I am interested in purchasing an infrared thermometer to check my oven temperature. I have a dial thermometer but I would like to use the IR thermometer to confirm that and to check during baking.
Does anyone have a brand that they can recommend? I saw some Fluke ones for about $100 but I would prefer not to spend a lot of money on something I might not use that often, unless the cheaper ones really aren't any good.
Thanks!
I don't have any recommendations but I will warn you away from ~$20 Etekcity brand models. The one I bought is not accurate when compared against a Thermapen on water, and it isn't linearly inaccurate either. Unsurprising at that price point, of course. It is consistent with itself but that doesn't seem like it would do what you need.
I have this one and it works great:
https://www.thermoworks.com/ir-food-safety/
Tony
Mine is too old and I think not made anymore. I want to mention that mine - and I'm pretty sure most of them - are very sensitive to their own temperature, For example, on a winter day, open the door and measure the ground or deck temperature. Then step out and do it again. The meter will have cooled down (since it's cold outside) and the reading can be quite different. Bear this in mind when you measure your oven.
TomP
Same experience here.
I'm also pretty sure, that generally an IR thermometers are not very accurate. An IR thermometer has some advantages, but if I want to measure the temperature of my oven, I'd choose a different method.
Low budget version: something like the ThermoPro analogue oven thermometer (for example on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Thermometer-50-300°C-100-600°F-Instant-Stainless/dp/B083BMMQV9/)
A bit more expensive: digital multimeter + thermocouple
What an IR thermometer can give you even if it's not completely accurate is a feel for how much variation there is inside an oven and in its metal structures. You are not going to be talking about "the" oven temperature after scanning your own oven a few times, even if there's a baking steel in it.
Also, the best readings are going to be made with the meter's angle at 90 deg to the surface.
The Thermopen Food Safety Infrared (IRFS) thermometer is excellent of course but it's very expensive so it's intended for professional service. SKU:IRFS
Serious Eats recommends the Wintact Infrared Thermometer Temperature Gun for a budget choice since it is low cost and is reasonably accurate.
For many years I have used, and still use, the NuBee Non Contact Infrared Thermometer which is also very economical and it measures within a half a degree of the professional thermometers that I compared it to so its proven to be reliable but its no longe on Amazon, so I don't know what happened to them.
Keep in mind that you cannot check water temperature with non-contact thermometers but of course they work well for pointing at the inside walls of your oven to check its temperature.
this reminds me to get IR thermometer for making mousse, meringue, and mirror glaze, and tempering chocolate which I've been procrastinating for too long. Contact-thermometer is such pain in the bottom.
Thanks alcophile
Jay
Thank you all for the recommendations. I'll look at the Wintact and the ThermoPro units.
After thinking more about this, maybe I'm approaching my oven problem incorrectly.
The gas oven is 27+ years old. When I preheat the oven, the dial thermometer reads the correct temperature for the setpoint. During a bake though, I notice that the thermometer will sometimes read 50 °F (or more) lower than the SP. I know that there will be some fluctuation in temperature during the bake, but this variation seems a little large. Is the oven flaky or is this normal behavior?
Would a better instrument be a probe thermometer embedded in an inert medium?
I've read that temperature deviations of 50 deg F aren't unusual for home ovens. We always hope that ours is not that bad...
What I find odd is that the oven temperature varies this much during a bake. I checked my empty oven at several different temperatures a couple years ago and it was spot on to the thermometer with three readings at each temperature 15 min apart. It seems that with a load it has this variance. Maybe I should repeat the temperature verification again…
Your oven probably can only be either full on or off. If there is a lot of thermal mass that will lead to overshoots. Also the bulk of the bread (and Dutch Oven if you are using one) will change the airflow in the oven, and the local cool volume of the bread will change the temperature gradients and therefore the heat transfer. I have never studied the subject in any detail but I'm not surprised if there were are departures from the thermostat setting.
I wonder if there is some non-proprietary research on the subject.