Never Undercook Meat Again with This Tool

If you’ve watched any amount of Hell’s Kitchen with the lovely Gordon Ramsey, then you know just how easy it is to undercook your meat or fish even if you’re a professional cook. For home cooks, one of the most embarrassing things is to accidentally serve your guest something undercooked and they notice. Or worse… they don’t notice it, get sick, and then have to suspect that it was due to your food.

Practicing Safe Temps

Each type of meat has an ideal temperature or temperature range that you want to cook it until so that it’s safe to eat. Different cuts of meat also have different ideal temperatures and cook times, but let’s just focus on the general “safe-to-eat” temperature and the most common types of meat that we, as humans, tend to consume.

• Beef
  • Rare - 125°F (52°C)
  • Medium Rare - 135°F (57°C)
  • Medium - 145°F (63°C)
  • Medium Well - 150°F (66°C)
  • Well Done - 160°F (71°C)
• Fish
  • 145°F (63°C)
• Pork
  • Chops - 145°F (63°C)
  • Ground - 160°F (71°C)
• Chicken
  • 165°F (74°C)

How to Tell the Temperature

A lot of chefs can tell what the temperature approximately is by touching the meat, but the keyword here is “approxitmately” because it’s literally a guess. Although there are probably some chefs out there that can guess a steak’s exact temperature from just squeezing it… but let’s just have Hagrid call them a wizard and move on.

Without the experience of cooking a piece of meat over 10,000 times, what can home cooks do to always achieve the right temperature? An instant read thermometer is the golden tool here. The great news is that they’re affordable and there’s a TON of them on the market. Personally, I use the ThermoPro TP710 because it also comes with a oven probe which means I can use it on the stove top, in the oven, and on the grill; ONE THERMOMETER TO RULE THEM ALL!

Speaking of the grill, you might want something that can tell the temperatures of multiple different types of meats. When I fire up the grill, I usually have at least 2 different types of meat cooking. For those occasions I use thermometer probes made specifically for the grill or oven. The ThermoPro TP829 w/ 4 probes is a great choice for this with its 1000 ft cord length and color coordinated probes. I’ve even used this for Thanksgiving dinner when I [foolishly] volunteered to smoke a Turkey, a rack of lamb, and spare ribs for the extended family.

And if you’re not a fan of cables and have some money to splurge, I’ve heard that the Meater Wireless Bluetooth Thermometer is a great investment. I’ve only used it once when I was at a friend’s house, but it’s really acccurate and works great. the ThermoPro is just as accurate though, so it really comes down what your price of convenience is.

Final Verdict

Overcome your fears of serving undercooked (or overcooked) meats by getting yourself an instant read thermometer. You’ll nail the right temperatures for all of your meat every time once you get used to using one of these things while cooking on the store, oven, grill, or firepit.