PSA: That $40 oven thermometer from the grocery store read 50 degrees hot

Ruined a batch of macarons at a client's house in Nashville last weekend. Anyone else have a cheap thermometer throw off their bake timing?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel55220h ago

That 50 degrees off is a lot, reminds me of the time my grill thermometer was off by 40.

ryang6517h ago

My wife bought one of those cheap glass oven thermometers from a big box store last year. It told me the oven was a perfect 350 degrees, but the cookies came out looking like hockey pucks. Turns out it was reading 60 degrees hot, so I was basically slow-roasting chocolate chip cookies. I double checked it with a new digital probe and now I just trust that one instead. Figured out my old oven runs a steady 25 degrees cool anyway, so I was double wrong. At least I learned to test cheap thermometers in boiling water before trusting them with a full batch of anything.