Digital Thermometer Pan. There’s no doubt that this was invented by a full-on, classically trained geek person. I mean, c’mon, can you see Raymond Blanc or the Roux brothers suddenly getting the idea to stick a thermometer inside a cooking skillet in order to monitor exact temperature? Nope, not really. $49.99.
So many recipes you see tell you to “put a pan on medium heat.” Medium heat? What is that – 300? 400? You can never be quite sure of your pan’s surface temperature – even those cool laser-thermometers only measure the pan before the food goes in. Once food is in the pan, all bets are off. Happily, one enterprising cooking geek put a thermometer right inside the pan, and a readout in the handle. So, now when the recipe calls for “medium-high heat”, and the pan reads “400 degrees F”, and your traditional Oaxacan Platanos Asados come out just right, you can mark down in the margins the precise temperature, and get it right every single time.