Generally, it is mainly chicken that one needs to be careful about, because it is sometimes contaminated with unhealthy bacteria, even when bought "fresh". A general procedure with all meat, and especially chicken, is to wash any surface that raw chicken comes in contact with when you are done preparing it and have started to cook it, then wash any utensils you used that touched the chicken, and wash you hands. To be extra cautious, you can do that for any raw meat. Raw meat should be refrigerated soon after purchase and now allowed to stand uncooked at room temperature for more than the time it takes to prepare it.
Thanks for explaining that! But, um... I still have more questions... What is the procedure for washing the surfaces, the utensils, and my hands? How do I know when the meat is cooked enough to not qualify as raw? And for stir-frying raw meat, do I need to pause the stir-frying process to wash the stir-frying utensils, so that I don't contaminate the cooked food with any raw juices that happen to still be on the utensils?
I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
(And yes, I have one. It's this: how in the world do people go about the supposedly atomic action of investing in the stock market? Here I am, sitting at my computer, and suppose I want a share of Apple - there isn't a button that says "Buy Our Stock" on their website. There goes my one idea. Where do I go and what do I do there?)