Food for Thought

Some things make me nuts. Raw meat is one of them. Everyone knows you must cook meat to the proper temperature to avoid getting violently ill. I dutifully hand wash the knife and cutting board I cut up raw chicken with and try to avoid cross contamination when I touch raw meat by washing my hands before I move on to the next task. This brings up my question of the day - At what point in the cooking cycle does the meat become cooked enough? Assume you have your raw chicken thaw on a plate in the fridge. You use tongs to pick them up and put it on the skillet or grill. Now it's time to check how the cooking is going. What do you use? The raw tongs? Get new ones? Chicken needs more time on that side. Checking the second time which tongs are you using? Give it two more minutes. Time to flip them over. Which tongs? Do you have to keep track of which side of the tongs stays on the cooked side and which side is allowed to touch the raw side? Now we cook the other side, but one side is raw, one side is cooked. Which tongs? Check it. Check it. Check it again. Chicken is grilled to prefection. How many sets of tongs have you now gone through? Do you get a brand new set to use to remove it from the grill? Just a question. It is about as frusterating as trying to wash my hair. The directions say, "Wash. Rinse. Repeat."