Meater Pro XL: The Ultimate in Wireless Cooking

First …

It’s really easy to ruin food, isn’t it? We all know people who don’t seem to care .. overcooked eggs, overcooked bacon, overcooked veg, fish and worst of all, overcooked meat. Now you might have the rare talent one of my buddies has where he can determine something is perfectly cooked just by looking at it, but I don’t have that talent and I do enough roasting during the year to really need a way to get perfect results, meaning perfectly cooked, every time, not just randomly. It’s not the only way but cooking to the temperature that works for the doneness you want is a theoretically simple method that should work every time. So, I have a pretty high-end 4 probe set with wired probes from a well known brand and although it works ok it has 3 major drawbacks that I deal with every time:

• Wires! When wired probes were the only products they were better than the old mechanical thermometers but now that we have products like Meater wireless probes, the wires are really a pain, especially when there are 3 or 4 of them. It’s not so bad when using 1 probe but with all 4 it’s a hassle.
• Dedicated, hardwired control units that have limited functions and features and can’t be updated and don’t have connectivity with your phone. 
• My unit and many similar products use regular batteries and I’ve found I have to remove them for storage or risk the leaky/corrosive battery syndrome (LCBS).

Intro to the Meater Pro XL

The Meater Pro XL is a high-quality, flexible, total comprehensive cooking solution. The overall design and appearance is very much in the spirit of products designed by Bang & Olafson or Apple. In other words, simple, elegant, high-quality in fit and finish, and easy and intuitive to setup and use but at the same time, powerful and full-featured.

The bamboo-finished charger base stores the probes, is the charger and houses the control module and accomplishes the perfect balance of size, form-factor and functionality, enabling using Meater Pro XL standalone, without connecting to your phone, or connected and controlled by your iPhone or Android phone. It has a simple but very functional, retractable stand.

The probes themselves are the star. They’re constructed of polished stainless steel and feature not one but FIVE internal sensors. You might think this is overkill but actually it’s big deal because if you can monitor the food internal temperature in more than one place it’s easier to see hot or cold spots and if one or two sensors ever go out over the life of the probe, it’s still usable. Not so with a probe that has only one sensor. But a real breakthrough for me is the fact that there is an AMBIENT sensor at the exposed end of each probe that shows you the constant temperature of your oven or cooking enclosure. For me this is super-important because my oven doesn’t do a good job of temperature control  and if you’re using a barbecue grill or Kamado (ceramic egg) or any other cooker without temperature indication you’ll always know what that temperature is – I find that combination of internal and external temperature is really really helpful. By using the internal probe sensors and the tip ambient sensor your cooking is foolproof: that’s exactly what I experienced on this Prime Rib cook.

I don’t know about you but for me, well-designed apps have made life so much better than before and the Meater app is no exception. Paired with the hardware, this app can, on one hand, let you totally geek-out and look at temperature graphs, cooking histories, all of the thermal dynamics as well as let you set different foods, pre-defined doneness and cooking environments, or … simply use the Meater to watch and monitor temperature.  So, it’s as simple and easy or as detailed and sophisticated as you want. I have a feeling that most of us won’t delve deeply into all the features in the app BUT they’re there in the app and it seems obvious that learning the more detailed functions in the app will yield better more predictable results if you want to get further into them.

So you can easily monitor at-a-glance, the temperature readings of all four probes, or as many as you’re using, as well as the oven or barbecue, etc, temperature that the probes see (Figure 1). Figure 2 shows a visual reading of critical temperatures – internal, target temp and ambient temp for a given probe, in this case, 2. And if you prefer, you could simply use the Meater/App combo to simply track your internal temperature as mentioned. But the app has an insane number of features, too many to describe here, but everything that even the nerdiest cook could ever want to monitor. Some more really cool feature screens are:

In Figure 3 above you can see just a partial listing of the multitude of different food type presets that make setup and roasting really easy fool-proof and repeatable. And check out the Temperature/Time graph in Figure 4 above with the ability to create notes so that it’s easier to repeat your results on the next cook. And there are many more features too numerous to go through here. You get the idea, though, that this total cooking solution is packed with cool, useful features AND can and will be updated over time, especially through user feedback.

Cooking With the Meater Pro XL

In order to test-drive the system I defrosted a 3-4 lb. boneless Costco choice ribeye. I’ve found that the closer you can get the roast to room temperature, the easier and better everything turns out, so I inserted the probes BEFORE cooking to monitor the internal temp as it warmed up to room temp. I dry-brined it with kosher salt overnight, hence the white spots.

It’s crazy how long a roast at an internal temp of 41 degrees takes to get to room temp! This time, I didn’t wait but started cooking once it hit 60 degrees. Here’s how I like to do it:

Ok, so there a LOT of ways to roast a Prime Rib, but this is the method I mostly use. Notice the legacy, wired probes in the foreground and two Meater probes of the four included, inserted, one right in the middle and one to monitor the end. As I’ve said, this is such a game-changer for me because I could easily watch and wait until I had an internal temp of 60 degrees, then place the roast in a 200 degree oven BUT found, as I suspected, that my oven’s temperature was NOT as indicated and in fact, changed during the cook. With Meater’s ambient temp sensors located at the outside probe tips I knew this and was able to change my oven setting as needed – something I’ve never been able to do. And oh yeah, those cheap dial-type thermometers you hang in the oven don’t work, and what are you going to do, keep opening the oven to check them? You get the idea. By the way, I always use the reverse-sear method so I removed it at an internal temp of 120 degrees, rested it for 45 minutes, then cranked the oven to 500 degrees and browned it for 10 minutes after coating it with a garlic-butter slurry – yah, that’s ALL garlic!

Here’s what the Prime Rib looked like when I cut an end-slice off (Figure 7 above) and Meater indicated the internal temp was 130. Idk about you but it sure is MY idea of perfection! And if I’d been roasting the whole Ribeye I would have used all four sensors and I’m certain I would have obtained the same results. And check this out:

I tend to try to roast to just under Medium Rare, especially for a larger roast, so that you can heat up leftovers without overcooking them. But with Meater I know that I can confidently get it to any desired internal temp without that fear-factor I’ve had so many times in the past. No doubt about it: these were my best roasting results EVER.

Final Thoughts

Should you buy the Meater Pro XL? If you do a fair amount of baking and roasting, absolutely. Or, even if you only do the holiday Turkey or Roast Beef roasts once or twice year, keeping in mind it’s great for the barbecue also, I would still recommend it because its so easy to use, guarantees the best results all the time, and is built to last. Perhaps one reason you might hesitate to purchase the Meater Pro XL or similar systems is price – it’s not an inexpensive solution and yes there are more than a few cheaper tools out there. However, for what it does I think it’s well worth the price and with careful shopping you can often find very good pricing, such as on Amazon. And if you don’t need the Pro XL with it’s FOUR probes, the single or two probe kits have the same quality and functionality at lower prices.

My Last Word: Watch for specials, promotions or price reductions and buy the Meater that fits your needs but it’s a BUY.

Please note that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I have no official relationship with Amazon.

Home