Probe Thermometers Guide

There is something about a little blue sky that makes the thought of a glass of wine, a proper glass that makes a significant drain on the bottle, seem a million times more desirable when balanced perfectly on the shelf of the BBQ! There is a lot of pressure these days on the BBQ chef! There are so many customers, each with their own requirements. There is the worrier, not happy about the idea of eating under cooked food they prefer to make do with something nuked so hard to resemble shoe leather. Then the gung-ho, give-it-me-raw, a-bit-of-blood-never-hurt-anyone customer who prefers steak still mooing and chicken still clucking. Then there are all the preparations needed for a really successful summer sizzle, the marinades, the homemade burgers, the enormous piles of sausages (mine’s a merguez!), the steaks, the dressings! Having gone to all that trouble one tool is completely indispensable. What you need is a good probe thermometer. They are a joy, taking all the worry out of the job. There are lots of reasons why having this baby in the cupboard is an absolute must. Is it under cooked? The last thing you need is to cause your guests to spend the next 48 hours counting the tiles on the bathroom wall. Interestingly, BBQ’s are not the worst offenders when it comes to food poisoning, but the probe thermometer lets you get it just right, every time. This is especially true for boney chicken portions, where the main culprit hides between the meat and the bone. You can get the temperature just right, deep inside. The accepted safe temperature is 75C, and once reached, you can rest assured. Is it overcooked? The temptation to overcook BBQ food is enormous, but you needn’t. Getting the temperature of a piece of steak, I mean a proper piece of steak good and thick, or even the increasingly popular assado, poised over a fire, can be judged to perfection. And there is nothing more soul destroying than preparing your best burger recipes to see them disappear to nothing because auntie says she want’s it ‘really well done’. Give it a rest! We often overlook the resting period for cooking meat in the UK. Yes, off the heat food cools and the cooking slows, but the BBQ is ideal for maintaining temperatures, and your probe thermometer is a final check for resting foods when you need it for a well done steak. Some BBQ’ers like to stop the cooking when it is 5C from the required temperature and then leave the meat to rest for 10 minutes. This gives a perfect ‘medium rare’. One of the great things about the probe thermometer is you can experiment with different temperatures to get food cooked exactly as you like it, by combining different max temperatures and rest periods. What about the juice? When you pierce a piece of cooking meat you do get a little juice leaking from it, which ends up in the BBQ, and this has been cited as the main reason for not using them. However, if you hold your spatula over the entry spot, the loss is stemmed straight away, and what little does escape serves to flavour the surface. This can be important for certain sausages. What type? For years I used an analogue metallic thermometer, but as eyesight fails (yes - its an age thing!), I needed a digital readout, which is excellent, and there is little to go wrong with them. They are easy to disinfect and keep clean. You should be able to calibrate it if needed by measuring the temperature of boiling water. It is difficult to calibrate the analogue ones. Final tip! Don’t repeat my mistake when first I used a problem thermometer. You will find they work much better by removing the plastic cover for the probe, which is metallic! I had difficulty pushing the probe with the sheath into the meat, and when I managed it, the temperature was far too low! Well, you live and learn, pull the sheath off before use!

For more information on Probe Thermometers Guide talk to Weschenfelder Ltd