Hot take: a $12 oven thermometer beat 20 years of trusting the dial
For two decades I cooked by the little number on the knob and just ate whatever came out, including a tray of cookies last month that went from pale to charcoal in under 4 minutes. I figured my oven ran hot so I started pulling things 5 minutes early, which worked about half the time and gave me raw chicken thighs the other half. Then my wife brought home a $12 oven thermometer from a hardware store in Boise and it turned out the thing runs 40 degrees cold at the start and 25 degrees hot once it gets going. Now I hang the thermometer on the middle rack and set a kitchen timer, and I have not burned a single sheet pan of vegetables in 3 weeks. It feels dumb that the fix was 12 bucks, but I would rather look dumb than scrape another blackened pizza off the stone. What is the one cheap tool that made you realize you were blaming yourself for your oven's problems?