Some Like It 165° Fahrenheit

The first key to culinary proficiency is temperature control. And I should know. Because I don’t do it.

I mean, I set the oven to whatever temp the recipe prescribes. And I leave the food in there however long I’m supposed to. And that usually gets it pretty close to right. But only usually. And only pretty close.

And that’s as good as it gets, because the oven is pretty new, and inside it’s probably pretty close to whatever temperature the controls say. In a less directly manageable cooking situation — I’m thinking here of the backyard grill — the variety of results is wider. It’s like a fun game of chance! Except you might get salmonella if you lose.

Oh, man, one time I went over to a neighbor’s house, and he had a big leg of lamb rotating on a spit in front of his fireplace. I thought he must have been a genius. Who ever thought to use the hearth for cooking? (Recently, I mean. Because obviously a lot of people thought of that in pioneer times.) It filled the whole house with roasting meat smells. It was awesome. But there’s no way I would try it. How would I know if it was done?

I’ll tell you how I would know: By whether my dinner guests got food poisoning in the eight hours after eating it. It’d be a crapshoot. In case of staphylococcus, maybe literally. For a variety of reasons, including liability, it wouldn’t be an ideal system.

But here’s the problem: The second key to culinary proficiency is patience. And I should know. Because I don’t have it.

How much active monitoring of roasting meats can a fellow be expected to do in this fast-paced digital age? I can’t just stand by the grill checkin’ the chicken for minutes on end; Twitter beckons.

I’ll tell you what would solve this 1W problem: If there was some way for my phone to tell me when the food was cooked to a safe internal temperature! I know: Keep dreaming, right? Maybe in Wakanda they cook like that.

Oh, well. Old-fashioned guesswork and blind chance have gotten me this far. I’ll muddle on and manage, same as ever. What’s it to me to suffer the occasional overdone pot roast or bout with listeria, anyway?