Meater 2 Plus

Verdict

A smarter way to cook, the Meater 2 Plus monitors internal and ambient temperatures to deliver accurate cooking time estimates, as well as telling you the proper time to remove the heat source and leave meat to rest. If you want to elevate your cooking skills, this smart temperature probe is essential.

Introduction

Getting the best results from cooking means precision, and the Meater 2 Plus is designed to do just that with meat.

Taking into account ambient temperatures, target temperatures and how different types of meat cook, the Meater 2 Plus aims to turn you into an expert who delivers perfectly cooked food each time. It’s a job that it succeeds at, giving you better results with very little effort.

Design and features

• Better range than the old model
• Works at up to 500°C
• Clever app

Although the Meater 2 Plus doesn’t look too different from the original Meater, the new model has had a complete overhaul to make it more flexible and responsive.

The Bluetooth temperature probe comes in a magnetic charging dock, which acts as a repeater for the probe. I tend to stick mine on the side of the fridge for storage, but I move it around the kitchen, depending on where I’m cooking (hob or oven).

There’s greater range on this model, compared to previous versions. I didn’t have any trouble maintaining connection throughout my kitchen.

Powered by a single AAA battery, which should last for two years, this dock can fast-charge the probe in five minutes, giving enough juice to last for a two-hour cook. Charge the probe for at least 15 minutes, and it will last for 12 hours, which is long enough for slow-cooking or smoking food.

As with previous models, the probe has to be paired with your smartphone, which takes just a couple of minutes to do. While the probe is in the dock, Bluetooth is disabled; remove it ready for cooking, and the probe comes online.

From the app, getting started is as simple as selecting the type of meat that you want to cook. There’s a lot of granularity, ranging from salmon fillets and whole chicken to sirloin steak and lamb cutlets.

Most temperature probes have to be set based on more generic parameters (beef or chicken); here, delving into the type of meat, such as fillet steak, means that the monitoring and target temperatures are set specifically for the food you’re about to cook.

Meater automatically selects what it thinks are the best options for your selected food. For poultry, the default levels are safe; for food like steak, I could override the settings based on the finish I wanted (I usually go medium-rare).

With the cook selected, the app then shows you how to insert the probe. This new probe has multiple temperature sensors. The internal one, marked by a notch on the probe, supports maximum temperatures of 105°C. This temperature sensor needs to be fully inserted into the meat.

The ambient temperature sensor monitors the cooking temperatures and supports maximum temperatures of 500°C. That’s way more than you’ll need in an oven, but it means that the Meater 2 Plus can be used in BBQs, on hobs and even for deep-fat frying.

Once food starts to cook, the app calculates an estimated cooking time. Depending on the internal meat temperature and ambient temperature, this can take up to ten minutes. How useful this is, depends on what you’re cooking: using the Meater 2 Plus for burgers, by the time the app had calculated the cooking time, it was almost finished; with a whole chicken, the estimate was far more helpful, as I could plan when to load up the oven with roast potatoes with more accuracy.

Although I could keep an eye on the app to see how the food was cooking, it sends notifications (customisable in the app), for when food has been overcooked, five minutes before the cook has ended, when a cook estimate is ready, and when meat has completed its resting period.

Rather than cooking meat up to its target internal temperature, the Meater 2 Plus tells you to remove meat from a heat source before this. This is because meat continues to cook for some time afterwards, and the Meater 2 Plus aims for spot-on precision.

At the end of a cook, the temperature probe can be left until the meat has finished resting, so you can check the final core temperature. Then, remove the probe and wash it in soapy water.

Performance

• Powerful control
• Needs some adjusting to how you cook
• Spot-on temperature control

Largely, using the Meater 2 Plus is as simple as using any other temperature probe. Provided the probe is inserted in the correct part of the meat, then it will work accurately and safely. The app is then simple to pick the type of food you’re cooking and the desired result.

I started with a roast chicken. Based on average cooking times of 45 minutes per kg plus 20 minutes at 180°C, my 1.7kg should have taken 97 minutes. However, it took around 20 minutes less than this, with the Meater 2 Plus telling me to remove the Chicken from heat when the internal temperature was 73.7°C (whole chicken needs to be at 75°C).

Leaving it to rest, the temperature increased to just a little over 75°C, resulting in perfectly cooked food that was still moist.

It takes some faith to remove chicken from an oven early but trust in the Meater 2 Plus to get you great results safely.

Overall, it meant I had to adjust how I cooked slightly. Using organic, free-range chicken, I found that this cooked faster than supermarket meat, so I had to adjust my timings for the rest of my food. Fortunately, the cooking estimate meant that I could work out when to put in potatoes and other veg so that everything was finished simultaneously.

Next, I cooked a sirloin steak in a pan, aiming for medium rare. Sirloin can be hard to get right: it needs to be cooked through enough to bring out the flavour, but not overdone that they become tough. I inserted the probe into the thickest part of the meat.

Using the Meater 2 Plus, I could cook the steak in a pan, and then know when to remove it from the heat when alerted.

At the end of the cook and after the resting time, my steak was spot-on. Slightly pink on the inside, but cooked-through and with no chewiness that can affect this type of cut.

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