Meat thermometer madness.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband bought a meat thermometer.

Not just any thermometer, but a deluxe kind, with a metal probe that you insert into the meat, attached by wire to a digital read-out that you can keep outside the oven.

With our brand new meat thermometer, we experimented on some steaks that we cooked on our electric grill. The meat came out perfectly done: perfectly medium rare for Mike, and well-done (the only meat--sniff! sniff!--I can eat until I give birth, sigh!).

The following day, we brought the meat thermometer to our friend's house and made a beef roast.

Again, perfect.

The center was an exquisite medium rare, and the ends just hit well-done.

Since then, we've become meat thermometer addicts.

Mike and I eat a lot of steak, and we used to always just rely on the second hand of our kitchen clock and guesswork. We had gotten good at estimating cooking time for medium rare (which, when I'm not pregnant, is the kind of meat I eat), but when we'd have friends over who would want their steaks medium or well-done, or when we cut the steaks slightly thicker or slightly thinner than usual, we'd often get it wrong, having to throw back the slab of beef onto the grill or into the pan to cook out more of the blood.

But having a thermometer takes all the guesswork out of making roasts and steak. Pop the meat in, check the chart for the correct temperature, and a few degrees before the thermometer reads that temperature, take the meat out and let it rest. (It continues to cook while resting, so you want to take it out slightly before it hits target temperature.)

Result? Perfectly cooked roasts/steak every single time.

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