The Best Digital Meat Thermometer for Oven Cooking

If you want to roast a turkey breast, or cook any other kind of beef, pork, or even a vegetarian roast in your oven, the best tool to get it right every time is a digital meat thermometer.  And all digital thermometers are not made alike; the one that has given me the best results over and over is the Taylor 1470 digital cooking thermometer.

I resisted getting a digital meat thermometer for a long time.  You know how it is, when you are used to cooking with a specific tool that works for you, you do not want to give it up.  But when my sturdy manual meat thermometer gave up its last gasp, I was given a Taylor 1470 digital meat thermometer as a gift, and from then on I was hooked.

Several features of the Taylor 1470 digital thermometer make it a great choice to use.  My personal favorite is that you can just stick it on your oven because the back has a very strong magnet.  That means that you can’t loose it easily, and if you jostle it when taking your roasting pan in and out of the oven, it is hard to knock it down.   I usually put mine on the corner of the oven closest to where the probe wire comes out of the oven door.

The digital thermometer has recommended temperatures for different types of meats that are listed on the brochure, but those need to be taken with a grain of salt, and it also depends on how well done you like your meat.  You should place the probe for the thermometer in the thickest part of your roast, so for instance when I roast a turkey breast, it goes in the center near the bone at a diagonal so that it is in the last part that will cook.  The probe slides in easily, and stays relatively clean throughout the roasting or baking process.  And it never falters.  The temperature is always absolutely correct each time.

To use the thermometer you need to compare the actual temperature of the meat on the left hand side of the screen, with the recommended temperature on the right hand side of the screen.  As I mentioned above, you will need to decide if the recommended temperature is correct for your cooking purposes, but we like our turkey just past the pink stage so that it is fully done, but not dry in any way, and I have found that I need to go about 10 degrees above the recommended temperature to get that result.  This will vary due to your altitude and location, and the meat itself.  So the first time you use the thermometer, take note of any variations from the instructions.

Other than that, the Taylor 1470 digital meat thermometer is simple to use.  You can program it or just use the set programs, and the cord from the probe to the thermometer is 4 feet long, plenty long for most situations.  The numbers on the screen are nice and big, easy to read, and the instructions are quite easy to follow.   This is a great product, and makes a terrific gift for housewarmings, single men and women, and college students moving into an apartment on their own.