Preparing a meal for the family can be time-consuming and tedious if each meat has to be cooked separately. Is it safe to cook them simultaneously, even though it would save time? Can chicken and beef be cooked together? Meats of different textures and colors can be cooked together, but only if they need the same amount of time to prepare. Roasts of beef and chicken should only be cooked together if they both need the same amount of time in the oven.
Continue reading if you’re curious about the best methods for preparing chicken and beef together in the kitchen. We’ll find out the most effective and secure methods of cooking chicken and beef together, and we’ll also cover the situations in which you’d be better off cooking the two separately.
Should You Cook Chicken And Beef Together?
Theoretically, chicken and beef can be cooked together, and in some instances, this can be a big advantage. The two reasons why people are afraid of cooking chicken and beef together are the possibility of cross-contamination and variances in cooking times. We’ve had the risks of handling raw meat and poultry pounded into us for years and have been cautioned to never allow them come into touch with any other components.
But does this mean that the two can never go in the same pan or cooking pot?
In practical words, you can cook chicken and beef together as long as you can assure that both are properly cooked through and are perfectly safe to eat. While we can eat rare meat, chicken must be entirely cooked before it is consumed. This is due to the risk of food poisoning induced by bacterial contamination of pathogens such as salmonella. The speed at which chicken and beef cook will depend on how it is cooked and the size of the pieces of meat.
If you do not have two comparably sized pieces of meat, they will take different times to cook, causing one to get overcooked. As long as both are cooked through (particularly the chicken), they are totally edible when overcooked, just maybe not as wonderful as you were hoping.
So before you dive in and start cooking chicken and beef together, let’s have a look at the scenarios where this is a smart idea, and where it is just just not practicable.
What Are The Advantages Of Cooking Chicken And Beef Together?
The biggest advantage to cooking chicken and beef together has got to be the large amounts of time you will save. We don’t all have room on our stove top or in our ovens to accommodate two separate pans at once, so if you want to cook both chicken and beef, you generally end up doing one after the other.
So, if you can cook them both concurrently, then you halve the time spent cooking. All the more time to spend relaxing with the family before supper – a wonderful benefit! In terms of conserving time, you might potentially also halve the amount of cooking pots you use. This also cuts down on clearing up time when our dinner is finished.
Removing burnt-on meat and grease from roasting pans is a laborious process, so if you can avoid at least half of this, your burden will be considerably easier. Depending on the cooking technique employed, there may be also some advantages in terms of the flavor of your dish when chicken and beef are cooked together.
When we cook meat, juices are generated, which we generally employ to create delectable sauce or gravy. If we are cooking beef and chicken in the same skillet, these liquids will blend together and create something really wonderful!
When Shouldn’t You Cook Chicken And Beef Together?
Okay, we’re going to start with one word of caution here. Never, ever cook chicken and beef together if there is a chance that the chicken may not be properly done. Also, never mess around with adding beef to chicken part way through the cooking procedure, or vice versa. The methods used to cook beef rely on a steady temperature throughout the cooking time, and adding more ingredients might create major changes in this.
It is necessary to ensure that your chicken is cooked properly when cooking chicken and beef together – cooking chicken thoroughly is essential to kill any dangerous bacteria that can cause food poisoning. And cooking beef alongside chicken could mean that your meat turns out lot more well done than you would like it!
To guarantee that any meat is cooked, we should check the internal temperature with a meat thermometer.
Chicken should attain an internal temperature of 165°F.
We have a bit more flexibility with beef, as this meat can be eaten rare or even raw.
With beef, we utilize the interior temperature to guide how well done the meat is:
Rare steak needs to be cooked to just 130°F.
Medium meat will be cooked to 145°F.
Steak is well done when it is cooked to 160°F and above.
From this, we can see that if we had two identically sized pieces of chicken and beef, then cooked them both until the chicken was safe to eat, the beef would be very well done!
Luckily, there are certain somethings we can do to counteract this condition. Firstly, by reducing the size of the meats, the cooking time also reduces. So, by utilizing ground beef and chicken or meat that is sliced thinly into strips, we may remove the problem of the disparity in cooking temperatures.
Which Cooking Methods Can You Use To Cook Chicken And Beef Together?
There are a few situations where cooking beef and chicken together can work to your advantage, saving time as well as enabling you to create more interesting and flavorsome dishes.
1. The Grill
It makes no sense to cook separate beef and chicken on the grill. As long as each piece of meat reaches the desired internal temperature, the USDA says it’s fine to eat. When grilling chicken and beef of similar size, chicken will take a little longer. In order to get the best results when grilling different types of meat, you may need to start at a lower temperature in order to avoid the outside from burning before the inside is fully cooked.
Cooking multiple foods at once on a grill is an advanced form of the art of grilling. Similarly, you shouldn’t use the same cutlery or dishes for other foods, not even beef, if they’ve previously come into contact with raw chicken. When grilling, it’s best to use a different set of tongs for each kind of meat.
2. The Stovetop
The stovetop cooking techniques that use the tiniest pieces of meat work best when combining beef and chicken. This means that since both will take only a few minutes to cook thoroughly, thin strips of beef and chicken breast can be cooked in a stir fry together. Additionally, it is completely safe to cook ground beef and chicken together, even when formed into meatballs or meatloaf. Cook until the food reaches an internal temperature of 165°F.
3. The Oven
When it comes to cooking chicken and beef together, this is the riskiest method because meat cooked in the oven takes much longer to reach the desired internal temperature. If you took a whole chicken and a beef joint of the same weight, the beef would cook much faster. This is because chicken requires a higher internal temperature than beef.
You may be tempted to begin with the chicken and then add the beef to the roasting tray, but this is a bad idea. Adding a cold piece of beef lowers the temperature of the oven, increasing the likelihood of your chicken being undercooked.
Starting the two types of meat together is also a bad idea, as the beef may become contaminated with bacteria from the partially cooked chicken during the cooking process. Is it possible to cook beef and chicken together in the oven?
The only safe solution is to find two pieces of meat with similar cooking times, but this means you’ll end up with a larger piece of beef than chicken.