LAURANAV Hello. Let's cook.

For under twenty bucks, this instant-read thermometer promised to solve all of my problems. You see, my husband cares about whether his food is cooked through. He cares a lot. (I mean, I do, too—I don’t eat raw chicken or anything.) But too many times, his cute face was two inches from his plate, asking, “Is this done?” How could I prove to him that we wouldn’t die of E. coli or salmonella?

Enter the Instant-Read Thermometer. Suddenly, I had empirical data. Yes, your chicken hit 170 degrees! Yes, your pork hit 160! This gadget has single-handedly given me confidence where I once had to rely on guesses.

It is not just good for meat—you can measure the internal temperature of bread to determine if it is cooked through. I use it for homemade yogurt, which has helped refine the milk-heating-and-cooling process. Recently, I used it on a whim to measure the water temperature when I was proofing yeast and realized, to my horror, that I was casually killing my yeast by using too-hot water. Ever since, my yeast breads and pizza doughs have risen beautifully and consistently.

I keep finding new things to measure. Thank you, Instant-Read Thermometer!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.