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Originally Posted by Defenestrator  I think you have very little to worry about. Bacteria live on the outside of meat, not on the inside. People get sick from hamburgers because of the small particles which were exposed to the outside air which are now in the center of the burger. If the outside of the chicken were cooked it would be no more dangerous than eating a rare steak.
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This is absolutely false. Salmonella is carried INSIDE of warm blooded animals, it doesn't just appear on the skin of slaughtered animals exposed to air. It is inside the tissues and vessels.
Hamburger often contains e-coli because of the manner of slaughter, it's often messy and feces/bowels often come into contact with meat that is ground up into hamburger. Exposing meat to air doesn't cause it to become contaminated.
Any food safety class will give you basic food safety information, and it is absolutely false that bacteria on meat is only on the outside, and that by cooking the outside you are safe.
If that were true there wouldn't be thousands sickened every year by improperly cooked turkeys, not to mention those roaster chickens that sit under warming lamps for hours waiting for someone to buy them- they make people sick because they weren't brought to temperature throughout- and then they sit under a lamp in the danger zone and the remaining bacteria has a field day and breeds like mad.
Always bring the internal temperature of your meat to a safe level. Cooking the outside does not make it safe. That's like washing your hands with gloves on what good does that do?
My husband is a chef, and there is so much misinformation out there about food safety. Be safe, and I encourage everyone to take a class or read a book about food safety. There are many ways food becomes contaminated:
Improper handwashing by the person cooking the food, even a healthy person that uses the restroom and doesn't wash their hands can make people sick with germs that live inside our lower intestines that get transmitted onto our hands
Handling raw meats and cross contaminated food that won't get cooked- like lettuce
Meat that has bad bacteria in it being improperly cooked
Food that is improperly stored and held at unsafe temperatures.
OP I think you are out of the danger zone.
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