Cooking with a food thermometer

Readers,

Recently i've been experimenting with a food thermometer when i BBQ food. It makes cooking a breeze and takes the usual guessing out of judging when the food is hot through.

This is especially useful when cooking chicken, pork and of course sausages.

We all have that concern that snags are never really cooked through unless they are charred on the outside to oblivion and cut in half and cooked excessively.



With a thermometer, you simply stick it in the centre of the meat, and take a reading.

N.B. Its best to move the piece of meat away from the burner or flame to ensure you get an accurate temperature reading.

Best of all, these thermometers are usually pretty cheap (under AU $20). You can also find them on Ebay for about AU $12.

The following article has some additional useful tips on using a thermometer.

http://www.kraft.com.au/CookingSchool/BBQBasics/FoodThermometers.htm

Cooking the perfect steak

We had a family BBQ over the weekend. Dad recently got one of those new BBQ's, all stainless steel, with self-igniting burners etc.

Its an absolute joy to cook on. We've been experimenting in recent weeks and BBQ's with the cooking of perfect steak. Now Dad, is a recent convert to medium-rare steak, he used to be pretty strict on the old well-done slab of meat.

We've actually been using a few tools to help us achieve a perfect (or near perfect) result.

• A small digitial timer
• A meat thermometer

The meat thermometer, we use to check the temperature of the inside of the meat - its got a special temperature range for steak/beef.

The digital thermometer is used to keep track of our time between turns.

OK, so we use the grill part of the BBQ, turning 2 burners on. Close the hood of the BBQ, and turn the burners to full-heat. Leave the hood closed for approx 5-7 minutes, the temperature inside the hood as well as thr grill rungs should be nice and hot by this time.

Now, open the hood and reduce the heat to a medium setting, now place the steaks carefully on the grill, close the hood.

Set your timer for 2 minutes. When the 2 minutes is up, open the hood and carefully turn the steaks, close the hood and set the timer for a second 2 minutes.

Depending on the thickness and cut of your steak, this should result in a perfect medium-rare cook. If you prefer a little more well-done, as some female family members do, we left these steaks on for an additional 1-2 minutes. We ttested this with rump steak, T-bone, sirloin about 1-2cm's thick.

Its important, to keep turning to a minimum, unless you want a really well-done steak without the juicyness of medium, medium-rare, medium-well.