![]() ![]() The unrelenting criticism leveled at pop-up timers, in short, hasn’t undermined the market for them, and manufacturers know why. (Volk, alas, doesn’t keep stats on how many consumers rip out the thermometers once home.) ![]() That number represents about a third of Volk’s annual pop-up timer sales, says company president Ed Gustafson. Volk Enterprises, the big daddy of pop-up timers in the United States, estimates it sells about 30 million units around the Thanksgiving holiday, mostly to processors that insert the timers into birds before they’re shipped to supermarkets. ![]() Despite kitchen gurus who promote the use of digital probes, Thermapens and other tools to accurately gauge the temperature of a bird, millions of Americans continue to rely on those slender, often disposable timers drilled directly into their turkeys. When it comes to determining the doneness of a Thanksgiving turkey, the gap between the pros and home cooks could hardly be wider. ![]() The company’s birds have “never, never, never” had timers in them, says Carol Miller, supervisor for the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line. Įven Butterball, the brand probably most familiar to home cooks, doesn’t endorse the pop-up timer. From Martha Stewart to Consumer Reports to Cook’s Illustrated, the pros all express little faith in the gadget. A half-century later, professionals actively steer amateurs away from the timers to avoid that very fate: arid, overcooked birds bound for the nearest dog bowl. The instrument was designed in the 1960s, back when home cooks often relied on unreliable time-per-pound recommendations, to prevent folks from roasting their turkeys into dehydrated meat sacks. “If I had my way, the world would be rid of it.” The only service this meat-based jack-in-the-box can provide is to “inform you when your turkey is beyond edibleness,” López-Alt says. He says he has plenty: He rips them from uncooked turkeys all the time. Kenji López-Alt, the respected managing culinary director for the Web site Serious Eats, how much experience he has with pop-up timers. (Joshua Yospyn/For The Washington Post)īefore the two of us waste too much time on the subject, I ask J. In all, nine turkeys were roasted in the name of science. All but one of this bird’s plastic plungers popped up during a test conducted at the CulinAerie cooking school on 14th Street NW. ![]()
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