Hell yeah I do and now my meat is always cooked to perfection!
Yes. A good one (reads fast, replaceable parts) makesoit easier to cook.
No
Yes.
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.
Pretty much only for poultry.
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…
I am an experienced cook and use one to produce consistent, on-target results. It more often prevents over-cooking, not under-cooking.
Yes.
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.
I think most people who do sous vide cooking also use the reverse sear method.
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.
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
Depends on what I’m cooking, but always for chicken breasts. Roasting at a high temperature works great (it’s not the only way), but can mean the overcooking time is pretty small. It’s an easy way to respect the bird and get the best results possible.
Thighs on the other hand, I just go by eye, you really have to try hard to overcook those.
Might be worth noting that using a thermometer well does require some amount of skill and experience, you need to insert it into the right location for the data to be repeatable. Easier to learn than cooking by eye, though.
For what?
To measure your meat
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.
Yes. Especially for chicken breasts. It’s easy enough to know for sure they’re done, but they’re much easier to eat as soon as they hit 155F. My immune system has never questioned my chicken, but my taste buds are very thankful for the meat thermometer.
Interesting. I heard that chicken needs to be cooked to 165F. Do you let it rest (and does that get it to eventually reach 165F?)
I just want juicy chicken that won’t give me diarrhea!
I always heard 165 too, but I looked at the chart on the meat thermometer and it said 155 for breast. I tried it out and it’s much juicer.
No, but I spent a lot of time and money practicing to cook the perfect steak. Now I can eyeball it and adjust the time as needed for a splendid outcome. My partner does most of the other cooking.
