At this very moment, I'm trying a cooking experiment…and have I ever mentioned here what a lousy cook I am? I usually botch up anything more complicated than Campbell's Bean with Bacon Soup…and even that doesn't always come out the way I want it to. Beans undercooked, bacon overcooked…
So I'm trying a new device called a Meater. It's a meat thermometer that works on your wi-fi connection. At this very moment, a three-pound Butterball Turkey Roast is in a Rival Crockpot in my kitchen downstairs. As you can see, I am upstairs working on my computer. My iPad sits downstairs next to the Rival Crockpot and the Meater probe is in the Turkey Roast which is in the Rival Crockpot, which is set to "low." Via a bluetooth connection, the probe relays the internal temperature of the Turkey Roast to the Meater app in the iPad…
…and the Meater app on my iPhone is connected via my home wi-fi to the Meater app on the iPad. Is that too complicated? Basically, I can sit here upstairs and look at the Meater app on my iPhone and it can tell me the progress of the Turkey Roast downstairs. Everything is supposed to beep and my Turkey Roast is supposed to be done when it reaches an internal temperature of 170°.
So here's the problem. I started this thing around 10:45. The Butterball website says it's supposed to take seven hours and it won't hurt anything if I overcook by an hour or two. They also say that the roast must reach an internal temperature of 140° in the first four hours.
That, it did. Based on the first half-hour of cooking, the Meater timer estimated a total cook time of almost eight hours, which seemed right in line with the instructions…but since then, the internal temp has shot up, the timer estimate has gone down and as I write this, I'm getting an internal temperature of 144° in the Turkey Roast and an ambient temperature (the temp inside the slow cooker) of 202°. A setting of "low" on a slow cooker is supposed to be 190-200° so that doesn't seem terribly wrong.
Anyway, I'm now being told that my Turkey Roast will hit 170° in 35 minutes — for a total cook time of not seven hours but around three hours and fifteen minutes. Something here is not right.
When the time's up, I'm going to check the Turkey Roast with a conventional meat thermometer and maybe I'll figure out what it is that's not right. Stay tuned.