I am a bit late to the party. Yes, I have a meat thermometer. No, I do not use it for meat, poultry or other animal matter. I do not cook meat that often and when I do, I usually know how to properly cook it without using a thermometer from experience. It’s not that difficult unless you roast entire birds or anything.
I occasionally use it for measuring temperatures when brewing beer. I have a digital thermometer with a wide range (-40C to +200C-ish) and use it to check the temperature of the wort when pitching the yeast.
I have one of those ones with an external probe, so I just set the temp I want on the thermometer and it beeps when the food is done.
Yes. Accurate temperatures guarantee good results. Sous vied is also wonderful for stress free prep of expensive meats.
Sous vide was a game changer for me. I don’t use mine often but break it out when I want to convince people I am not terrible at cooking.
Just wish that it wasn’t necessary to use so much plastic for it. If there was any sort of plant-based film that food could be sealed in instead, it’d be perfect.
Try the reverse sear method instead. You get sous vise like results with no plastic, no water bath, just an oven and a pan.
I use my toaster oven to do the precook while searing off vegtables in my pan, then get pan wicked hot and sear the steak. Fast, excellent mutlitasking. Works well for pork chops too.
Its a much better cook than sous vide imo.
I find it to basically be exactly the same, but almost no setup. No filling a pot/container with water, putting the stick heater in, ziplocking or vacuum sealing the meat, then waiting an hour+ for it to hit temperature.
Toss the steaks on a tray, preheat toaster oven in 5 min to 225f, prep and cook the rest of the meal and the sear off the steaks after 20min. Easy as fuck.
My new stove/oven has air sous vide, as they call it. You still have to bag up whatever you’re cooking, but otherwise it’s a lot less work. Seems to work just fine, but it does take a little longer than liquid sous vide.
Sounds like they rebranded convection a bit, but more power to them if it works.
It does work. And it is not rebranded convection. In order to cook sous vide, you need to be able to consistently maintain pretty low temperatures. That’s what the oven offers and it works well.
I think most people who do sous vide cooking also use the reverse sear method.
Hopefully as an alternative at times and not as an addition. Doing both wouldn’t have any advantage, as both work to take the internal temp of the meat to a specific state and hold it there.
The whole benefit of sous vide is that you can completely forget about the meat—even leave it for days at a time—and it will never overcook. Just take it out anytime, slap it on the stove for a quick sear, and get a perfect medium rare every time.
As someone with extreme ADHD, this is why I always sous vide my steak. Reverse sear is slow, yes, but there’s still a chance to forget about it and let it overcook.
We use silicon bags and magnets. You let the top of the bag drape over the side of the bucket(tub? basin?) and hold it in place with a few magnets. From what I can tell the results are the same for the steaks and meat we cook and none of the sketchiness from eating slow heated plastic.
It’s also great for cheap beef. You can throw a tri-tip or brisket in there and run it for literal days until you have meat as tender as the deli counter, while also being med-rare throughout.
I think possibly the best steak I ever had/made was a cheap chuck steak that I gave a nice long sous vide treatment
There is a whole lot of flavor there, but it can be as tough as shoe leather, but with sous vide it came out as tender as any filet, but way beefier
I only really need to for chicken.
I am an experienced cook and use one to produce consistent, on-target results. It more often prevents over-cooking, not under-cooking.
Only for chicken, for salmonella reasons, and steak, because I’m terrible at judging doneness without it.
For roasts, yes. For steaks, no.
Yes, but never for meat. I use it when I make toffee, bake bread and some other things.
100% but I like in the bird stuffing.
I always use one and the feeling when the meat just kisses the done temperature while it’s resting is almost as good as sex.
Yes, I frequently cook for my family and I use it on steaks, roasts, whole birds, pretty much anything big or where temperature is super important. I don’t use it for chicken breast though as I tend to like that cooked beyond the recommended temperature anyway.
No. I overcook my meat but I don’t really care since I don’t eat it that often at home. Just another thing to wash up afterward.
Yes, on the rare occasion I cook meat. Too unpracticed otherwise. I originally got one because I’m colorblind and was scared of undercooking red meat and tired of eating leather. As a bonus, I used it to get the temperature right when I got into fancier teas and inadvertently trained myself to judge the temperature of water pouring into my mug by the sound it makes within a couple °C, which is kinda neat. Now, if I could figure out how to do something similar so I stop overcooking food, that’s be grand…
Yep, I am absolutely crap when it comes to judging the doneness of meat. I’ll often over or under cook without one.
It also It makes things a lot less stressful when I cook. Rather than constantly going to the kitchen and checking if the roast (or whatever) is ready I just have a wireless thermometer I can look at while I play video games, read or something.
Yes.
