"Meat probe." This just sounds so wrong! ;)

Probes sound like a Jessy topic...

Plllog, I don't have a clue, I'm sure somebody will help but in the meantime, we just may have a LOL moment.

Nancy

You mean one of those things you plug into your stove and poke into the roast and it tells you when the temp has been reached?
Always worked fine for me....but an instant read is just so much easier.
If it's not working right It's probably a faulty one that came with your stove not "meat probes" in general.
Linda c

I was waiting, patiently, and I mean very patiently, for legitimate posters before I chimed in with my chuckle. Heh heh.

As the OP mentioned, I think probes work best with roasts, not always with birds.

DH has a different opinion....we'll leave it at that.

Yeah, I know, but that's what they're called in all the literature!

My oven will self regulate to not overcook the bird if I can figure the danged thing out. I mean, I know how to use a wristwatch and a thermometer, but it would be nice to know how to put the probe thingie in correctly.

Just had another amusing thought...I wonder if they put in a failsafe that keeps the rotisserie from going round if the meat probe is plugged in! :)

I have nothing to add. I'm only reading this to see what Jessy had to say --- I knew she couldn't "keep her mouth shut" on a topic like this!

I don't have a meat probe. I am only guessing.

It doesn't seem to me that a meat probe can accurately measure the meat temperature.

Because metal conducts heat many times faster than meat can and the shaft of the probe is made of metal, therefore the meat around the probe will be much hotter than the rest of the meat.

This is similar to those metal pins with fins that you stick in meat so that you can roast faster.

dcarch

I have had a meat probe with my oven for over 10 years. I don't use it a lot but, when I do, I always double check with an instant read thermometer as well.

Almost always, the meat probe says the meat is done before I think that it is.

I used it at Christmas with a turkey breast and it turned out fantastic.

I've never made a whole bird before but the trick is all in inserting the probe in the proper place.

Next time I make a meatloaf I am going to try using the probe because my last attempt was an over-cooked meatloaf!

heh heh heh heh You said probe heh heh heh (said in my best Beavis imitation!)

Dcarch,

That makes SOOOO much sense!! Thanks for the explanation. It tried to tell me that a visibly uncooked chicken was done. I don't want a more cooked spot with a hole in it! Off to the drawer the silly named thing goes...

People talk about how great these things are, and the computerized oven turns itself off and all, so I thought it was worth learning a new trick. Once in a while something will happen and a bird gets a little overcooked. I could just program a shut off time with this new oven anyway.

I use one all the time  one of the external ones that is  the one recommended by CookÂs Illustrated. I wouldnÂt know how to cook meat any other way. I mean  when do you start checking with an instant read? And how often do you check after that? I usually recheck with my Instant read but that is because I have to justify the cost of my Thermapen. :-)

Jeri,

What I'm talking about is the one that plugs into the oven and interacts with the oven settings.

I've always used time as a general guide (minutes per pound at temperature) and confirm with a thermometer.

I'm not buying the metal-heat-conduction theory. While I have no experience with an oven-supplied thermometer, I do have a remote thermometer which I use with roasts but then double-check with an instant read at the end of cooking, and have not noticed any significant discrepancies. I say if the probe tells you your roast is at 130 or whatever an it isn't, there's something wrong with either it, the oven, or the user.

As I understand it, an oven thermometer stays in the meat during the entire roasting time, and an instant-read is inserted and remoted immediately.

If you insert a metal pin in the meat, the temperature around the metal will be hotter much faster. You have no choice. It is the law of physics and thermol dynamics.

I have a set of pins for inserting in potatoes so that they can be baked faster, and I have a set of pins for roasting meat also.

dcarch

...and the engineers for all these ovens and remote thermometers never thought of that. And they're so inaccurate yet no one has called them out on it until now.

(My microwave is from 1984 and has probe technology although I don't actually have the probe. Something tells me if it was bad physics someone would have addressed it over the past 26 years.)

I don't have the answer to that question. May be the engineers at Toyota Motors have. LOL.

As I said in the begining, I don't have one. If you have found the thermometer not accurate, that would be my guess. However, metals conduct heat much faster than meat is a fact, not A guess.

One way the inaccuracy can be minimized is to compensate electronically by progamming into the electronics some statistical information. Also, the thicker the meat, the better it works.

Insulating the metal pin will improve the situation also. I don't konw the components in a meat thermometer. Typically it is a solid state device known as thermistor, which, if properly isolated (not insulated) will give a better reading.

dcarch

BTW, in a microwave oven the probe may work perfectly because the air in the microwave is not heated.

dcarch

As I understand it, there's one company that makes all the probes. I'm sure there could be something in the oven's programming that compensates for the heat around the pin. I have a Gaggenau oven, so one can assume the engineering is good. I'm sure I don't know how to place it correctly, which is why I asked.

But all that said, from what I've learned from y'all I don't think it's worth fussing with any more. :)

Aha - Good point about the microwave!

But like I said, I have no experience with the microwave's probe. What I DO have experience with is my meat probe thermometer which despite its metal probe being in a hot oven for several hours does not suffer from any noticable inaccuracy.

I just quickly took a look at Cooks Illustrated's testing of 11 meat probe thermometers, and of those only two were noted as having accuracy issues: one by up to four degrees and one up to two. So I guess the nine others had engineers who were clever enough to overcome or adjust for the thermodynamic properties of their metal probes. (If that was even an issue in the first place.)

Making what I would guess is a safe assumption that the technology of an oven's built-in meat probe thermometer and a stand alone unit are similar if not identical, I stand by my initial assessment that if there's a problem, it's with either the probe, the oven or the way in which it's being used. As opposed to some fundamental flaw with the technology due to poking the meat with metal.

Long before the technology of ovens which shut down or buzzed when a probe inserted into food signaled a certain temperature, we had meat thermometers. You put it into the center of a roast and it told you the temperature...it worked fine....still does.
I suppose that candy thermometers don't work because the metal conducts the heat away from the boiling sugar?

Any heat transferance from the warm air of the oven to the tip of the sensor in the probe is negligable...