Back when I was a young man, I gave my sister one of these. At the time, she was recently married with her first of three children. With a husband who might have to work late, or when she had guests over, the warmer would keep food warm and edible for an extended period of time.
The Amazon Prime fairy dropped this off this morning. I am optimistic it will be put to good use.
My 25 year friend from Chicago and I just talked about these things. His (deceased) wife and grandmother both had these, which he wound up with and likes, although they were much more useful for a family that is bigger than one. Mom could make breakfast before the kids were up, and just give them a warm breakfast without having to worry exactly when the meal would actually occur.
His daughter also has one, and loves it. I guess these are a big “must have” item for women. It is very low tech – just a heating element connected to a thermostat.
I put breakfast on it, intending to let it sit for 15 minutes, but my phone rang and it was more like an hour. The waffles were still warm and not dried out, and the maple syrup was warm (the butter had melted in the syrup inside a coffee cup). It is everything that I hoped it would be, even though Countess doesn’t yet agree.
Interesting. I love this “general purpose” blog! Great conversation about all kinds of things.
I had never considered buying one of those, and in fact, just this week repaired my microwave. The door switch needed replacing as the fan would come on whenever I opened the microwave door. Easy fix with parts from Amazon for $7.
I hope you’d be so kind as to give us a pros/cons compared to a microwave for warming waffles. Could see how they keep them crisper.
I have once owned a mini-version of that for holding a coffee cup on my desk and keeping the coffee warm… your post has me considering replacing that.. I don’t know whatever happened to it, but I liked it a lot.
The most important thing to know is that it is not for cooking. The temperature on high is only 200°, too low to boil water. In my experiment, I still cooked the waffles in the toaster, and put some cold cooked sausage links with only a small surface area.
Because it is only 200° maximum, it will not melt plastic, and water loss is minimal, especially in a closed container. The example I have used is that the Harris-Teeter across the street has hot deli specials that go on sale at 4:00. They come in a sealed (leaky) plastic container, usually with juices in the bottom. The problem comes if you are not going to eat until 6:30 and have other things you need to make. You can put the container on the tray and know it will still be fresh and moist, at least as much as it would be in the store. Note that it only heats from the bottom, not heat lamps from the top.
Good restaurants know that the purpose of a plate is to keep the food warm – the food is not there to warm the plate. So even if there is no food to keep warm, it makes a fine plate warmer. The contents on the plates can be assembled and sit contentedly while doing other last minute tasks like putting out place settings, filling water glasses, pouring drinks, turning on music, etc.
By taking the plate of food out of the critical path, what should be hot stays hot, what should be cold is still cold, and things get much less complicated. If the husband is in the middle of writing a long blog post, I don’t have to leave to go to the table in mid-thought to avoid having a cold dinner and warm glass of milk. The objective is to de-escalate annoyances that grow into problems.
What I learned was heating the syrup worked fine, and melted the butter. You never want to heat the entire bottle because the sugar will crystallize. The waffle was as OK as toaster waffles can be, but the sausage was not warm, because so little of it was in contact with the plate. I also did not have the heat very high.
I am going to assume it would work acceptably for day old foods from the slow cooker, but it is too early to tell. Countess has agreed that it should be in a different location, but I kept the experiment in a counter area that was only used for storage.
Plate warmer is good. My parents have one. I remember when I was in high school my mother saving a plate of food when I was late with after school activities and worked in the evenings at the gas station my senior year in high school. It was good.
Kept Mac & cheese ready to eat !
have a good one
rob
Thats cool CC. My parent had a microwave that had that heat sensor on top of the oven area, that opened and would not let the Microwave start up.
I replaced that for them, it was a $6 part, that I had ordered from
Newark supply. They have good electronic parts if you need them.
I am glad you fixed it instead of throwing it out.
Yeah its a good blog,
best
Parrott
I learned two eye opening things from my 14 year old daughter. A couple years ago, she offered me something she cooked in the kitchen that amazed me. I asked how she learned to cook it. She said youtube – if you don’t know how to do something, just watch the video on youtube she said. That is how I knew what to replace and how to replace it on the microwave.
The other was a when she was in third grade. She said her teacher told her to come home and ask us a question that her teacher guaranteed we would all get wrong: “Name all the oceans in the world. ” She said we got it wrong because of our age. I thought she was kidding but google proved her right…. at least I knew enough to tell her about Pluto. (not the Disney character.)