A lot of what goes into making a great meal—be it a Tuesday steak dinner or Thanksgiving—is your ability to manage temperatures. No amount of chopped parsley or sprinkled fennel fronds can zhuzh up overcooked meat. (Though mayo can rescue a leftover turkey sandwich). And that’s just the unpleasantness of chewing on leathery supermarket steaks, because accidentally tucking into raw chicken is more serious. Yet only about one in four adults say they use a thermometer often when cooking proteins.
Wireless leave-in probes aimed at outdoor cooking, which have been out for years, struggle with connectivity. These probes work … until you close the oven door on a bird, the lid on a pellet smoker barbecuing a brisket, or walk away from that T-bone on your grill. That’s when the glitchy behavior starts: dropped connections, requests to repair, timeouts, or temperatures that didn’t seem to move. Some hold a stable connection, but they can be fussy to work with, especially for an amateur backyard cook who might put them to work a couple of weekends a month. What good is a wireless probe without the confidence to walk away from the stove or smoker and take a nap inside while the collagen breaks down in the pork butt?
I spent a few days testing these probes: using the apps, checking responsiveness, and checking connectivity in my kitchen and the backyard. Then I subjected them to the Ironman test: putting the probes in a Staub cast-iron Dutch oven sitting in a Yoder pellet smoker (8/10, WIRED Recommends), one of the most robust cookers on the market, and checking whether they stayed connected. I also grilled steaks over glowing-hot charcoal to see if high heat bothered the probes. Kamado cooker diehards don’t fret: While ceramic grills have thicker walls than any metal smoker, steel is generally more difficult for these frequencies to penetrate, so these probes should work with your Big Green Egg too.
Check out the WIREDs Gear team’s other kitchen-related coverage, including the Best Meal Kit Delivery Services, Best Meat Subscription Boxes, Best Grills, and Best Pizza Ovens.
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Can You Use These Probes When Grilling?
Yes. The probes can withstand temperatures of 800 to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit before you risk damaging the sensors, which is usually more than the energy generated by charcoal briquettes, which get hotter than a traditional gas grill. There are some scenarios, like caveman cooking, where the protein is sitting directly on the coals, or using an infrared gas grill, that might be risky for the probes because this can expose them to temperatures higher than 1,000 degrees, but for most daily cooking these probes will handle whatever you throw at them.
What Is the Temperature Range These Probes Track?
While the probes can withstand up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, don’t expect to see readouts for a steak that’s reached 400 degrees. Sensors buried in the food generally track temperatures from 14 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. You can use probes to confirm the freezer is humming at 0 degrees Fahrenheit, the refrigerator is chilling at 40, and poultry reaches 165, which is just about the hottest internal temperature of the proteins you’re eating. If the sensors in the main part of the probe get hotter than 212 degrees Fahrenheit, you’ll receive an alert to cool things down. For example, you can’t drop the probe into a vat of oil and use it as a deep-frying thermometer. A notification could mean part of the probe is touching a metal grill grate or is exposed to ambient temperatures hotter than 212 degrees, like in an air fryer.
The outlier is the ambient sensor on the butt end of the probe. This specific sensor sits outside of the food, so it’s designed to accept more heat than the main probe because it gets pounded with more convection, conduction, and infrared energy. Those who bake, roast, and barbecue at lower temperatures for longer periods tend to care more about ambient temperature than those who grill hot and fast.
Can You Calibrate the Probes?
Not really. Many of these probes have been checked by a lab for accuracy within the plus-or-minus range they provide, which is usually around 1 degree. If you suspect the accuracy of the probe is off, a quick way to check it is to submerge the tip in boiling water, which should read 212 degrees Fahrenheit (at sea level) and then into an ice water bath, which should read 32 degrees Fahrenheit (if you avoid touching a cube). If the probe’s reading is off by more than the stated range, contact the manufacturer.
If the Probes Have Multiple Sensors, What Temperature Is Displayed on Your Smartphone?
The lowest temperature inside your food. Once you set your target temperature, the probe tells you what the coolest reading is from inside your dinner. While the app displays one number—a bird’s eye view—most allow you to dial in and see the temperature of individual sensors within the probe, which can be helpful for bigger cuts like brisket or a rib roast. The temperature the ambient sensor reads isn’t factored into the display the thermometer shows.
Do All Probes Track Ambient Temperatures?
Yes, but the accuracy of that specific reading varies, and various probes don’t all check it the same way. Most probes include an ambient sensor at the butt end, designed to withstand the most heat since the air, frying oil, or in the case of sous vide, water, around the food is hotter than the center of whatever you’re cooking. ThermoWorks is the only system that tracks ambient temperature with a wired probe that plugs into a base station.
The reasoning is the second law of thermodynamics: sticking a conductive, metal probe into cold food pulls temperature away from the onboard ambient sensor as hot moves to cold. Beyond that, in a hot oven, that big block of thermal mass (cold food) has a blanket of cooler temperature covering it, caused by water evaporating off the surface. Unfortunately, the location of the ambient sensor within the probe, sticking an inch or so outside the food, is in that misleading zone that reads colder than the actual ambient temperature. To get around this, ThermoWorks uses a wired probe held by a spring clip that is designed to rest on the oven rack or the grate of a grill or smoker near the food, but far enough away that it’s not picking up the evaporation cooling. Ambient temperature tracking is less important if you’re cooking a steak or pork chop, but it is something backyard barbecuers pay a lot of attention to, because the name of the game is low, consistent heat held over hours.
How Do You Stick a Probe Into the Food?
Each probe shaft has a minimum insertion line marked on it. In practice, you bury about ¾ of the thermometer’s length in the food so the main sensors are shielded from the heat. Aim to rest the probe’s tip in the center of the fattest part of the food, avoiding bones or pockets of gristle or fat, which can throw off the temperatures. With more sensors, electronics, and a battery embedded in the probe, placement can be finicky compared to wired probes, which only take readings from the tip. You might be able to stick a wired probe into a thick steak through the cut’s top, or at an angle, but that won’t work well with a wireless probe, which is usually heavier, floppier, and needs all the shaft’s sensors submerged in meat to avoid a high heat alert. Wireless probes won’t work well in every situation, like thin chicken cutlets, narrow sausages, or very delicate fish—these probes are wider in diameter than wired versions. It’s good practice to situate the probe so the end, which often houses the ambient sensor, isn’t touching the grate or any other metal, which can give a false reading.
My process for setting a probe starts by syncing it to my phone’s app so I see the thermometer registers room temperature. Then I set the target temperature on the app and double check for low battery warnings. Finally, I insert the probe into the thickest part of the food, making sure the temperature changes, which it should since the protein is often around 40 degrees Fahrenheit out of the refrigerator. If there’s ever a question about the probe working, you can always grip or pinch along the probe, with clean hands and wait for the temperature to tick up a few degrees on the app.
Are You Going to Need an App?
In most instances, consulting the smartphone app helps and might be required. Not all probes have a base station with a screen, which means you’ll need an app to adjust target temperatures and receive notifications. Some probes offer Apple Watch apps that handle the basics of communicating the current temperature.
Is This the Only Thermometer You’ll Ever Need?
No. Wireless probe thermometers are a good option when roasting or searing indoors, or grilling or smoking outside, and while they are responsive, they are not a replacement for an instant-read thermometer that can show the temperature inside food in a couple of seconds. Instant-read thermometers are also thinner, so it’s easier for them to temp things like chicken tenders and wings.