Infrared thermometers have plummeted in price in recent years, and are now inexpensive gadgets for the home cook, not to mention the pros.
What are the primary uses of an infrared thermometer in the kitchen?
What can you do with an infrared thermometer
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Related Solutions
Look for a strong motor and thick blades. If the blades are thin, they're likely to warp over time. The motor needs to be able to spin those blades through the liquid.
Look for a thick glass container. The plastic ones are unlikely to deal with the heat of things like soups and sauces being dumped in.
Check the gasket between the glass container and the piece that attaches the blades. A thin, flimsy gasket is likely to start leaking before a thicker, softer gasket.
Look at the number of teeth on the connection from the motor to the blade. The more teeth, the greater the surface area being used to distribute the power to the blade mechanism and is less likely to wear out.
Overall, as with many things, one of the quickest ways to tell a good one is to weigh them both. The heavier item is better. No one pays for shipping extra weight unless it's there for a good reason.
(note that the "heavier" rule doesn't apply to electronics like cellphones/computers, etc. where the cost of making it small is actually higher)
With thin cuts of meat (like chicken breast or a steak), you want to make sure you put the thermometer in to the thin side of the meat so that the whole thermometer goes in to the meat, rather than putting it in through the "top" so that only a little of the thermometer is in the meat. If you're putting it in the top, you can get wildly inaccurate temperatures. Also make sure that the thermometer isn't touching a pan, exposed to air, or touching a bone. Any of those can have a negative effect.
Also, you only need to cook chicken to 74C / 165F. That may be part of the problem in your case.
You may also want to check that your thermometer is accurate. You can stick it in boiling water to check that it reads 100C / 212F (assuming of course it goes up that high).
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Best Answer
Infrared thermometers work very well when measuring the temperature of hot oil. For deep frying it's not a big deal, as standard probe thermometers work fine. But for shallow frying or sauteeing, the IR thermometer does an excellent job at providing the temperature of the oil. (Note that IR thermometers are not accurate when measuring the temperature of a dry steel pan, as the shininess makes the pan look much cooler than it is. IR thermometers work fine on dry cast iron pans, though!)
IR thermometers work rather poorly when measuring the temperature of hot water, however! Rather than measuring the temperature of the water surface, which is usually similar to the mass of the water due to convection, it measures the average temperature of the water vapor coming off the surface! In my experience, boiling water measures about 200 F with an IR thermometer.