Bone-In chicken raw around bone

I have tried cooking bone-in chicken thighs. @ 149.9 F / 65.5 C
But the meat around the bone is always very red and raw.
I have tried cooking for up to 2 hours, with the same disappointing results.
Why?

Hi Tim, there’s a few possible reasons. To start, it might be the chicken. Commercially produced chicken is very quickly processed in enormous amounts and is not always completely bled out when harvested. A small amount of blood can remain near the bone resulting in that red colour. Try changing brands to get an improved product quality…

And raw? How do you know? Do you check the internal temperature?

You are cooking chicken thighs right at the very bottom of their generally accepted SV cooking temperature range. You might consider cooking thighs at 157F / 70C for a full two hours.

74C for 5 hours did the trick
Will try shorter time

165F (74C) for 2 hours gives me perfectly cooked bone-in thighs.

I echo TBell512’s comment.

Recently was at the wholesaler & batch cooked 5kg over multiple bags, some for us some for the french bulldog (spoilt) …all were good bearing in mind the density of bulk cooking (weight / mass) at 165F (74C) for 2 hours, water pre-heated insulated base & covered top.

Thus I’d also question the process at point of slaughter.
(I do remove one in a bulk cook to scrutinise & be sure …dog yet to complain about that)

Hey Mr. Gus, some dogs will eat a raw chicken so that’s not always a useful gauge for your satisfaction.

Do you monitor temperature at the beginning of the cook?
You need to get a full 2 hour cook at target temperature to ensure temperature equilibrium is achieved.

If in doubt cook longer, up to 4 hours won’t hurt. No longer though.
Then you are certain of both safety and doneness.

Thus the term “scrutinise”…digging out one from the middle, performIng a thermometer check, scraping flesh, if maybe breaking the bone to check how it appears (forced raising effect on bones etc) :wink:

If you think there may be blood left in the meat from processing, try soaking the chicken in salt water for 3 or 4 hours. This will draw the blood out.

It’s most likely myoglobin, not blood and probably not raw. Safe time and temperature combinations can, as always, be found in:
https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Poultry_and_Eggs
Some more: