Thermometers

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If ever I would ask my Irish grandmother how long it took to cook something she had a stock reply: “Till it’s done!”

“When’s it done, Nanna?”

“When it’s fit to eat”

Frustrating maybe, but that advice was better than I realized at the time and I pass it on to you. Cookbooks will tell you how long to cook chicken, for example; but those times should only ever be used as a guide. What you really need is a thermometer. Taking the internal temperature of meat is the only reliable way to tell how well cooked it is and, in some cases such as poultry, whether or not it is safe to eat.

Wiggling a cooked chook’s foot won’t tell you much more than that the cartilage has gone soft. You really need to know that the temperature of the thigh meat is a uniform 180F.

Similarly with pork, the safe internal temperature is 160F minimum. The REALLY safe one is 170F.

Knowing the internal temperature helps you in other ways too, such as letting you know when your beef is cooked but still rare (140F) and so on.

The simplest thermometer to use is the best and costs less than $10. It’s just a spike with a dial on the top that you can leave in the meat while it’s cooking.