Make Friends with your Thermometer
A Perfect Filet Mignon
At an hors d’oeuvre party we recently catered, the star of the show was our beef and Boursin crostini. We toasted some crusty French bread, slathered it with whipped Boursin cream, and used that as a bed for a beautiful slice of filet mignon, topped with a dollop of homemade onion jam and a little sprig of watercress. Yum! They flew out the door! It seemed our waiters had barely walked out of the kitchen when they were back to get another tray.
A number of guests were kind enough to stop by the kitchen to compliment our staff and chat about the food. And when they did, the most common question they asked was this: “How did you get the filet mignon cooked so perfectly?” Easy—we used a thermometer.
Look, when we’re grilling steaks or pan frying pork chops, we do what most chefs and other cooks do: We press on them to test their density. After you’ve done it enough times, you’ll know how a medium-rare steak feels compared to one that’s medium well-done. But when it comes to a roast that you need to have done just right, we use a thermometer, and it comes out perfectly every time! For this particular hors d’oeuvre, we had seared off a whole beef tenderloin and were then roasting it in the oven. That’s a $150 piece of meat—you don’t take chances with that! And it was the only one we had. If we didn’t get it right, we had neither the supplies nor the time to fix the problem. That can be a lot of pressure. But no need to worry—a simple thermometer takes all the pressure off. We roasted the beef to 125F, knowing that the temperature would rise a bit while the meat rested, giving us beef for our crostini that was crusty on the edges (from the searing) and juicy red in the center, medium-rare at 130F.
Try This at Home!
When The Gourmet Guys begin personal chef services in people’s homes, we give them a thermometer on our first visit. It’s not just a promotional piece! Each meal we leave in their refrigerator is accompanied by detailed instructions for heating the food when it’s time to eat. Those instructions will often say things like, “heat in a 350-degree oven for 18 to 22 minutes, until the roast reaches 140 degrees.” And the most important information in those instructions is the last part: “until it reaches 140 degrees.”
In their own home cooking, most people rely solely on time (the part of the instructions that say “18 to 22 minutes”). But here’s the problem: No two roasts are exactly alike. (Or chickens or turkeys, for that matter.) Even two roasts that have the same weight will have different thicknesses—and that means the heat affects them differently. We can’t tell you exactly how long you should keep your roast in the oven; but we can tell you exactly what temperature you want your roast to reach. Follow that direction and your meat will be perfect every time!
Safe and Delicious!
To be safe, foods must be cooked to specific minimum internal temperatures:
Poultry (chicken, turkey, duck, etc.), stuffing, and casseroles = 165F
Ground meats (meatloaf, burgers, salmon cakes, etc.) = 155F
Steaks and roasts (beef, pork, veal, lamb, etc.), fish and shellfish = 145F
Knowing that, some people tend to overcook their food, just to be safe. But that results in dry, chewy, tasteless meat! At 145F, a pork tenderloin (which has very little fat) is juicy and flavorful. At 155F it’s dried out. And at 165F you’ll give it to the dog and order take-out. Insert a thermometer before you pop it in the oven, and that roast will come out perfectly every time.
Now, the truth be told, we don’t eat all our meats at the recommended minimum temperatures—specifically, our steaks! At 145F (the recommended minimum temperature for beef), a steak is medium-well done. Here are the temperatures you’ll want to know for beef:
Rare = 125 to 130 F (cool red center)
Medium rare = 130 to 135 F (warm red center)
Medium = 135 to 145 F (warm pink center)
Medium well = 145 to 155 F (slightly pink center)
Well done = 155 or above (little or no pink)
Food Temperature in 5 Easy Steps
To get an accurate reading, you need to take the temperature of your food properly. But don’t worry: It’s easy! Follow these five steps:
First, choose the right thermometer. You can use a traditional analog thermometer (the kind with the dial) or a digital thermometer (the kind that takes batteries)—either will do the job. But to accurately measure the temperature of a steak, roast, or other piece of poultry or meat, your thermometer must have an insertion probe: You have to be able to stick the thermometer into the meat. Don’t use an infrared thermometer, since that kind of device only measures the temperature on the surface of the meat, and you need to know the temperature deep down inside. As long as your thermometer can be inserted into the meat, you should be good to go.
Second, make sure your thermometer is accurate. Of course, an inaccurate thermometer does you no good. And most kitchen thermometers are manufactured to give you an accurate reading within 2F. But how do you know if your thermometer is working properly? Test it. Use it on something you know the temperature of: ice! We know that water freezes at 32F. So if you want to test your thermometer, just fill a glass with ice and water. Insert your thermometer probe into the glass and see what reading it gives. If your thermometer says it’s 32F, you’re good to go. If not, you’ll either need to recalibrate your thermometer or get a new one.
Third, insert the thermometer into the thickest part of the meat. When you cook in an oven (as opposed to a microwave), the outside of the meat cooks first. But you need to know what the temperature of the meat is in the center, where it cooks last. So, stick your thermometer probe into the thickest part of the meat, taking care not to let the probe touch any bones. It takes a moment for your thermometer to give you an accurate reading, so leave the probe inserted for about 15 seconds, until the reading is steady.
Fourth, do it again in another spot. Pull out the probe, and choose another thick spot to test the temperature again. When you’re satisfied that you’ve reached the temperature you want, go ahead and remove your meat from the oven.
Fifth, clean your probe! Do I really need to tell you this? Unfortunately, I do. I work in a lot of people’s kitchens, and I see the crusty residue on thermometers left by roasts and chickens of the days gone by. Yuck! One of the leading causes of foodborne illness is cross-contamination—that’s allowing food that must be cooked to a higher temperature (like chicken) to touch food that gets cooked to a lower temperature (like beef). Pull your thermometer out of your chicken and stick it in your beef roast, and you’re injecting that beef with the ability to make you sick! So, be sure to thoroughly clean your thermometer probe every single time you use it.
And for Heaven’s Sake, Let It Rest!
I’m sure you know the disappointment of cutting into a beautiful piece of meat only to discover it’s dry. It takes all the pleasure out of the meal.
There are two main reasons for dried-out meat. The first is obvious: overcooking. But the second is a actually a very common mistake: cutting the meat too soon. If you cut a roast (or turkey, or chicken, or whatever) as soon as you take it out of the oven, you’ll find your cutting board is covered with juice. You might even think, “Wow, that’s great—look how juicy this is! Unfortunately, the “juice” in “juicy” just ran all over your countertop, and the meat that winds up on your plate will be all dried out. You went to all the trouble of taking your meat’s temperature so you could be sure of a safe, juicy, tasty meal; don’t ruin it now! All you have to do is let it rest. When you take your meat out of the oven, put it on the counter and tent it with a piece of aluminum foil, so the heat doesn’t escape too quickly. Then let it sit there for at least 10 minutes … 20 is better. During that resting time, the juices that are flowing inside that meat will have a chance to reabsorb. When you cut into it, you won’t find as much juice running out on your cutting board. But when you bite into it, you’ll discover where all that juice has gone: right back into the meat!
In preparing meals for our clients, The Gourmet Guys typically make a week’s worth of food and leave it in their refrigerator—which means we’re not there when the food is served (unless we’re catering, of course). We want to be sure that every meal is at its peak readiness when it’s time to eat, and so we prepare careful directions on how to heat the food. Those directions almost always include a temperature. And we even give you a thermometer, to make it easy to know what the temperature is. Make friends with that thermometer! It will become the most important tool in guaranteeing you eat consistently great food!