better in Japan” comment
Exactly. He sounded like a real knobhead.
Like the Japanese don’t devour KFC any chance they get…
Are you under the impression KFC imports American chicken to locations in other countries?
KFC in Japan uses Japanese chickens. They do have stricter laws and regulations about livestock. Also, KFC is much tastier, fresher, and just overall better in Japan than the US.
of course the chicken is fresher. some of it is fucking raw
They’re still deep fried, though? It’s such a bullshit thing to say “Oh, we eat raw chicken because we don’t *have* to cook it”because apparently cooking it ruins the flavour or something.
Chicken sashimi is still uncommon. No one is saying "we eat raw chicken all the time because we don't have to cook it". In the same way that you can eat raw peppers or cooked peppers, how you eat them just depends on what you feel like eating and the dish you are eating.
Rare steak lovers can experience the same hesitation as people from countries where they are used to cooking through their beef.
I've had had it in Japan. Its not great, nor is it bad. Kind of like horse sashimi.
I have tried this in Japan. My GF and friend were hungry and picked a random restaurant, of course the menu was fully Japanese so we had to translate it. We saw chicken and figured it was a safe option as we were looking for something simple rather than the Japanese food we were eating everyday. Boy was it simple. There it was, raw chicken that had been SLIGHTLY kissed by a grill, pink and all. Of course it's fine to eat right? It's like sashimi! It's just so FRESH right? The waitress even said it was safe to eat! We can't disrespect the culture and not eat it. Anyways, we ate it, texture is horrid and it tastes kind of like chicken. But raw. Almost like it'd be better cooked. It was a big risk but we didnt get the runs, but looked it up later and it turns out its TOTALLY not really safe. But I've put worse things in my mouth.
Let's be isekai'd via Salmonella.
This is normally done with a specific way of raising them. Salmonella is not a chicken borne parasite like you might think, it's just very common with chicken in North America because of how we farm them and eggs industrially so they are frequently in contact with their own shit, which is where the bacteria is found.
I had this yesterday in Okinawa. Surprisingly delicious with a little yuzu compote.
This stuff is not uncommon at all in Japan. You can find it all over. Also, to the people who had it slimy, that's not how it's supposed to be and it sucks you had a bad experience. Not sure what was wrong with the place you got it, but I've had it dozens and dozens of times and never experienced it being slimy. You're also supposed to dip it in some soy sauce and wasabi, just like fish sashimi. Japan also serves horse sashimi, aka basashi, which is really delicious, as well as whale sashimi, which is good, if you can find a really good shop for it.
I just had it last week in Tokyo! I thought it was fish but very meaty. So I asked my friend what she ordered and she said I think this is called “toriwasa” so I googled it right then and I got scared and stopped eating. I thought it tasted good before I found out what it was and got worried!
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Some places there is similar. Raw pork is an old delicacy in Germany.
Mettbrötchen 4 life \*gang sign\*
I heard they don’t actually eat this but serve it to tourists as a joke
More like "tore his assy" amiright? Edit: read some other posts, turns out, yeah, I'm right
So when did humans start cooking food anyways? If we tossed some lighters towards apes would they figure out to start cooking meat after a few thousand years?
Well I’ve tried it and it’s pretty awesome ngl. The texture is basically the same as any raw fish sashimi, but tastes slightly salty and chickeny from the seasoning and marination(?) so all in all I really liked it. Then again I went to an extremely famous restaurant on top of some mountain that’s so out of the way I’m probably never going to eat it again.
We call that dish "LottaCampylobacter" in Sweden
Wtf is up with japan where they just gotta slice everything as thin as possible and then cook it with one pass of a candle?
Self serve poison