Best Meat Thermometer, Need Advice Before Buying

Cooking Discussions Cookware
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I’ve recently been researching instant-read thermometers because I really want to cook more accurately for my family. Lately I’ve been getting mixed results — sometimes my meat gets overcooked, and sometimes it’s still a bit underdone, and the same happens with cakes and baked items.

While reading reviews from trusted sources like Serious Eats and The Spruce Eats, two models kept appearing again and again as top recommendations:

ThermoPro TP19H Digital Meat Thermometer

Alpha Grillers Meat Thermometer Digital

Both look great, but now I’m confused about which one would actually be more practical for everyday home cooking.

Most of the time I cook steak, chicken, and also do some baking — and my kitchen is usually pretty busy. So I’m looking for something accurate, fast, and easy to use.

Any advice or suggestions would really help. Thanks in advance!

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There’s been previous discussions on the topic. You also seem to have started, then deleted your own thread with the same topic in November :thinking:

The most popular gadget here seems to be the Thermoworks Thermapen.

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Thank you for your advice .
As for the previous post, I had created one on the same topic back in November, but it got flagged by someone.
I appreciate your guidance!

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That’s strange. It usually only says “deleted by author” when the author (i.e. you) themselves deleted a topic they started.

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When in doubt you can look at at the user’s profile. AFAIK, @mavoo has been an active member for several months now.

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Flag and take it up with moderation, then.

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Because this is a food forum.

Many users here ask for advice. Some folks like to hear about someone’s personal experience over an anonymous Google search.

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Yes, I completely understand. That’s why I also try to share my personal experiences so that others can get guidance based on real-life experience.

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I’m a bit of a fan of this one called iProbe, it’s about $15 on Amazon. I have now bought 6 of these for me and family members.

https://www.amazon.com/Instant-Thermometer-Accuracy-Waterproof-Rechargeable/dp/B0DHQPG63W

And no, Jmat, I am not getting compensated for this review.

What I like - it’s cheap AF at $15, compared to better quality stuff like the ThermoPen (I do have the ThermoWorks 4-set leave-in thermometers and base/remote, and wouldn’t use anything else for leave-in roasts).

This iProbe is also super fast - temps up to about 140°F stabilize in less than 0.5 seconds, and up to about 205°F (like for pulled pork) in about 1 second.

What I don’t like about this iProbe - first, the swivel head is fairly stiff to move, and the plastic collar around the probe head has cracked on 2 of the 6 we’ve bought. One I could repair with superglue and the other one pulled out the wires too far and had to be tossed. So I recommend starting the opening rotation out at the knob end vs. grabbing by the end of the probe (too much torque). Design flaw - the probe collar up near the knob should be thicker and/or sturdier, or they need to work on making the motion smoother with less force needed to rotate it.

The other problem is the newest version of these iProbe thermometers is that they are rechargeable rather than 2xAAA batteries in the original design. The first several charging episodes only last about 3-4 days, which is a pain in the butt. After a couple of weeks, though, they start holding about 10 days of charge. Still, this is sub-optimal to me. I’d prefer a 2xAAA setup which lasts a year or more.

Still, for $15 ea, these are a great buy.

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This topic is temporarily closed for at least 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.

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Many posts related to accusations of bot posting and gift links and the replies are removed. If there is a concern about bot posting or gift link, flag the posts. Groundless accusations are not acceptable. Please keep the discussions civil. Refer to the site policy on acceptable behavior.

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This topic was automatically opened after 4 hours.

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I can see how this happened.

This is an AI site. The username seems to use the same term. And the user has some quirks which are distinctly not like. They seem to be collecting information for the AI site.

It seems to be quite an advanced, interactive bot.

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I can’t remember for certain, but I think Discord Discourse (need caffeine!) either does not let you delete a topic at all, or you can’t delete if there has been a reply.

Update - Here, it’s the former. I just found an old topic that I started having no replies. Hovering over the trash can it says “you don’t have permission to delete this topic”.

I checked a no-replies topic on another `site using Discourse and it permitted me to delete.

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Nice work.

ETA - I asked it why peanut butter is more dense than water and it has several explanations, among them that fats are more dense than water and the peanut butter can have air pockets in it, also making it more dense.

Both of which are wrong. Of course edible fats are less dense than water, and air pockets would make it less, not more dense. But hey, it tried.

Edit2 - playing with it a bit more, I thought maybe it was pulling from sources using caloric density, so I changed the question to SG instead of density. Got the same bullet point answers (including the air pockets argle bargle).

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I’m not sure why the @moderator-team haven’t acted on this yet. I’m fairly certain it is a bot, with a continuing presence on the site to harvest information. It’s also pretty good at disguising itself as a real life user.

Maybe the actual mavii website will improve if it is deploying bots to sites like HO which has useful and accurate information :joy:.

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This sort of crap will actually end up harming people at some level. In the medical profession, we are increasingly getting challenged with “But I asked AI and it said something different to what you are saying”.

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Agree. On another website I frequent someone posted a question about fasting serum glucose. The poster was Canadian, obvs using mmol/L, and an American tried to help him out, and asked ChatGPT to convert it to units he understood, mg/dL.

For some reason the AI used BHB’s molecular weight instead of glucose, and got an answer that seemed shockingly low to him (58% of the actual number, which was WNL) and reported this back, alarming the poster.

Luckily I’m conversant in both schemes and came along just a couple of minutes later, and talked the guy down off the ceiling.

Now let’s say AI picked a molecule heavier than glucose, instead of lighter as above. I can imagine a situation where someone gets told they need to up their insulin (when they don’t) by a would-be-helpful AI user.


ETA

I hadn’t really paid any attention to the OP other than the topic starter, because the distracting side convo about paid posting (which likely got pulled out before you saw it, because it’s not here now).

Reading all of the mavoo replies here now, yes, it seems pretty apparently AI generated.

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There’s a window for both being able to edit and delete posts. Not sure how long it runs, though, as I do most of my editing / proofreading before posting, and rarely have to delete anything :wink:

That said, it drives me bonkers when I discover a typo after the fact :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

The bot sounded stilted in their msgs to me :woman_shrugging:t2:

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Thank. I believe the limit for editing a comment under someone else’s topic is right at 60 minutes, and I think it’s the same for an OP. Didn’t realize there was a delete timeframe for OPs as well; and wonder if it gets truncated by someone commenting. Next time I have a dumb question, I’ll pay attention to the time frame.

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