How hard do you have to hit a chicken to cook it? (2020)

jxmorris12 | 161 points

I assumed the question was how to achieve the proper preconditions for cooking a chicken while avoiding any animal cruelty charges.

Clearly, we could simply knock its head off with a bat, since today I learned you can physically cook chickens with bats and professional batters, via a method well suited to humanity's eminent migration to outer space.

But I expect with some years of strength training and finesse, a very hard flick to the back of the chicken's lower noggin could dislodge the first cervical vertebrate from the skull, severing the spinal cord's integration with the brain stem.

Whether actually dead, or merely in a persistent vegetative state, the chicken may now be cooked.

However, if the chicken is merely headless [0], but in good health, one should not cook it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

Nevermark | 11 hours ago

I thought the FDA guideline was once the internal temperature reaches 160 or 165 or something it didn't need to sustain that temperature? it was only the lower temperatures that required some duration to achieve the same log reduction as reaching 160/165?

wpasc | 7 hours ago

Chicken sized 74C object radiates at 2kW? Probably cools rather fast, but still feels like high number...

Energy in general really feels weird, when you look at the numbers. Like potential energy or kinetic on relatively low speeds... And then compared to chemical energy...

Edit: Also how do you get it there? Wouldn't you need to hit it with higher frequency to start with to get to temp?

Ekaros | 15 hours ago

Spiritual successor of this is how many slap's it take's to cook a chicken. There was a viral video on this a few year's ago rather funny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFhnnTWMgI

KadenWildauer | 10 hours ago

I love that when I opened this article i already knew some elements, from having read it months ago on HN

So now I will remember it a bit better and for longer

Hackernews is actually like Anki cards for nerd (and in this case useless) Internet stuff

aubanel | 5 hours ago

Assuming an infinitely malleable chicken...

This reminds me of the old blacksmithing trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I68Cik7ywg

userbinator | 15 hours ago

That chicken would be obliterated long before cooking

xivzgrev | 26 minutes ago

If we're considering unconventional cooking methods, what about orbital re-entry cooking, or atmospheric friction cooking in general? What speed/altitude would a plane need to be travelling at to lob a chicken out the window and have it perfectly cooked when it hit land?

SR-71 external temp reached 600F or so at Mach-3, so that might result in a charred chicken.

HarHarVeryFunny | 8 hours ago

I still need to know how fast I need to ride my bike to not freeze my hands, when biking during the winter without mittens. There has to be some sweet spot where my hands a warm, but not burning.

mrweasel | 13 hours ago

This is exactly why I like hanging out with math & physics types. It has big "assuming a spherical, frictionless horse" energy.

kstrauser | 16 hours ago

Chicken Gun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun

I’m pretty sure NASA used a version of this to test the resiliency of the space shuttle tiles. Not fast enough to cook tho.

whycome | 15 hours ago

Someone did build himself a chicken slapper to he could slap himself some chicken dinner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFhnnTWMgI

foofoo12 | 13 hours ago
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| 3 hours ago

"Mom, where are the hitters in the oven?"

"We call them heaters in that one case."

flowerthoughts | 15 hours ago

OT, but the site of that author looks very interesting in general: https://james-simon.github.io

xg15 | 13 hours ago

And the experimental evidence…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFhnnTWMgI

neilwilson | 13 hours ago

"Assume a spherical chicken..."

TheOtherHobbes | 22 minutes ago

Sounds more like a recipe for chicken soup ...

amelius | 6 hours ago

The question posed is not "how hard" but "how many times and how hard". You can't cook a chicken in one hit because that amount of heat requires a large amount of force which then obliterates the chicken. There's a video on youtube that tries to answer this question.

knowitnone3 | an hour ago

I don’t think I agree with the assertion that instantly bringing the chicken up to temp wouldn’t result in it being cooked. Especially since the classic solution got the chicken up to 400F. I don’t care how fast it cools off, if we assume magic uniform heat distribution from the slap, starting at 400 F, all the proteins are gonna be denatured and the diseases killed.

oofbey | 15 hours ago

Used to joke in the kitchen that I worked in that if we were pressed for time, instead of baking something for an hour at 300°, we can just bake it for 6 minutes at 3,000°. It's such a fun concept and always makes me giggle

bobson381 | 13 hours ago
[deleted]
| 6 hours ago

"if you slap a chicken at 3726 mph, it will be cooked."

Certainly holds true for the Gen Z sense of the word.

kylecazar | 9 hours ago

I raise the bar higher - how hard and how long do you need to hit the chicken to make it sous vide

p0w3n3d | 9 hours ago

Incredible. Was not expecting an answer that felt reachable.

burnished | 12 hours ago

Does anyone know why does the footer of the page have a “ssn”?

5xpB7n8tdbtoP | 15 hours ago

Are we assuming perfectly spherical chickens in vacuum?

dvh | 14 hours ago
[deleted]
| 6 hours ago

I thought this was xkcd's What If? series from the title.

By the way, it's got a Youtube channel now and it's as good as ever: https://www.youtube.com/@xkcd_whatif

sph | 9 hours ago

Motion is relative, so firing a chicken at a static target is also a possibility.

The trouble would be imparting and spreading enough energy through the entire mass uniformly enough to have something remain.

It likely wouldn't work in the real world because the result would obliterate bones resulting in something worse than Chicken McNuggets, and not cook it sufficiently long to be safe from bacterial contamination.

If attempting such a feat, it would generate visible light. There's a good chance of generating some long-wave UV at the energies involved (several MJ, which would be a chicken flying at about 2 km/s. It would instantly disintegrate.)

burnt-resistor | 6 hours ago
[deleted]
| 9 hours ago

Conspicuously, this is from June 2020

hkt | 11 hours ago

is it cooked or vaporized?

zakki | 11 hours ago

You don’t have to hit a chicken hard to cook it you just shoot it at a wall.

slowhadoken | 15 hours ago

This is really disgusting. Chickens are feeling animals as well.

nullzzz | 10 hours ago

Sora, show me this.

handfuloflight | 14 hours ago
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| 9 hours ago