Infrared Thermometer

Temperature is extremely important in cooking, but most thermometers suck. How many do you need too? There are so many different types.

They are just so ungainly, for many that you’d stick in a pot (such as a pot of oil for deep frying) they get in the way of any lids or splatter screens. Also…how do you take the temperature of a millimeter of oil in the bottom of a frying pan? Often when I’m making up a recipe on this site I’ll tell you to put a little oil in a frying pan and wait for it to reach 350, but how do you know when it is 350? It is too shallow to stick a normal thermometer in. There are visual clues if you are an experienced cook, but those are hard to pick up on for the novice. And even for the experienced, nothing beats scientific accuracy.

The solution is to buy an infrared thermometer. It is a flipping laser! That has to appeal to the geek in you right? Also, it is a point and shoot instant read thermometer. Any surface you can point it at it’ll read, instantly. You can use it for far more than cooking (use that to justify the price).

Get one of these and you can throw all your other thermometers away, except for a good probe thermometer since afterall this laser one can’t read inside of meats, only the surface.