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I'm grilling marinated chicken (I'm following a Tandoori chicken recipe which involved marinating the chicken in lemon, curd, Ginger, garlic and some other spices for 3 hours in the refrigerator).

While grilling them I see a dark red color discharge coming out. I'm not sure what that is and whether it is a normal thing. Here's a photo of what that looks like:

grilling the chicken

And here's another image before I turned it over and zoomed in.

red discharge

Since, I'm a complete beginner in cooking chicken I'm not sure whether this is a normal thing or not. Can someone please help me out with this?

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2 Answers 2

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@pb2q is right, it's blood. This happens during processing. When the meat isn't allowed to bleed (i.e.; drain blood) long enough, then some of the blood remains in the muscle structure and cooks along with the chicken. It might look odd, but it's not a concern as far as eating it is concerned. It won't "hurt you".

If it bothers you (as it might for some people), just remind yourself not to buy that brand of chicken again. If one bird from this company was rushed during processing, there's a reasonable chance that they always "rush the process". Easiest solution might be to just switch brands... but please, don't thrown out the Tandori Chicken. I bet it's... delish!

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    Thank you for identifying this! I'll switch brands immediately. And yes, the chicken was delicious. The blood solidified into a really dark maroon, crispy part after sometime. I broke it off from the chicken and threw it at the time of eating. I thought that this was related to "juices run clear", malcogen or a similar name of the enzyme. So you don't think it was the protein enzyme being released?
    – Mugen
    Jan 21, 2019 at 13:40
  • "Juices run clear" is an old-school way to judge how cooked (chicken) is. If you pierce it with a fork, you want the "juice to run clear". If there is any pink tinge, cook it longer.
    – elbrant
    Jan 21, 2019 at 17:36
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It's the chicken losing some blood during the cooking process.

No need to worry, I hope the recipe was a success!

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