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.

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.