Choosing the Best BBQ Meat Thermometer: Our Top Picks

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When it comes to BBQ, a meat thermometer is essential for achieving the perfect cook every time. This guide to the best BBQ meat thermometers will help experienced cooks achieve precise control over doneness preferences, and beginners eliminate guesswork, ensuring perfectly cooked meat.

Table of Contents

Types of meat thermometers

Here’s a quick look at the thermometers I like to use for my backyard grilling with a quick note on when I use them. I’ll cover these BBQ meat thermometers in detail below.

Instant-Read Thermometers – inexpensive; good for knowing the current temperature.
Wireless/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Thermometers – for high-tech control of the grilling process (know the temperature of your food, the grill, and when your meat will be ready).
Leave-In Thermometers – inexpensive; beeps when internal temperature is done.
Infrared Thermometers – best to measure temperature inside the grill (not the food).
Dial/Oven-Safe Thermometers – old school (I’d skip them!)

Let’s get into the details…

Instant-Read Thermometers

Instant-Read Thermometers are cheap and simple, perfect for quickly checking the temperature of fast-cooking meats.

However, they don’t predict cooking time like the high-tech thermometers in the next section, so you’ll need to frequently check the grill, potentially losing heat each time.

Grilling Lobster with Instant Read Thermometer

One advantage of instant-read thermometers is their ability to easily read the temperature of smaller items, like smoked chicken wings, unlike wireless thermometers which require deeper insertion.

Wireless/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Thermometers

I use Wireless/ Bluetooth/ Wi-Fi Thermometers the most.

Full disclosure: as a brand ambassador, I sometimes receive Meater Plus Thermometers for free, but I was a customer before that.

Meater Wireless WiFi Thermometer inside Traeger Smoked Texas Torpedoes

It’s like being psychic! The great thing about this tool is that I don’t have to take the food out of the oven to know the temperature. It monitors the temperature from a distance and connects to my phone apps for remote monitoring.

Smoking Chicken on Traeger Grill with Meater Thermometer inside

However, a drawback is that I don’t find them easy to insert into super-small foods like smoked wings or smoked chicken breast skewers. They need something more substantial to stick into, like a smoked tomahawk steak.

How to use it… What I do is stick the digital thermometer in steak, pork, chicken, whatever before cooking them.

Inserting wireless thermometer into BBQ Chicken

While the meat cooks, it reads the temperature so I know exactly what temp meat is as it’s cooking. Without having to take it out and check. It’s really difficult to overcook food when you know exactly what temp it is inside!

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Leave-In Thermometers

Less expensive than wireless options, non-wireless Leave-In Thermometers like my Thermopro stay in the meat during cooking, but are a bit more advanced because they connect to a monitor outside the grill via a cord.

Ideal for smoked foods and traditional oven cooking turkey, but I don’t like to use them for grills with an open flame.

Infrared Thermometers

Infrared Thermometers differ from traditional thermometers as they measure the surface temperature of whatever you point them at.

While they don’t indicate the internal temperature of meat (so you’ll still need another thermometer for that), they are perfect for gauging the heat of a grill or griddle.

Dial/Oven-Safe Thermometers

Analog thermometers, oven-safe for continuous use. I do still use this from time to time in my kitchen, just because I own it. It takes longer to know the temperature, so I suggest you choose a cheap digital instant-read thermometer instead.

Dual-Probe Thermometers

These monitor meat and grill temperature simultaneously. I don’t have a separate thermometer for this, because my wireless Meater Thermometer measures both temperatures. So I always know the ambient temperature of the smoker (ie. if I set it to 250 degrees F, is it really 260 degrees F?)

Smoking Food On Traeger with Meater Thermometer

See how to make this Traeger smoked breakfast fatty…

My top recommended BBQ meat thermometers

If I had to choose just two of the thermometers discussed in this guide, I’d suggest…

Meater thermometer – the fancy wireless thermometer that connects to a phone app and tells you the ambient temperature inside the grill, PLUS the temperature of your food, PLUS how long it will take for your food to be done.
Instant-Read Thermometers are under $10 and will give you an accurate, on-the-spot reading of your food.

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