Best Thermometer for Deep Frying

If you have ever made a batch of french fries or onion rings at home, let alone a bunch of hot wings, you know that deep frying can be tricky. The web is full of bad advice on the topic, like “Check to see if the oil is at 350°F by dropping a breadcrumb in it to see if it sizzles.” That’s pre-industrial kitchen babble right there. That, my friends, is not how you get reproducible results.

We at ThermoWorks are dedicated to making the quality products you need to help you take your cooking—including your deep frying—to a new level. This includes finding the optimal temperature for frying a turkey or even critical temperatures for chicken. So what, among our arsenal of industrial-grade thermometers should you use for your deep frying?

Best Thermometer for Deep Frying

Our recommendation for deep frying is the ChefAlarm^®. While you may think of the ChefAlarm as a leave-in probe thermometer for roasting more than anything else, it excels in the deep fryer, too. The pro-series interchangeable probes are accurate to within ±2°F (1.1°C), so you can always rest assured that you are getting a correct reading on your frying oil temperature. (Just be sure to use the included pot clip with your probe as the transitions on the probes cannot withstand the oil temps and will corrode if oil gets into them.)

But there are more advantages than ‘just’ accuracy. When you add food to a fryer, you almost always get a temperature drop in the oil. The ChefAlarm has a high- and low-temperature alarm, meaning you can set a range of temperatures within which you want your oil temp to stay, and be alerted if it exceeds those bounds. If the temp drops further than you want it to, turn up the heat. If it gets too high, turn the heat down. Try that trick with a breadcrumb.

As we always stress at ThermoWorks, temperature is everything.  But that doesn’t mean you don’t need a timer, too. And the built-in timer can act as a reminder for you to check temps, add ingredients, or get the dipping sauce ready.

You can also use the Smoke™ dual-channel thermometer, which also works with the Pro-series^® probes. Or, if you feel like you want something with a bigger ‘engine,’ you can try a ThermaQ^® thermometer with its dual-channel thermocouple probes (the ChefAlarm and Smoke use thermistor sensors) and get accuracy down to ±0.7°F (0.4°C). Why don’t we just recommend these for the best frying thermometer? Well, neither of these has a timer, and both of these are more expensive than the ChefAlarm. So the combination of convenience and a great price is another reason it is our top pick for deep frying.

So there you have it, our case for the ChefAlarm as the best deep-fry thermometer on the market. Try one for your next fish fry, donut party, or frozen-cheese-stick binge. You’ll get great results every time.

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for more on deep frying, take a look at these articles:

Fired Chicken with temperature tips	Homemade french fries: golden and crisp

And for more “best thermometer for…” check these out:

Best thermometers for candy making	What kind of thermometer do I need?