SteakChamp, The Grilling Thermometer

The SteakChamp is a $59 thermometer you stab into your steak, and it flashes when you’ve cooked your steak to the desired doneness. You’ll need one per steak, making this a $200 investment if you’re serving four. It might cost you even more, since they’re not adjustible, so you’ll need a couple each of rare, medium-rare, medium, and medium-well SteakChamps if you’re planning on SteakChamping your steaks all four ways.

There’s an existing version of this concept that costs $9 for a four-pack (the Charcoal Companion Button Steak Thermometers.) Beyond that, learning to control the heat and timing of the food you’re cooking trumps any gadget you might buy. But this is a world whose economy is bolstered by convincing us that skills are too much work, and that the goods we consume are the one true way to a life well lived. Our ingenuity, we’re told, is just a way for us to cheap out on buying the good stuff. Our techniques and traditions are too time-consuming and cerebral to compete with a stock image of a smiling face next to a piece of trash we have to buy to live a complete life. Our time is stolen and sold back to us as convenience. Our health is stolen and sold back to us as pills. And at the end of it, we still fight with each other, endlessly, to the last moment. Not for truth, happiness, or love, but to get more crap.

SteakChamp.