Homemade candies are fun to make and can be more flavorful than your store-bought candies. But making them is a little difficult. Especially when you don’t have a way to measure the temperature of your candy while cooking! The good thing is, you can always have the best candy thermometer!
Without it, you may end up with a sticky goo or a bitter overdone hard candy. Yikes! I can stand a gooey syrup, but a bitter candy will not make the cut! To help you with your problem, we will be looking at five candy thermometer you can have in your kitchen!
Candy Making
Candy thermometers used to be exclusive to huge companies and not available for home kitchen use. They used to be bulky and expensive! You wouldn’t even bother having one. Most people making homemade candies rely on their experience to tell the firmness of their candy.
This is an okay method. You may end up with a great tasting batch of sweets from time to time, but, you will always doubt if you have the right heat before you burn your candy! With a candy thermometer, you can make chewy or runny candies perfect for wafer fillings! Now, check out the other benefits of this tool!
Benefit of Candy Thermometers
1. Portable
Candy thermometers are now pocket sized and available in most kitchen centers. In fact, you can even choose from analog and digital versions! They are usually as small as a pencil (sometimes smaller!). Some even have a timer built-in with them to be more functional.
2. Affordable
Industrial grade candy thermometers cost lots of money. Before the availability of mass produced cheaper versions of food thermometers, you would not try making your candy if you are not a real big fan! Buying candies would give you more savings rather than make your own!
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3. Availability
Food thermometers are not rare! You can find them in the kitchen section of your grocery store! Go ahead and ask the friendly sales personnel on the grocery to lead you to it! There’s no excuse of not having a candy thermometer especially when you are making your own candy toppings for your cookies!
4. Perfect Candies
With a candy thermometer, you will always get the same perfect consistency of candies, chocolates and other sweets you make. Every single time! You can always repeat your recipe and get the same results (as long as you don’t deviate from your recipe)!
With a butane torch, you can brown the outside of your perfect candies to make it more appealing! Just perfect!
You can always measure your sweets while cooking to see the stage of your candy. At a hundred eighteen to one hundred twenty degrees Celsius, you will be able to get a firm and chewy ball. Now, past one hundred seventy degrees Celsius will go to the trash. Be careful!
5. Measure Hot Cooking Oil
Aside from being the perfect kitchen tool to make tasty homemade candies, you can also use it to measure oil for cooking. I know you have, once in your life, deep fried some chicken wings or some meat and ended up with a perfect golden brown outside and a not-so-nice raw or bloody inside!
Or maybe, you have tried to deep fry something and burnt it a few seconds after having contact with the oil! One more thing, you may have also dipped your food in a cold oil! I know, you ended up with your fries soaked in too much oil!
With a candy thermometer, you will always get that perfect crispy golden brown outside and juicy inside. Always. Because you can predict how hot your oil is before dipping whatever you are frying! And you will also know when to stop cooking them!
6. Perfect Roasts
Roasts can be a little tricky. It is a little hard to tell if the core is already well cooked as the outside of your roast will be cooked and will brown first. You will not have a visual clue if the insides are already done and your roast is ready.
To make perfect roasts, you can stick a food thermometer to the core of your roast to determine if it is already well done on the inside. This will help you create a perfect roast, always. You wouldn’t have to worry of under-cooked roasts. This will also cue you when to stop cooking! This way, you will not have dry and tough meat!
7. Timer and Beeper
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To make things a lot easier for users, some thermometers are equipped with timers and beepers. This can help you monitor your food as you cook it! How convenient is that?
Now, to help you decide which candy thermometer is the right one or you, we will round up 5 of the top candy thermometers available in the market.
Reviews of Five Best Candy Thermometers
1. Winco Deep Fry and Candy Thermometer
Winco probably wanted to create the simplest and most affordable food thermometer in the market. You can use it to make great candies and other confections!
PROS
- Can read up to 400 degrees! – Well, exposure to the maximum heat for a long time may get you some black and bitter, inedible candy, but you are sure can easily tell that you have the optimal heat for deep frying.
- Built-in pot clip. – This clip will facilitate easier monitoring your candy while cooking them. You don’t need to worry about holding it down while cooking. Clip it on the side of the pot to efficiently see what stage of cooking you are on.
- Hanging loop. – Keeping your kitchen tidy is one of the things you want to maintain. With this simplistic ergonomic design, you can easily hang it to conserve space in your kitchen.
- Graduation spread wide. – Spanning at almost a foot, the graduations are very clear, and you can precisely stop on decimals! This gives you more accuracy when cooking your candies!
CONS
- A little large. – It spans at 11 and ¾ of an inch. That is a quarter inch shy of one foot. If you are short on space and trying to save some for the other much more important stuff in the kitchen, you may find this a bit of space consuming.
- Limited clip adjustment. – If you are using a shallow pot, you may find no way to mount and clip your thermometer steady. You will need a pot at least a foot deep to effectively use the clip.
2. Taylor Precision Products Candy Thermometer
This is another affordable version of candy thermometer you can get your hands on. It has a posh black and silver design. Very visible in the kitchen and you won’t have trouble finding it! It stands at 8 inches and measures up to four hundred degrees.
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PROS
- Stainless steel material. – With the stainless material used to make this thermometer, cleaning is never easy! You can even just wipe it with a damp clean cloth, and you’re done!
- Insulated handles. – Moving it around will never be trouble with its insulated handles. Never worry about getting burnt while handling it.
- Sliding clip – Even if you are using a shallow pot or pan, you will not have a problem in keeping it secured. The clip slides vertically up and down so you can secure it carefully.
CONS
- Printed markings. – Though they may last pretty long depending on your usage and maintenance, it’s still a fact that time will come that the markings will eventually wear off. The good thing is it’s not expensive and when the markings come off, it may have already served you well and buying another one will be no problem.
- Flimsy bulb. – Though the reading is accurate, having a flimsy end that sticks to the heat is a little bothersome. If they have made it sturdier, this should not have been an issue.
3. Digital Cooking Candy Liquid Thermometer
We are in the digital era, and a digital tool is only appropriate. This digital candy thermometer can be a great kitchen tool you can have. It has a 5-inch stainless probe that can read the temperature in as little as 5 seconds. Obviously, since it’s digital, it is battery operated.
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PROS
- Backed by the lifetime warranty. – This is product confident of its name. They assure you that you can have your problems addressed as long as they exist!
- Can do negative readings.– Analog thermometers can give you zero degrees up to around four hundred degrees. This thermometer, however, can give you negative readings. I know you are here because you want to make candies but admit it, you can make use of this feature to make slushy drinks!
- Quick read. – With its capacity to read the temperature in as little as five seconds, you will not need to expose your thermometer to heat for the whole duration of your cooking. This may seem trivial, but this can lengthen the life of your tool!
- Can measure the insides of your roasts! – Aside from cooking your favorite candies, you can also use them to tell if your deep fries are cooked from the inside out! You can stick it to the core of your roasts to make sure that they are well cooked on the inside.
CONS
- Cannot accommodate deep pots and pans.– You can clip it on the side of your pot, but the problem is, if your pot is more than 6 inches deep, you will not be able to reach the bottom!
- Requires you to hold and expose your hands to heat while taking a reading. – The thermometer requires at least five seconds in contact to get an accurate reading. This means that your hands are over the hot stuff you are cooking! However, you can easily avoid this with the use of a thong.
- Too many parts. – Unlike their older manual versions, digital thermometers are fitted with much more many parts to perform its calculation. This means that fixing it can be a little trouble in case you encounter minor issues.
4. Maverick CT-03 Digital Oil & Candy Thermometer
This model of candy thermometer had taken its game a lot further than its competitors. They may come a little pricey than your generic tools but, they come with more handy features This rectangular thermometer with pivoting probe can be a great additional in your kitchen arsenal.
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Via Amazon.com
PROS
- Triple A battery operation. – This means that you can buy batteries anywhere. These batteries are widely available and easy to find. If you run out of battery, you can easily replace it.
- Auto shut-off for battery saving. – Sometimes, forgetting to turn off your gadget means you will not have juice the next time you use it! With this feature, you can always be assured that you have charged batteries whenever you will use it.
- Pre-programmed settings. – Maverick took the initiative to factory program 14 settings to help you with the most commonly used temperature when cooking in the kitchen. Just one button and you are ready to cook like a pro!
- Built-in timer and beeper. – This is a fancy feature that can make a great chef out of you. You can set it to beep when you have reached the temperature you set and keep track of your time and remind you with a distinct beep when it is done. No more bitter candies!
CONS
- It easily jumps to triple the price of your manual candy thermometer. – I hate to say this but, with great features comes expensive pricing! But if you can afford it, you will be able to benefit from its amazing features.
- The LCD is a little large. – The large LCD means a large and readable display. The only problem is, it can get unstable when you mount it over your pot. This part is a little heavy and can position it over your cooking pot can be a little of a challenge.
5. CDN DTC450 Digital Candy Thermometer
This probably is the best food thermometer you can have available in the market. It has all the features of Maverick but, it is smaller!
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PROS
- Just the right size. – Though the stick probe cannot pivot, the simple design and the size makes up for it. You can stick it in your pot and not worry about it falling off.
- Nine-inch stick probe. – This nine-inch probe means that you can use it over your deeper pots and leave it hanging there whenever you need a quick read. It can be fastened securely with its built-in clip.
- Everything in one. – Combine all the features mentioned above, and you got this. Your all-in-one kitchen thermometer that can cater your varying needs in the kitchen.
CONS
- Expensive – Nothing more to say. It’s plain expensive. But you get what you pay for. It’s expensive for a reason. It has the most useful features of the rest.
- Batteries shut off in one hour when not in use. – Shut-off function while not in use is a good feature. But shutting down after one hour means an hour worth of consumed battery.
Last Words
Candies and other foods can be precisely cooked with the best candy thermometer out there. You can time your cooking carefully and monitor them efficiently for a perfect consistency of your candy (or roast!).
Clearly, the DTC450 Digital Candy Thermometer model trumps all the other products out there for a price. But it does everything you need! But if you are watching your budget, the digital cooking candy thermometer is sufficient enough!
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