A TikTok user who posts as Alex Blumy said in a video that she spent days feeling nauseous and dealing with an upset stomach before she linked those symptoms to chicken she had been cooking. Blumy stated she had thought she was simply sick until she opened a package of thawing chicken and was hit with a strong smell. The TikTok video from @alexblumy has drawn about 296,500 views, 20,000 likes, and more than 300 comments. On-screen text in the clip reads, “This is ur sign to never cook raw chicken straight from frozen.” Blumy appears to be speaking to the camera in a grey tank top. Blumy said she was making dinner and needed protein, so she pulled out the chicken she had been thawing in the fridge. She described the thaw time as about 36 hours, or a day and a half. She added that the chicken “had a while to go before I froze it,” which led her to think a day and a half in the fridge after freezing would be fine. Chicken packages smelled like rotten fish after days of cooking from frozen Blumy said she unzipped the package and was “hit with the most putrid horrible smell.” She stated she immediately threw that package away and then decided to check the rest of the frozen chicken. She said she had been feeling really bad for the last couple of days, with nausea and an upset stomach, and had believed she was sick. @alexblumy I’ve literally been food poisoning MYSELF. ♬ original sound – alex blumy She then asked in the video whether she might have been poisoning herself with chicken that had gone bad because it came all the way from South Africa. She answered her own question by saying that would be crazy. Discoveries of spoiled or disturbing chicken can happen to anyone, as a woman once found a disturbing sight in a Sam’s Club rotisserie chicken. She later stated that all of it was bad. “I opened all the packages. They smelled like rotten fish,” she said. Food scares involving chicken can happen to anyone, like when a Tampa man bit into a Burger King chicken wrap and found something gummy and glistening inside. Blumy said she never understood what people meant when they said you would be able to know that a chicken had gone bad. She explained she had been cooking the chicken straight from frozen and that it did not smell bad once it was cooked. She said the raw chicken made her want to throw up just thinking about it. She added, “This is why I need roommates, because I feel like maybe someone else would have realized that before me.” She said it took her three days of eating chicken that had gone bad and getting sick from it to finally figure it out by accident. The TikTok caption on the post read, “I’ve literally been food poisoning MYSELF.” A Simply Recipes article on cooking chicken from frozen quoted Lisa Yakas, a trained microbiologist who works at NSF. Yakas said frozen chicken takes approximately 50 percent longer to cook than fully thawed or fresh poultry. She said it is not really dangerous to cook from frozen if people allow the extra time. Yakas said frozen chicken can be cooked in a skillet, in the oven, or in an Instant Pot, but should not be placed directly into hot oil for frying. She said people should avoid cooking partially thawed chicken because it can cook unevenly. Yakas said the internal temperature should reach at least 165°F in the thickest part of the meat, as checked with a certified meat thermometer. She also said hands should be washed before and after handling chicken, and the area should be cleaned and sanitized. Yakas said, “If there’s ever an unpleasant smell with chicken, please discard. When in doubt, throw it out!” Viewers reacted to the clip in the comments. One commenter wrote that buying chicken from a whole different country was not a wise idea in the first place. Another focused on the timeline and wrote, “3 days???!!! That chicken was definitely not refrigerated properly in route.” A third commenter wrote, “Living in the middle of nowhere, giving self salmonella poisoning, what could possibly go wrong…..” Someone else asked an off-topic question about waste, writing, “Off topic but like where does your garbage go? I’m worried raw chicken will attract an unwanted guest.” Another person said they had stopped eating meat a few months ago after 46 years, and that the stress of worrying about bad or undercooked meat was gone.