The holiday season is officially upon us, and here at Thirty One Whiskey we like to highlight great gift ideas. And whether you’re making lots of turkey or prime rib for the holidays, or already thinking about next summer’s barbecue season, what better way to ensure your meat is cooked perfectly than the MeatStick 4X.
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Right off the bat, I want to be transparent about how we procured this. At Thirty-One Whiskey, we take pride in purchasing all of the materials used for a review. In any instances where we are provided a sample, we let you know about it up front and are transparent about where those materials came from. In this case, the product we are reviewing today was provided for free by the manufacturer to test out, but we believe that we are able to still adequately maintain our impartiality since the manufacturer did not influence or edit our review prior to publication.
Okay, with that fine print out of the way… let’s get into it.
I have been a long-time user of the Meater product, and absolutely love it. I’ve cooked countless items using it, and everything comes out perfectly. That said, I do not want this article to be a compare and contrast review — I want to look at the MeatStick as its own product.
Imagine being so obsessed with perfect meat that you and your friends create a company to ensure that no meat is abused ever again. (Easy enough for me.) According to their website:
As native Californians, the idea for The MeatStick came to us after an afternoon BBQ with friends. While we were chatting and playing a game of charades, their 4 expensive New York Strips were overcooked and completely ruined the mood! After trying several wired cooking thermometers, the problem was still the same: you had to walk over to your thermometer to check the progress of your meat. And with the drive to solve this problem, The MeatStick’s journey began.
I can completely relate. When I started to embrace the low and slow method of perfect Texas barbeque, I started with a wired thermometer. But there were some hassles that came with being tethered to the smoker (primarily, that I didn’t want to put down my bourbon and get out of the pool to see how the brisket was doing). I don’t call it lazy, I call it being efficient.
A wired probe with a handheld unit was quickly acquired, but even then it wasn’t a perfect solution since I was still only getting one temperature reading and it wasn’t giving me the control I wanted.
The MeatStick fixes all of these problems elegantly – a Bluetooth powered device that sends four temperature readings directly to your phone.
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This probe takes the guesswork out of cooking. The MeatStick is a wireless cooking thermometer that gives you not one reading, but four. There is an external temperature probe, giving you real time reading about the current temperature outside of the meat. There are also three internal probes, one at the point, and two more up further up the probe. This allows you to have full visibility into the progress of your cook at multiple points in your meat.
The internal thermometers will read temperatures from 32-212 degrees F, and the external probe will read temperatures from 32-572 degrees — plenty of range for most grills and meat. It’s also completely sealed, meaning it’s deep fryer, sous vide, or dishwasher safe. You could use the MeatStick with a Thanksgiving turkey, drop it in the deep fryer, and have delicious worry free turkey.
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There is a companion app for both iOS and Android that will sync your MeatStick with your phone, which claims to provide you a guess free guided cooking system.
To really test this out, I grabbed a 5 pound pork loin from the store, rubbed it with my favorite cowboy meat rub, and fired up the Traeger.
The first thing I notice is that the app is slightly clunky. There are a ton of alerts and notifications on your phone throughout the setup and cooking process. They really stress the proper use of the MeatStick… which is not necessarily a bad thing if you are new to the product, but it’s slightly annoying after you are familiar. I would prefer if you could turn off some of the alerts and streamline the app.
Like I mentioned, there is a lot of information available to you once your cook starts.
The four temperature probes are each called out, and plotted out over time on a chart. A donut chart tracks the progress to the desired temperature. The elapsed cooking time and estimated time remaining are also visible.
If you are using charcoal, of other fuel that may have big swings, there is also a desired ambient temperature range and possible alert range. Having a Traeger where the ambient temperature is set it and forget it makes this feature unnecessary for me, but I can see how this is helpful for other situations.
The MeatStick is designed to push an alert to your phone when the internal most probe reaches a specified temperature. In my cook, the alert was set to 140 degrees for a cook that was complete at 145 degrees.
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This model is the MeatStick 4X probe, which boasts an impressive 650 foot max range. (For those of you who are mathematically challenged, that is more than a 1/10th of a mile.) I definitely was going to put this distance to the test in my townhouse — it’s not just straight distance, but also how it performed through the roof and floors.
Well, in my testing, it did okay. I could go anywhere outside and would get a solid connection to the MeatStick. I could go inside, and down one level with a great connection. However, when I got to my kitchen (two floors down) the connection would start to get spotty. Now, my situation is unique — most people do not need the connection to be stable through a roof and a floor — so take that for what you will. When you are looking at exterior line of site, you should be safe for a two-football field radius… which sounds just about perfect for a tailgate.
If you really need to go the distance, there is a wifi add-on that will allow your MeatStick to access the world wide web. I did not test this, it’s worth noting that it’s available.
Let’s get back to my cook! The pork loin hit 145 degrees, I got an alert from the MeatStick, and I pulled it off the Traeger. After a resting period, it was sliced revealing perfectly juicy pork that was part of a delicious dinner.
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Overall, the MeatStick is a great product allowing you to go about your day while your smoker works its magic on your meat. It’s got a great range even without having to rely on wifi, and gives you multiple levels of measurement for the thicker cuts of meat. After several other uses, it’s been consistently reliable and has always produced perfectly cooked meat.
The MeatStick 4X retails for $124.99, and the more limited range MeatStick 4 retails for $94.99. There are other models and add-ons available at TheMeatStick.com.
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MeatStick 4X Wireless Thermometer
Product Website: themeatstick.com
MeatStick 4: $94.99 (Amazon)
MeatStick 4X: $124.99 (Amazon)
WiFi MeatStick: $264.99 (Amazon)
Overall 5/5
Cooking should be simple, the MeatStick lets you automate the grilling and focus on friends and great drinks.
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