I’ve not posted much on Mastodon, but I used a couple of hashtags and an interested-based group that automatically boosts any post you tag it in and I’ve gotten some people to respond! But yeah Lemmy and Mastodon are pretty different ways of interacting with people so I can see how you might like one more than another.
Normal soap should be enough to clean your hands and kitchen tools. I believe the issue with rinsing chicken in the sink is that the water can splash little droplets around very easily, and those droplets can have the chicken bacteria in them, thus spreading bacteria around your sink area.