On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 17:39:20 +0000, Adam Preble wrote:

larry wrote:
When dealing with chocolate, you should use a double pot. bottom pot
has water to heat up the top pot which has the chocolate. if you only
use one pot to melt, you have to use a very, very low heat. it's not
the fault of the temp probe. chocolate burns very easy, and the pot
catches the heat from a very hot flame, and conducts it too fast.

if you used an IR type sensor, you have to worry about getting false
readings off the pan and the heat waves from the side of the pan
eminating from the flame itself.

LarryLarry

Well I wasn't just melting chocolate, but making fudge from it. There
is a pretty specific temperature I need to reach, just like when making
candy. I don't have a candy thermometer (yet), and I was thinking the
digital one would be able to work. Unfortunately, the probe was
under-reporting the heat, and I ended up scalding the whole mess. I
don't really see why there can't be a way to use a digital thermometer
for that kind of thing.

What kind of "digital thermometer" was it? If it was a fever thermometer,
then you'd get this kind of result - one, they're not designed to go that
hot, and two, they sacrifice response time for 0.1 deg. F accuracy.

I've used probe-type thermocouples to monitor the temperature of bread
in a vacuum chamber - the product was supposed to be a "vacuum cooler"
for a bakery. Normally, when you get bread out of the oven, you have to
let it sit for hours to cool, so it doesn't gum up the slicer. In a
vacuum cooler, it reaches room temperature in minutes. (the water
evaporating "sucks the heat out" - remember Mr. Wizard, when he froze
and boiled water simultaneously?)

Anyway, the probe thermocouple responded fast enough to track the temp.
within a few degrees. IOW, the speed of response wasn't even an issue.

Do some googling - they're out there. Say,
http://www.google.com/search?q=thermocouple+probe

And, from the book of cooking tips - you sometimes have to stir quite
enthusiastically to keep your mixture from scorching. :-)

Good Luck!
Rich