It's heart-breaking wasting good food by cooking it badly. Make sure you never serve up soggy salmon or tough tenderloin ever again by investing in a good quality meat thermometer. Probe-style versions are the most accurate, and nowadays, wireless versions are within the budget reach of most home cooks. However, if you can splash out exciting, next-gen products like the cord-free Meater option come highly recommended.
The first genuinely wireless meat thermometer, the Meater cuts the cords completely with a cable-free probe. It communicates to a magnetic base unit which then sends info to a companion app on your iPhone or Android device. The probe boasts dual sensors, one at the tip to monitor the heat of the meat and one at the other end to keep an eye on the ambient temperature. The Meater+ model gives you 165 feet of wireless range and comes with just the one probe. Other -- obviously more expensive -- packs are available with multiple probes.
The Meater app offers a smart "Guided Cook" program that lets you select what type and cut of meat you're cooking. It then advises how long to prepare it, and crucially for some types of protein, how long to rest it for too. If you're a confident home chef, you can also fully customize the cooking and alert options to your own preference.
This is a capable wireless Bluetooth thermometer for a reasonable price. On the wireless side of things it will give you a range of 200 foot outdoors, and 100 foot indoors. The set comprises of the large LCD backlit display unit and two heavy-duty oven-proof probes for meat which can be controlled independently. This also means you can see the two different temperatures as the food cooks.
With the free companion "EasyBBQ" app, available for both iPhone and Android devices, if you leave your Bluetooth on, you'll get a push notification and an audible alert when the food goes above or below the temperature range you've set. Within the app, you can create and customize 11 different pre-set cooking temperatures for specific types of protein.
This wireless option gives you the standard 100-foot indoor and 200-foot outdoor range, a companion app for control and monitoring and a smart-looking unit with a clear display that offers both Fahrenheit and Celsius readings. With the Chugod iPhone or Android app, you get cooking presets for beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, fish, hamburgers, BBQ smoke, hot smoke, and cold smoke as well as five taste types from rare to well done.
It gets interesting with the six bundled probes. Two of them have stainless steel handles and are safe to go in the oven, but four of them get colorful silicone handles. While these can't go in the oven, they are great for differentiating the food you're cooking and offer a finger-friendly way of pulling the probes out.
This attractive option has won a Red Dot Design award. The central unit has clear backlit display that offers more information than more basic models with both the current and preset temperatures shown. As well as the display unit, six stainless steel probes can all be set up and monitored separately. The probes can measure a temperature range from 33 degrees to 572 degrees to a ±1.8˚F/1˚C accuracy level.
With Bluetooth 5.0 the range is around 200-feet which means you can use the "Grill5.0" iPhone or Android app to control and monitor progress and get alerts as and when your food is cooked, or if it moves out of its temperature range. The app offers USDA recommendation for cooking 11 types of food which you can select, or set your own personal time and temperature preference.
Especially designed for use with BBQs, grills, and smokers, this is a slightly different option than the others we're featuring. This is because it only boasts one meat probe, but does get a second ambient temperature probe that you can monitor the temperature of the cooking environment. So you know when the heat levels are suitable to add your food, or when you need to add more fuel.
Boasting hassle-free set-up, the transmitter and receiver are pre-synchronized, so this will work instantly as soon as you insert batteries. This ThermoPro option will give you a 300-foot range and a handy independently controlled countdown and count up timer so you can keep an eye on timings of other food items too.
The only product we're featuring with a rechargeable battery, juice this up via USB and you'll get over 40 hours' use. There are six no-nonsense steel probes that can all be monitored independently. The companion "BBQ Go" app offers all you'd expect with real-time temperature readouts, a countdown timer, presets for different types of meat and alerts if your food goes above or below a specified range.
Design-wise the central unit is unusual looking and boasts some exciting functionality like a rotatable LED screen and a magnetized back so that you can stick it to something metallic nearby for at-a-glance monitoring. It's worth noting the sensor's cables are a perfect length at 115cm (about 3.8 feet), a practicality worth considering based on your cooking area.
Bottom line
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Whether you're grilling, barbecuing, smoking, or simply cooking a roast in the oven, a meat thermometer allows you to manage and monitor the cooking process to help ensure you don't under- or overcook your meat.
Thanks to advances in wireless technology, and some handy companion apps, this is now possible from the comfort of the couch, or while you're entertaining guests around the dinner table.
All the solutions above are capable and stand out in one way or another, but our overall recommendation is to buy into the Meater system, a genuinely next-gen thermometer, this lets you cut the cords entirely for a contemporary culinary experience.