There is nothing worse than overcooking a steak or other protein. Overcooking turns the most expensive part of a meal into shoe leather.
I’ve written several articles on meat thermometers and their benefits. The primary benefit is that a meat thermometer enables even a beginner chef to serve perfectly cooked proteins.
However, meat thermometers are not without their challenges. The most significant challenge is that they can’t tolerate the high temperatures needed to properly sear a piece of meat. This leaves you with two options.
- You can start cooking by searing your meat without the thermometer inserted into it. Once searing is complete, you can attempt to properly insert the thermometer into the center of a very hot and slippery piece of meat.
- Reverse Sear – You can cook your meat to the proper internal temperature, remove the meat thermometer, and place the meat on a very hot area on your grill to quickly sear it before the high heat overcooks it. An added bonus of this technique is that while searing you get to watch all the juices, that make the meat moist, spill out of the hole left by the meat thermometer.
Neither of these options is ideal and, in the words of Shark Tank, “There has to be a better way.”
Soma Labs is a California company that was founded in 2017 by a group of friends after overcooking steaks at an afternoon BBQ. Their priority is for their customers to all have perfectly cooked proteins.
Soma Labs’ latest wireless, grilling thermometer is MeatStick V (pronounced MeatStick 5 as V is the Roman numeral for five). This innovative new thermometer:
- Uses a dual-shell of Zirconia that can withstand extreme temperatures up to 650°C/1200°F. This allows MeatStick V to be used during searing, high-heat grilling, in a pizza oven, in a deep fat fryer, and during other forms of high-heat cooking
- Includes both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Connectivity. The Bluetooth radio in MeatStick V provides over 900 feet of range. When used with MeatStick V’s Smart Base, the link from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi provides unlimited range
- Six temperature sensors for precise cooking. There are five internal sensors that detect the lowest temperature within the meat. There is one ambient temperature sensor to monitor the cooking environment
- Designed to handle extreme temperature shifts. This allows MeatStick V to maintain its durability and waterproof integrity over time
- The MeatStick app (iOS and Android) provides users with real-time alerts and an estimate of cooking time. Alerts include when the meat is ready, when it needs attention, and five degrees before it reaches its target temperature so you can prepare for resting and serving
- Supports connecting multiple temperature probes to a single MeatStick Smart Base so multiple dishes can simultaneously be monitored
- Alexa and Apple Watch integration
- Dishwasher safe
Hands on with MeatStick V
Soma Labs provided me with a MeatStick V to test for this article. It arrives packaged in a simple cardboard box with a short USB-C cable for charging the thermometer’s Smart Base. Unlike previous MeatStick thermometers I have written about, the Smart Base is rechargeable instead of using replaceable batteries. More on this later.
Adding MeatStick V to the MeatStick app was a simple matter of pressing the “+” button in the upper right-hand corner of the app. The app will then guide you through the process. The app also recognized MeatStick V’s Smart Base and guided me through the process of connecting the base to my home’s Wi-Fi network. Wi-Fi connectivity allows you to monitor cooking temperatures with MeatStick V from anywhere your smart phone has connectivity. This is useful during a long cooking process, such as smoking meat, when you might have to run to the store for a forgotten ingredient.
The first thing I noticed about MeatStick V is the minimal insertion line. It marks how far the probe must be inserted into a piece of meat. The line is about 2/3 of the way along the probe portion of MeatStick V. This allows MeatStick V to be used with smaller pieces of protein (i.e. a tuna steak or a chicken thigh). When cooking larger cuts of meat, such as a roast, you just need to insert MeatStick V fully into the meat.
Because my grill is already covered with snow, I wasn’t able to test MeatStick V’s high temperature searing ability on a grill. However, my wife and I were able to test the product in several other cooking scenarios.
Our first use of MeatStick V was cooking a steak on an induction cooktop. The magnetic cooking technology of the induction cooktop didn’t cause any problems for MeatStick V. The MeatStick app provides a warning when the protein you are cooking is 5 degrees from your target temperature. This provides adequate warning so you can prepare to remove it from cooking and let it rest before serving.
Soma Labs rates the accuracy of MeatStick V at +/- 0.2 degrees C / +/- 0.4 degrees F. So, our steak came out perfectly medium rare.
Next was a turkey breast on Thanksgiving. We smoked a turkey breast for an hour and then finished cooking it in the oven. This seems to add just the right amount of smokey flavor to a turkey breast.
I wanted to test MeatStick V’s use in small cuts of protein. For the next test we cooked a boneless, skinless, chicken thigh. In this case, due to the small size of the chicken thigh, the thermometer was only inserted up to the minimum insertion line. Again, MeatStick V worked perfectly, and the chicken thigh was cooked to a food safe temperature but remained very moist.
The one area for potential improvement I found with the product is that the app doesn’t display the battery level of the rechargeable base. The prior generation of MeatStick bases used replaceable batteries. So, if the batteries were low, you could simply replace them and immediately start cooking. If the power runs low on the base for the MeatStick V, either right before or while you are cooking, this is a real problem.
You will see a popup message when the base runs low on power and needs to be recharged. However, a battery gauge would allow you to pre-emptively charge the base when the power is starting to get low to avoid the problem of needing to recharge the base right when you are ready to cook a meal.
That being said, MeatStick V will operate without the base. The product will communicate directly with your smart phone through Bluetooth. However, you will lose the ability to monitor the cooking process from outside the range of the MeatStick’s Bluetooth radio.
Conclusions
MeatStick V’s ability to withstand the high temperature required to sear meat is a major step forward. No longer does an outdoor chef have to struggle to insert a grilling thermometer into a hot, slippery piece of meat that has just been seared. In addition, the five internal temperature sensors assure that temperature readings from MeatStick V accurately reflect the protein’s internal temperature; even if the thermometer wasn’t perfectly inserted in the center of the protein.
The smart charging base, with its Wi-Fi radio, allows a cook to monitor a long cooking process from anywhere, including an emergency trip to the store. However, it would be helpful if the battery level was displayed in the MeatStick app so you can proactively charge the base, and make sure it doesn’t get low on power, when cooking meat for a house full of guests.
