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Test Your Kitchen Thermometers
Posted by: | December 28, 2019
| 2 Comments
| Kitchen, Personal

My Thanksgiving Turkey was a disaster due to my faulty kitchen thermometers. I had three digital meat thermometers and all three of them were trash. I tested those thermometers on both ice water and boiling water. All three of them failed miserably.

It was my fault for not testing the thermometers. Now that I look back, I was naive to trust cheap kitchen thermometers without testing them on my own.

Thermometers that I threw out, two Mavericks and one Taylor
I’m not sure if I will ever buy another Taylor or Maverick.

I trashed all my thermometers and bought 3 new ones. I also bought 2 extra probes. They all passed my test. Moving forward, I will use two thermometers with probes at the same time to double-check my progress. When I’m done with cooking, I will use the third thermometer to confirm my work.

And I shall test my thermometers every year, at least 1 month before Thanksgiving Day, rather than 1 day before Thanksgiving, so I will have time to buy a new thermometer if I have to.

To test the kitchen thermometers, I shall…

  • Take the temperature of ice water – Temperature should read almost 32 F (0 C).
  • Take the temperature of boiling water. – It should read 212 F (100 C), or very close to it.

To redeem myself from the Thanksgiving turkey disaster, I baked a Christmas turkey with my new thermometers. Finally, my turkey came out super-fantastic.

New thermometers – all tested.
Turkey Disaster
Posted by: | November 30, 2019
| 2 Comments
| Personal

I cannot believe what happened to my turkey this year. Maybe Costco God was punishing me for not buying a turkey from Costco.

This year, I bought an 18-pound Butterball Turkey from a local supermarket. I gladly paid $43, instead of $18 I would have paid at Costco. I wanted this turkey to be super fantastic.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving Day. The turkey was in the oven, and everything was going OK. I was watching the temperature going up slowly on my digital thermometer. And then the temperature appeared to be stuck. My turkey was getting darker and darker, but the thermometer still read 153 degrees. So, I took out my backup thermometer and a backup probe. To my shock, I found out that my turkey was over-cooked by 40 degrees. (205 degrees instead of 165).

Turkey was all I was thinking about for the last 2 weeks. I was very disappointed. I wanted to cry. Dinner was still OK, but it was not super fantastic. I kept thinking ‘next year’, but I don’t know if I can wait that long. I may have to bake a turkey for Christmas. I don’t know. I try not to think about it too much, but this bothers me.

I need to troubleshoot my thermometers and probes and make sure this will not happen again. Also, from this point, I will always use 2 thermometers when I cook ANYTHING. And I shall keep a backup thermometer and backup probes. It will be like when I used to be a wedding photographer. I have photographed hundreds of weddings. I carried 2 cameras at all times and had a backup camera in the car. My camera broke down only once during the ceremony. But I had another identical camera already on my body, so everything went smoothly. That’s the mentality I shall adopt when I cook with an oven. I shall prepare and focus.

I hope you had a super-fantastic turkey dinner.

Sonoma gourmet Ogranic Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce served with Bonterra Organic Cabernet Sauvignon
Posted by: | November 14, 2019
| No Comments
| Ti's Kitchen
This was over boneless chicken thighs I seasoned and seared. Finished in the oven with sauce, onions, (love the bagged) peeled garlic along with Costco Parm.

We used roasted spaghetti squash as a low carb alternative. Organic frozen peas from Costco are nice and sweet.
The wine was good, I don’t usually drink a cab but this was light enough to pair it with.
Prepped to reheat leftovers next night for a drop in guest. The pasta sauce is the right consistency, no sugar added-thank you!

Nutritional facts: 6 servings per container, serving size 1/2 cup for 2.5 calories, 0 fat, O Cholesterol, 440 mg Sodium, 9g carb, 3g sugar-noted Og added sugar.