Yummly Smart Thermometer Review

The Yummly Smart Thermometer is a Bluetooth-only, smart wireless probe thermometer with two temperature sensors to monitor both food and cooking chamber temperatures.

This thermometer is not only wireless in the sense that it can connect to a mobile smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth using the Yummly app, it also literally has no wires connecting it to anything.

The market for smart wireless probe meat thermometers has steadily grown in the last few years, mostly due to the increased availability and competition from brands such as MEATER, The MeatStick, the Tappecue AirProbe, and the Yummly.

The Tappecue AirProbe2 Review

The MEATER Plus Review

The MeatStick X Meat Thermometer Review

This category of thermometer is often referred to as “smart wireless probe thermometers”, which can be confusing.

Is the wireless term referring to the fact there are no physical wires attached or that they send and receive wireless signals?

Most people think of the term “wireless” as referring to sending and receiving information via radio waves such as how a cell phone operates, as well as any WiFi, Bluetooth, or Remote meat thermometer.

Perhaps these thermometers should be categorized as “wire-free wireless probe thermometers”.

So why the sudden popularity of this type of thermometer? Is it more convenient not having probe cables to deal with while closing an oven door or grill cover?

Is it the ability to monitor both cooking and food temperatures at the same time, which the thermometer can then use to estimate when your food is done?

Or perhaps you do a lot of rotisserie cooking and you would like to monitor your meat as it twirls around?

In this review of the Yummly Smart Thermometer, I will delve into these and other questions as well as its features, usability, accuracy, durability, and price to determine if a wire-free wireless probe thermometer is a worthwhile addition to your cooking toolkit.

Yummly Smart Meat Thermometer

The Yummly Smart Bluetooth Meat Thermometer (model number YTE000W5KB ) was originally released in January 2020 and designed to function with the Yummly app which is available in both iOS and Android versions.

The Yummly app has been around for a while, being named “Best of 2014” in the Apple App Store. It is a mobile application that provides personalized recipe recommendations based on the information you input about yourself.

The Yummly brand was acquired in 2017 by the Whirlpool Corporation, which owns many affiliated brands such as KitchenAid and Maytag.

In fact, you might see this thermometer advertised as the KitchenAid YTE000W5KB or Whirlpool YTE000W5KB thermometer.

Whirlpool and its associated brands have taken advantage of this integration.

KitchenAid has partnered with Yummly to give users of their products access to Yummly’s vast database of recipes.

This thermometer also has the capability to communicate with some smart connected Whirlpool ovens and ranges.

I can see this having some benefits, but I’m not sure that the video marketing this collaboration is highlighting or solving a common cooking scenario.

Do you need to have a connected Whirlpool oven to use the Yummly Smart Thermometer? No.

View Yummly on Amazon

Features and Specifications

Here are the reported features and specifications of the Yummly Smart Thermometer.

Features

• Magnetic Charging Dock/ Bluetooth Connector

The charging dock takes 2-AAA batteries and charges the Yummly while not in use. It takes around 60 minutes to fully charge with a reported 25 hours of cooking time. It acts as the Bluetooth connection for the thermometer when in use.

The green light indicates there’s power and a stable blue light indicates a Bluetooth connection.

• Probe Extractor

This is a nice touch. The handles of wireless probe thermometers are extremely hot and can be hard to remove when lodged in the breast of a roast chicken, the extractor actually works better than using an oven glove when removing a hot thermometer.

• Bluetooth connectivity

There are no WiFi capabilities with this thermometer, just Bluetooth.

• Built-in Timers and Alerts

The Yummly app will let you know how long your food will take to cook based upon the information you give it such as meat type, meat cut, and doneness.

• Assisted Cooking Programs

The Yummly app can help guide you when you select what you’re cooking from the different types of meat such as beef, lamb, chicken, salmon, turkey, duck, and pork.

• Dual-Temperature Sensors

There is one temperature sensor in the probe end around 1.75 to 2 inches from the tip that measures the food temperature while there is a temperature sensor in the black ceramic handle that measures the ambient cooking temperature.

Specifications

• Maximum Internal Measuring Temperature- 210°F (99°C)
• Maximum Ambient Measuring Temperature- 572°F (300°C)
• Dimensions- 4¼” L × ¼” W × ¼” H
• Probe Diameter- 5 millimeters

The Yummly is the shortest of the four smart wireless meat probes I tested as well as the thickest in diameter.

• Rechargeable Internal Battery with a reported 25 hours battery life while cooking.
• Rated IPX4 Waterproof- Resistant to water splashes but you can use for Sous Vide.
• Bluetooth range of up to 150 feet.

The wireless connection of the Yummly is as advertised. I was able to maintain a Bluetooth connection between my iPhone and the docking station placed in my kitchen up to a distance of over 100 feet.

Also, the Yummly never lost its connection during the many cooking sessions performed to test its accuracy.

Usability

The Yummly Smart Meat Thermometer is easy to use once you get the batteries inserted into the charging dock and let it charge for at least 30 minutes.

As mentioned earlier you will need to download the Yummly app from the Apple or Google app stores. The Yummly app has all of the control features of this thermometer.

Whether you decide to take advantage of all of the recipe features and guidance is up to you.

I signed up for a Yummly Pro subscription to see if it offered any extra features for the thermomfeter portion of the app and as far as I could tell, it didn’t add anything.

I was hoping for a saveable cook history to view but there is no feature. Once your cook is done that information is lost.

To cook something using the thermometer you will need to pull the probe out of the dock and press connect on the Yummly app.

Once connected, you’ll be taken through a series of four steps to set up your cooking session.

The first screen will prompt you to choose what type of meat you’re cooking, the second screen will ask what cut of meat it is, the screen after that will ask the doneness, and finally, it will ask how you’re cooking your food.

I do like the doneness option for many of the different meat selections. An example is choosing the doneness for salmon. You are given four doneness options with corresponding internal temperatures for salmon ranging from semi-cooked at 113°F to well-done at 140°F.

Once you’ve selected all the pertinent cook information and started cooking your food, the app will begin to calculate an estimated done time using that information along with the current temperature.

This assisted cooking feature would be great if it actually worked. In real-life cooking scenarios, the cooking time estimator isn’t helpful, with the estimated time changing greatly during the duration of a cook.

Tracking the temperature of a whole roast chicken revealed the Yummly thermometer to be off in both time estimates and temperature readings.

In one test, I inserted the MEATER Plus, the Tappecue AirProbe, the MeatStick, the Yummly, two Thermoworks Signals probes, and two FireBoard 2 Pro temperature probes to track the progress of a roast chicken that’s probably wondering what it did to deserve this type of punishment.

There are different temperature gradients in the chicken breast of a whole chicken while it’s roasting so keep in mind there isn’t one correct temperature in the photo below.

However, there are temperature reading anomalies, and the Yummly definitely was one, reading higher than the other thermometers.

I set up the Yummly thermometer to track the temperature of a whole roast chicken, inputting the corresponding information in the Yummly app.

After 45 minutes in the oven, the Yummly estimated the whole chicken would be done in another 30 minutes, or 9:10 am. This estimation turned out to be off by 30 minutes as it took another hour and finished around 9:40 am.

The main culprit leading to this miscalculation is the inaccurate ambient temperature reading on all of the smart wireless meat probes.

All of the smart wireless probes displayed ambient temperatures that deviated anywhere from 20 to 50 degrees from the Thermoworks Signals and the FireBoard 2 Pro.

This seems like a good time to discuss the accuracy of this thermometer.

Accuracy

I tested the Yummly alongside the MEATER Plus, Tappecue AirProbe2, and the MeatStick in a series of cooks to measure their accuracy.

I also used the incredibly accurate Thermoworks Signals and the FireBoard 2 Pro WiFi Meat Thermometer during these cooks as a reference point for both the internal temperature and ambient temperature points.

See the review of the Thermoworks Signals.

Here’s the review of the FireBoard 2 Pro.

I cooked two whole roast chickens, a brisket flat, a brisket point, and multiple bratwursts over a series of cooking sessions noting both the ambient temperature and internal temperature at certain designated time intervals.

As a group, the ambient temperature readings of the smart wireless probes deviated 20°F to 40°F from the ambient readings of the Thermoworks and FireBoard thermometers.

In all of the tests, the Yummly tended to give much higher internal temperature readings than the other smart wireless probes.

The Yummly did stand out from the rest in getting up to the ambient temperature of the oven (or its reading of the oven temperature) faster than the rest in most of the tests.

These results beg the question, is it possible for a wire-free, dual-sensor meat probe to accurately measure the ambient cooking temperature?

I’m not sure if it is.

Durability

This thermometer has an internal battery and you can’t use it for deep frying, sous vide, or any submerging in liquid.

The probe needs to be inserted into food up to the black ceramic ambient temperature handle to keep the battery and the internal sensor safe from temperatures above 210°F.

It is rated IPX4 waterproof, which means you can wash it off in the sink, but I wouldn’t put it in the dishwasher.

I also broke the lid to the battery dock when trying to insert the 2 AAA batteries the first time. Apparently, I’m not the only person who’s done this.

There’s no literature in the enclosed user guide. After a bit of searching, I found this video explaining the correct way. I pressed the tab down many times as per the video and it still ended up breaking.

I’m willing to accept the blame for this, however, I’m still reminded of my inadequacy every time I use it and look at the lid barely attached.

How durable is the Yummly then? If you follow the guidelines and keep it inserted up to the handle you shouldn’t have any issues.

However, there are more durable wire-free wireless meat probes such as the Tappecue AirProbe2 (IP67 waterproof) and the MeatStick (claimed to be dishwasher and sous vide safe, no IP rating though). The MEATER claims it is “water-resistant” and safe to use for sous vide or placing under running water for cleaning.

Speaking of other smart wireless meat probes, how does the Yummly stack up to the competition?

Price

The price tag for the Yummly Smart Thermometer ranges from $99 to $129.

The lower price is right in the price range of the other smart wireless meat probes; the MEATER Plus is $99, the MeatStick X is also $99, the Tappecue AirProbe2 is $79.

These are not cheap.

What can $99 get you when you look for a meat thermometer with dual temperature monitoring outside of the smart wireless meat probe category?

There are some of the best meat thermometers on the market from Thermoworks such as the Thermoworks Smoke Remote Meat Thermometer, and the Thermoworks Square DOT.

The Flame Boss WiFi Meat Thermometer is also half the price of many of the smart wireless meat probes.

There are also Bluetooth meat thermometers from ThermoPro such as the ThermoPro TP25 and the TP25H2 Bluetooth Meat Thermometers that offer great value and functionality at a much lower price point.

Final Thoughts

I want to like the Yummly Smart Thermometer.

The ability to accurately track both the cooking temperature and the internal temperature of a piece of meat using a single probe not connected to anything is a great concept with many useful implementations.

If you can accurately measure your cooking temperature and the internal temperature of your food at the same time you can also accurately estimate when your food will be done.

For this to happen, every part of this equation must be accurate. Unfortunately, the Yummly does not give an accurate ambient temperature reading.

The Yummly’s internal temperature reading was also higher than the median average in all of my temperature tests.

The MEATER Plus, the MeatStick, and the Tappecue AirProbe weren’t much better in their ambient temperature reading abilities, so this isn’t just a Yummly issue.

Could it be the evaporative cooling on the surface of the meat while it cooks that causes this lower ambient temperature reading?

Perhaps, but this effect should be minimal when the probe is placed inside a bratwurst. The ambient temperature reading was still off on all of the smart wireless meat probes I tested.

I will be doing a more in-depth roundup of all of the smart wireless meat probes soon, but for now, I would place the Yummly in fourth place behind the other models.