LOL. Don't listen to the master chef. Like quoting culinary schools makes a difference? Wow 3 years in the the restaurant industry. What a genius! Makes my 18 years in electrical a bit redundant.
tumble wee'd you are
wrong.
In the engineering world we use thermal imaging to detect heat spots in electrical equipment. 33kV to 240v. Thermal imaging is a very accurate way not only to detect heat spots in things like switchboards or joins in high voltage etc, but it also gives an acurate temp reading. I've used my fluke temp gun next to the $25,000 thermal imaging gear and got the very same reading. Temp guns are very accurate and have many appliations. I can't see a use for them in the kitchen, but they are a great tool for reptile keepers and there is no problem using them as the solitary means of temp monitoring with reptile enclosures. What tumble wee'd fails to comprehend is reptile keepers are simply using guns to measure temps in basking spots. Not temperatures used to cook reptiles! So of course his limited experience in the kitchen would result in seeing other methods used for recording surface temp. Which of course has nothing to do with reptile husbandry. As he gets older he may realise that cooking and keeping reptiles are quite different.
Actually genius, I was in the commercial cookery trade for over 10 years. The 2 establishments I mentioned are regarded as 2 of Australia's most acclaimed (Hence, their hygiene practices are second to none).
If you can't see why an
accurate,handheld temp gun would be beneficial in a commercial kitchen setting I will explain it to you.
Both fan-forced and convection ovens,steaming trays,walk in fridges and freezers,reach in fridges and freezers,brat pans not to mention checking refrigerated trucks which deliver meat,dairy and fruit and vegetables are of a suitable temperature.......no, there are absolutely no application where a reliable one could be used in that setting
The point I was making with bringing up the industry is there are rules set in place by both OH&S and the Australian government which compel us to view and record these temperatures to insure the "safety zone" temps are met before being served to customers AND recorded to insure that if there is a case of food poisoning in that establishment or an outbreak of a contaminant which is the product of incorrect temperatures that there is documentation of those readings not just for the day in question but of that week,month,quarter.
Secondly, every TAFE institution in Australia that teaches commercial cookery will tell you more than once that if a temp gun is used a probe thermometer has to be used afterwards to validate the reading was correct, now these institutions have cooking equipment which exceed $60,000 per unit.....do you really think that they wouldn't use an instrument that would save the workers in the industry at least an hour per day IF that instrument was reliable?
Probably the same reason you won't see a chef or food scientist using one to measure the temperature of chocolate,toffee or spun sugar.
And the same reason all walk in cooling and freezing units that use digital technology also have analogue thermometers installed in them.
If you think a digital temperature gun will stay calibrated through it's life and without giving at least one false reading you must live in la-la land. And I'm sure you have calibrated it using $25,000 thermal imagining equipment
.....just like I had my family car tuned by Maserati.
At the end of the day you can use the old "baby bottle test" method to test your enclosure temperatures for all I care. I simply stated that using a single digital form of temperature reading is taking a risk that I personally won't take with my live animals.
