Let's Cut To It—You Should Be Using A Meat Thermometer Already

Do your nightmares consist of Gordon Ramsay berating you about the doneness of your pan-fried steak? We’ll leave analyzing the contents of your dreams to the sleep pros, but when it comes to overcooked or undercooked food, there’s one thing that professional chefs from Bobby Flay to Emeril Lagasse can agree on: The importance of a quality meat thermometer.

These handy kitchen tools are an easy way to take the guesswork out of cooking, whether you're tackling a glazed spiral ham to a well-seasoned roast beef. In fact, Emeril swears that a “good meat thermometer is a cook’s best friend,” because nobody likes a rubbery, furnace-blasted steak or dried-out chicken breast. Meat thermometers help you cook dishes to their optimal temperatures, plus they're helpful when it comes to food safety. Undercooked meat can quickly become a breeding ground for all kinds of harmful bacteria that cause food-borne illnesses like salmonella and listeria. In fact, the USDA recommends cooking food to their recommended “minimum internal temperatures as measured with a food thermometer before removing food from the heat source”—and yes, that also applies to casseroles and leftovers.

If you want to ensure your meals are as consistently delicious as they are safe to eat, we’ve rounded up all the best instant-read, leave-in, and even traditional dial thermometers. There are even a couple of thermocouples thrown into the mix if you’re feeling fancy! (Not sure of the difference between these various thermometer styles? Scroll to the bottom for intel.)

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Our top picks

How we picked these products

To determine which of these handy tools can take the heat and which ones should stay out of the kitchen, we turned to our friends at the Good Housekeeping Institute, who have identified the best meat thermometer brands based on availability, reviews, and reputation. Their team of on-staff experts—which includes all types: engineers! data analysts! registered dietitians!—rigorously put everyday products to the test (and then more and more tests) in their New York City-based labs to determine which ones you can trust.

From measuring the doneness of roasted chickens to controlled temperature assessments using over five gallons of boiling water and 10 pounds of ice, these Kitchen Tech Experts put over 15 models through rigorous testing to determine their overall performance, accuracy, clarity of readings, inclusion and helpfulness of special features, speed, and clean-ability. After narrowing down our recommendations for the best thermocouple, digital, and dial meat thermometers based on their findings, we’ve determined that these are the best meat thermometers you can buy in 2022.