4 Best Meat Thermometers (2023): Accurate & Lightning Fast

The long probes run from the meat to an easy-to-read display, and that display also connects wirelessly to an (admittedly dorky) remote receiver, allowing you to monitor cooking temperatures up to 300 feet away. Why is this helpful? Well, every time you open a grill lid or a smoker or oven door, you release heat, making it difficult to maintain the consistent temperatures that are key to the low-and-slow cooking process. A gadget like this allows you to monitor from afar and minimize the number of times you have to check on your meat project, which can be hugely helpful. Plus, you can set it to alarm at certain high or low temperature ranges, so you don’t have to worry about falling asleep on the couch and having your smoker temperature drop too low or your leg of lamb overcooking.

If these sound like pretty obscure use-cases, it’s because they are for most people. To be perfectly honest, I’ve probably used this wireless thermometer a grand total of five times over the past couple of years, but every time I’ve been incredibly glad that I had it. After spending more than a week brining my own Christmas ham for the first time, I was able to relax during the hours it spent in my hand-me-down smoker knowing that I could check on it from anywhere in my house. It’s definitely not the kind of meat thermometer that every home cook needs to have, but if backyard BBQ and other big, meaty projects with long cooking times are your thing, it may very well be worth the investment.

What are the benefits of using a meat thermometer?

At the end of the day, a thermometer—specifically one that you’re going to be using to take the temps of different types of meat—is valuable for two reasons: food safety and temperature control.

Proteins like chicken and pork need to be cooked to a certain internal temperature (take it away, USDA) in order to prevent the possibility of foodborne illness, so being able to get a quick and accurate reading without cutting into them is crucial. Plus, in the case of meats like these, there’s actually a pretty narrow range between undercooking (read: unsafe to eat) and overcooking (read: dry), and unless you have some kind of culinary ESP (thrilled for you), you’re probably going to need a thermometer to remove the guesswork and make sure you’re in the meat temperature sweet spot.

Then there are the meats that can be cooked to a variety of desired temperatures, like a steak or duck breast. In these cases a good meat thermometer is the only way you can know for sure that the proteins in question are cooked to your ideal level of doneness. There’s nothing worse than shelling out big bucks for a fat rib eye or a bunch of lamb chops only to accidentally overcook or undercook them. Whether you like your meat medium-rare or well-done, a meat thermometer will help to ensure that you hit your target temperature every time.

But a meat thermometer has plenty of uses that go beyond, well, meat. I use mine to check the internal temperature of a loaf of just-baked bread to make sure that it’s done, or to find out if my pot of oil is ready for deep-frying, or to make sure that a Dutch oven full of soup cooling on the stovetop is ready to be safely stashed in the fridge. A digital instant-read meat thermometer is the kind of useful, versatile kitchen tool that once you have one, you simply can’t remember how you lived without it.