Like I get paying that much for lab or industrial use if it’s highly accurate/precise. But for cooking…nobody will taste the difference between 0.1 degrees. And I’m not even sure it’s that accurate. It looks like a 10$ thermometer and I doubt it’s much better than one for cooking.
So I bought a thermapen. I knew about them because I used to work in kitchens, and it's pretty much exclusively what we used there. After my experience with other thermometers, I can appreciate why.
It's expensive, but it's super reliable, pleasant to use, and lets me focus on other concerns as I'm cooking. Compared to my experience with other cheap thermometers which, last Thanksgiving, went something like "fuck, it died on me again, let me dig out my backup... fucking hell, that one's dead too"
I have at least 3 floating around that ran me $12ish dollars each on Amazon and use them daily.
I'll probably get another one when the cheap ones that I'm using annoy me one too many times.
https://www.amazon.com/Saferell-Thermometer-Backlight-Calibr...
If I’m ever cooking a recipe that is written in imperial units, I will convert them all to metric prior to starting. (This includes turning nearly all measures into grams—including and especially cups and spoons.)
My scale is easily changed. I pick it up, turn it over, and push a button. However, it is pretty difficult to change it by accident, and honestly, I just check the display before I weigh just to make sure.
And honestly, do you think that folks are sitting down with pen and paper if they need to convert? Nope. Google will do this work for you.
I'll also mention that it isn't worth it to weigh everything in the home kitchen. Small amounts - the ones you are using spoons for - are too light for the average kitchen scale, and the sensitive scales are expensive (and also have associations with dealing drugs, which turns some people off).
Having a button that changes it with a single press is actually an impediment to working quickly, and only introduces uncertainty and anxiety about the tool. Measuring temperature isn't like measuring weight - seconds matter. A moment of confusion could be enough to ruin a process, and a failure to notice the change in settings could create a dangerous situation. Nobody wants a button to see the wrong number.
Think of it like compile-time config. It's there, you can change it if you want, and everyone will have a preference, but if you need to change it often, you're not the target market.
In the rare consumer case in which you may be using foreign measurements you can change it once at the beginning of the recipe.
Shadow kitchens that make recipes for multiple different restaurants could have measurements in both.
To not have the button at all would make sense(compile time config), but if there are situations where you need to change it, those can come up as frequently as every time you use it
Every commercial kitchen complies with and is inspected for compliance with food handling regulations.
Any recipe in commercial use is written specifically for the kitchen in which it is made. One might even consider them a complete vertical unit: if the recipe is designed as a chain or franchise standard, the kitchen standard is designed in tandem to match.
You will not find a commercial kitchen in America using Celsius for anything.
If you don't want professional tools don't buy them.
Tablespoons (for example) are often equating to 10-25g which even the cheapest, nastiest 1g precision kitchen scales can handle with greater precision and repeatability than using an actual tablespoon
It’s only when measuring half teaspoon stuff where I’ll either just use a teaspoon or pull out precision scales—it all depends how important it is to be accurate with an ingredient.
Obviously, the main concern is with repeatability in baking. But for me the biggest benefit is being able to pour all ingredients directly into your bowl (sitting on scales) without dirtying up a pile of measuring cups and spoons.
Liquid measures by volume are mostly ok, since liquids vary hardly at all in density (for a given liquid).
Solid measures by volume are a joke. It’s easy to be off by 10% or more, depending on how fluffy or packed down your ingredient is. When you’re baking a loaf of bread, this is the difference between a soggy mass and a dry pile of crumbs.
No, because my own experience says otherwise. And this idea of accidental changing is hogwash, again because I've used this for years. Experience is worth a thousand opinions.
I can't use recipes that use cups and spoons. I don't own measuring spoons or measuring cups, and drinking cups and spoons from the cutlery drawer don't cut the mustard.
In addition to a thermapen, I have an instant-read infra-red thermometer. I use this to check the temperature of my pizza oven, before launching a pizza - I launch at 450C, which is way too hot for any contact thermometer.
Why would you ever switch it to F?
Feigned confusion aside, I love the absolute simplicity of the Thermapen. It does one thing, and does it good. Absolutely zero distractions, compared to the one you linked. You open it up, it switches on. You stick it into things, it tells you the temperature at the tip. What's not to love?
The extra 80-90$, presumably...
I suppose there's room in the market for a cheaper thermometer with the same features/performance as thermapen but it's probably not worth it to the manufacturers and re-sellers that could actually pull it off. The markup for the thermapen is not particularly shocking or worrisome. More importantly, the consumer is not getting "ripped off" at that price if it's a solid product that lasts for years and years.
I'm not sure what to think of their Amazon antics. They're aggressively keeping Amazon from selling thermapens so they can keep the price at a premium in the American market? It's not like I cam blame them. They just want to make a buck and not bend over for Amazon. Competitors, including Amazon Basics, are free to sell a product and eat Thermapen's lunch, but they don't. I expect because it's not worth it.
The old digital thermometers did the awhile but I think some of the new ones are pretty fast (and accurate).
Stanley, Black and Decker, Dewalt, Irwin, and Porter Cable are all tool brands made by the same company in the exact same factories. People have ran extensive "scientific" tests on job sites and on YouTube on the battery life between them. Everyone has a favorite that lasts the longest or is best under load. Aside from the metal contacts and plastic housing to make the batteries unique to each brand - they all contain batteries from the exact same two suppliers.
Do professionals use those brands? I'm sure passionate amateurs will use those brands (I have a drill from that list) - but pros?
I ask because I know a professional mechanic and I asked his favorite wrench brand, and he went off about various brands I didn't recognize.
Also, regarding your list, have you accounted for variability in quality within a product run?
Binning is a related topic.
There's a certain 20V compact leaf blower that I've seen branded as a DeWalt, Ryobi, and Milwaukee. I'm not sure about the motor or controller but the plastic casing is almost identical aside from the color and battery connector. It's also interesting to note that the B&D and the Porter-Cable 20V batteries are identical except for a plastic tab that prevents interoperability.
Most common type/size is the 18650, used in everything from drills, powerbanks, to Teslas. Second most common type is the 21700.
A "scientific" test isn't even necessary, just tear down the battery pack, see what cell they put in there, and read the spec sheet. The big 4 battery makers will sell you a whole range of batteries in that size with varying mAh/Amp.
Googling teardowns, I found a Black & Decker 1.5A MAX Lithium simply uses a bunch of Sanyo UR18650W2 (1500mAh rated at 18A) cells, while a teardown of a Dewalt pack shows they used the more expensive LG HB4s (1500mAh rated at 30A).
There literally no reason they can't use the better cells in the Black & Decker, other than they're building it to a cheaper price point. The fact that they're built in the same factory is besides the point.
I've used shitty thermometers trying to make candy. It sucks. If you want it to come out consistent, you need a good thermometer. One that lasts longer than a few months is always nice too. I dunno if a $150+ one is reasonable. But a quality thermometer helps for sure.
There are a ton of cooking thermometers on Amazon. A majority of them are awful. Either they’re woefully inaccurate, or they fail after only a few months of use. You only have to read the reviews (when they’re not completely gamed by the sellers) to see this.
So you can either a) buy cheap thermometers one after the other until you happen to hit on one that works or b) buy a quality product first time that professional chefs rave about.
Sure, you might get lucky with option a), but after two or three duds, option b) starts to look increasingly sane.
Thermopens just work. They do one thing & have been honed to do that one thing incredibly well. When you buy one, you know exactly what you’re getting & you know that the company will stand behind their product. WHat you’re buying is a combination of certainty & quality. Why shouldn’t they charge a premium for that?
Yes, we have cheaper thermometers. The difference is night and day. More than anything, it’s the speed with which it settles, but the unit is also calibrated, which gives us confidence. (I spent some time looking for a cheap alternative, but didn't find anything with consistently great reviews. I decided it was worth the extra money to buy less hassle, and I went with Thermoworks. No regrets!)
Edit: I read a bit more on this, and was mistaken. Here is my original explanation: Basically a vacuum pump to lower boiling temperature; this puts a ceiling on achievable temperature for water-rich foods.
Actually, nowadays it looks like it's just slow cooking vacuum-sealed food in a temperature-controlled water bath.
For pan searing, a quick and accurate thermometer doesn't actually make this much easier. I also have a Thermapen, but pan searing to a certain level of doneness is still a bit of an art because the final interior temperature after resting can be quite a bit different than the pull temperature due to residual heat at the edges of the meat. Even trying to get a consistent interior temperature using the same pan temperature (using a Control Freak induction cooktop) is difficult because the shape, thickness, and moisture content of meat can vary significantly. There's a few new gadgets that attempt to resolve this (e.g., this predictive thermometer with 8 sensors https://combustion.inc), but honestly having a lot of cooking experience is probably the best way to get a feel for when to remove the meat from the pan under rapid cooking conditions.
Of course, sous vide and reverse sear are completely different and while you can indeed get a precise temperature, those methods have their own trade-offs (namely, it's difficult to get as thick of a crust).
She loathes sous vide.
The nice thing about the Thermapen is that it reads so fast that it's easy to explore the temperature gradients in the food. It's a learning process, right? In my own cooking, I'm correlating the measurements with technique and results, and when I finally cook something well I can reliably repeat it.
(Full disclosure. I have the surface temperature version of the Thermapen and a 4-channel recording thermometer, and I've profiled the oven, the griddle, etc. :-) We now focus on improving other aspects of cooking, confident that temperature is handled.)
I was amazed when I discovered this. If you have a thick steak on a pan, knowing what the temperature gradient looks like inside is very valuable, compared to just knowing the temperature in the middle. Just slide your thermapen out slowly, and you can get a good reading on the gradient.
There's a $30 Thermapen (the Thermopop), for what it's worth; it reads in 3 seconds, versus low hundred milliseconds.
Pay for quality. It's cheaper in the long run.
Even the value of "brand" is diminishing: decent corps are bought and gutted all the time.
The Thermapen is rated at 3 seconds, which I imagine feels much better when you quickly want to get the temperature of a steak or something while preparing other components at the same time.
...and downvoted for speaking the truth. Yes, it's all marketing BS, a tiny "bead" type thermocouple probe has next to no thermal mass and reads as instantly as you'll ever need for cooking purposes. Go buy a cheap one yourself if you don't believe me.
Regardless, I don't think the self-righteousness is called for. "Downvoted for speaking the truth"? We're talking about thermometers.
Get the right influencer/review site on your side and it's all downhill from there.
ETA: the thermapen isn't the Wirecutter recommendation. They recommend the entry level, $35 thermoworks option. So that's the price point to compete with and the $100 thermapen is the quality mark to hit.
Well it's true that you may be able to get something of equal quality for less, paying $100 for a high quality thermometer then I can always return and have replaced for years on end isn't that bad of a deal.
I have alwaysp been bothered by this. There's the strange masculine trait of pointing out how cheap you got something or how much something costs as if it Is a significant amount of money when it's not.
We get it! You're cheap and you would rather buy a mountain of disposable crap than spend money on something handmade to last! You're so cool and thrifty!
Who gives a fuck how much you make. There are many people making way less and not because they are in any way inferior.
>"You're so cool and thrifty!"
I do not even want to say in public what I think about this.
Honestly, I was using speech to text while having a drink so my comment came off as kinda stupid.
On the other hand, there's a group of people who have fallen for the classic car salesman logic of "I'm actually SAVING money by spending more!" As if there's this epidemic of devices constantly failing, and they're the smartest people in the world for having come up with this novel idea about "spending more on quality." But being able to signal on social media about the nice things you have is an added bonus, so maybe there's something to it.
The vast majority of people admit they are spending more to get more - not to save money.
>As if there's this epidemic of devices constantly failing
As far as I've experienced: There is. Maybe not "epidemic", and maybe not "constantly", but you appear to be using exaggeration for effect.
>they're the smartest people in the world for having come up with this novel idea about "spending more on quality."
What's with the hostility toward these people you're envisioning? I've never seen this group of people who think spending more to get a higher quality product is genius and novel.