Gwyneth Paltrow isn’t the best person to turn to for good advice. She and her lifestyle website, Goop, have promoted everything from full-service vaginal steaming, to solid gold dildos. They’ve also pushed $90 vitamins to cure you of diseases that don’t exist, and truffles that will help you get psychic powers (this piece on “affordable yachts” is definitely useful, though).
But the self-described healthy-living expert should be trustworthy on at least some basic subjects, like cooking a roast chicken, right? I mean, how hard is it to cook a roast chicken?
Too hard for Gwyneth, it turns out.
Researchers at North Carolina State University conducted a simple study of commercially available cookbooks, trying to figure out if the nation’s glut of celebrity chefs were giving home cooks good advice. None of them were particularly good, but Paltrow was one of the worst offenders, regularly giving her readers “advice” that could give them food-borne illnesses.
In My Father’s Daughter, the study says, Paltrow fails to list a safe finishing temperature for her rotisserie chicken (it should be cooked until a thermometer inserted into a meaty part reads 165).
In It’s All Good, Paltrow suggests washing raw chicken, a practice known to spread harmful bacteria like salmonella and campylobacter. Her recipes for Tandoori turkey kebabs, Thai-style chicken, turkey meatballs, Japanese chicken meatballs, and chicken with “Harisa, preserved lemons and greens” also listed incorrect cooking temperatures—when they listed a cooking temperature at all.
In other words, Gwyneth’s recipes could literally kill you.
Paltrow’s spokesperson told Food & Wine that, even though proper cooking temperatures weren’t listed, they were sure each recipe instructed home chefs to cook their food long enough.
Comforting.
