Or worse. How many times have you read "cook chicken until the juices run clear"? It means that, if you stab or slice into a chicken or turkey, and you see pink juices, it is not done. This myth lives in hundreds of cookbooks and thousands of websites.
Proper doneness temps for chicken ensure juicy results-but what if the meat or juices are pink or it looks bloody? Learn to tell if it's safe. Is chicken juice blood? Pink meat and thin pink juice in chicken, turkey, and even pork is due to a protein called myoglobin that is stored within the muscles and usually found mixed with water, making a pink fluid. The color of the juice can be influenced by various factors, including the chicken's age, diet, and the cooking method used.
Specifically, younger chickens and those with a diet rich in nitrates can sometimes retain a pinkish hue even when fully cooked. Chicken is cooked when it reaches the temperature necessary to denature (break down) most proteins, which kills any salmonella or other disease-causing agents and changes the texture of the meat. The juices that come out of meat as it cooks should be fat or water, both of which are colorless, but they could pick up color from the materials they pass through, such as the hemoglobin protein that.
Pink chicken is bad news! or is it? There is a myth that 'chicken is ready to cook when the juices run clear'. Find how to tell if your chicken is cooked. Cooking a chicken until its "juices run clear when pricked" is pretty standard poultry advice but, according to Cook's Illustrated, it's not a very dependable way to tell if your chicken.
Fully cooked chicken has clear juice whereas the juice of undercooked meat is red or pinkish. You can also point out undercooked chicken by inspecting its color, taste, texture, and juice. And when we pierced another chicken that we'd overcooked (the breast registered 170 degrees and the thigh 180 degrees), it still oozed pink juices.
Here's the scoop: The juices in a chicken are mostly water; they get their color from a molecule called myoglobin. When myoglobin is heated, it loses its color. The color of meat is mainly determined by a protein called myoglobin.
You know the pink puddle you often see in packages of raw meat? Many people assume it's blood, but it's actually myoglobin mixed with water. This combination, known as myowater, is what chicken juice is made of. If the myowater runs pink, it means it has a higher concentration of myoglobin.
Additionally, the difference.