Is having a meat thermometer really important to have in your kitchen? When you’re following recipes exactly do you still need to use a meat thermometer to check the temperature of what you’re cooking?
The simple answer is yes if you’re cooking meat in your kitchen you need to have a meat thermometer. Because recipes are not all Universal, they don’t know how big your chicken breasts are for example or maybe you were using a bit extra ground beef so it takes longer to cook. And if your oven isn’t perfectly calibrated to temperature, you might be cooking your meat at a lower temperature than you think, so you might end up with meat that is really undercooked, even though you think you’re cooking it for the appropriate amount of time at the appropriate temperature.
If budget is a major concern, picking up a meat thermometer from the dollar store is perfectly okay. It might not be fancy and digital and have all the bells and whistles as some of the higher-end thermometers do but as long as it is was telling you the temperature that your meat is, that is all you really need to have.
