It is undeniable that hot food always tastes better than the one turned cold. Along with the food tasting great, it is also protected against the attack of bacteria. Keeping the dish hot is not tough nowadays as various appliances offer help. You can use a microwave, oven or slow cooker for this.
However, if you are not indoors or do not have access to such electrical appliances, you need other ways to keep the cooked food warm without electricity. Fortunately, there are tons of ways to help you do exactly that even when you are far away from electricity.
Why Should You Be Keeping Your Food Warm In The First Place?
Nothing else can beat eating the home-cooked food on the picnics or any other outdoor activities. Thus, keeping it warm becomes a necessity to let everybody enjoy it. Moreover, the heat of the food enhances the taste bud of a human, making the food tastier. But that is not all, here are the additional benefits of keeping the food warm.
✔The Food Is Healthier
The growth of bacteria also depends upon the temperature of the food. The temperature below 60°C is considered a danger zone for food bacteria to multiply faster. However, if you keep the food warm enough, you can inhibit their growth. Thus, the food is saved from bacterial contamination.
✔The Food Is Easier To Eat
If you have tried the food which was once warm and turned cold after, you must know that it became too hard to chew. For children and older people, such food is hard to eat. And even for a full-grown adult, the joy of eating food is long gone. Hence, keeping food warm for this reason becomes necessary as well.
✔The Food Lasts Longer
Since the worry of bacteria spoiling the food is gone, it can stay good for long hours. It is the right way to treat the leftover dish that you could not finish before.
Ways To Keep Electricity Without Involving Electricity
As keeping food is crucial, here are the ways that do not demand electricity.
- Using Aluminum Foil Paired With Towels
Aluminum foils are one of the oldest and most common methods of keeping the food warm to eat later. These foils ensure that no steam is going out, not letting the cooked dish lose its heat. Another factor that makes them efficient to this perfectly is the property of being a reflector. Aluminum is a good reflector of heat radiation; thus, it reflects the heat towards the food to keep it hot.
And to make this simple method more effective, you can pair the foils with towels. Towels are excellent insulators that stop the heat from escaping. Combined foils and towels will keep the food warm anywhere from half an hour to a couple of more. It will depend upon the hotness and density of the cooked dish.
For using this method, you need to wrap the foils around the container containing the food. Now, depending upon the duration you want your food to stay warm, you can use multiple layers. When it comes to the towels, you can wrap either one or two of them over the foils.
Try not toad more than two towels as it will become harder to carry around the container. You can add up more layers of aluminum as they are lightweight. Hence, you will be able to carry the food without adding additional weight to it.
- Cooler Can Be Your Assistant
Who would have imagined a cooler could keep the cooked food warm. But, ironically to its name, using a cooler can be the best way to keep the food hot without a single ampere of electric current. The reason behind it is the insulation inside it.
The insulation in the interior of a container ensures that the temperature of the content does not fluctuate for a long time. So if coldness can be maintained, the same goes for the hotness.
But you cannot use the cooler as it is to keep the food warm. So here are the two ways to prepare your cooler to keep the heat intact.
- Using Aluminum Foils To Line The Insides
The first way to keep the meal hot you can line up the walls of the cooler with the foils. Then normally pour the dish into it. The aluminum foil and cooler will ensure that the heat does not disappear. If you can wrap your food in the foil, it can also be a great way as the foils will be wrapped around the whole dish.
If you want to keep the food extra hot, wrap towels around the cooler from outside. Now, the heat is well trapped from inside and outside. So be ready to see steams coming out of the food once you take your food out of the cooler.
- Pre-Heating The Cooler
To keep the food cool, ice is poured to maintain a colder temperature of the cooler. Since the aim is the complete opposite, the preparation will also be done differently. Instead of ice, the cooler is introduced to heat. However, it is not something you can do with any cooler.
The cooler must be of high quality to tolerate high temperatures. As the primary function of a cooler is to keep the content cold, the manufacturers only made it resistant to lower temperatures. Only the ones with good material give you tolerance to heat.
If you have the right cooler, fill it with warm water. The water should only be warm, not boiling, as it still has chances of damaging the cooler’s walls. Leave this water inside anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.
After keeping the water inside for a good time, you simply can discard the water. Drying the cooler is not something challenging. You can simply wipe it. Now pour the meal inside to keep it hot.
- Insulated Thermos Can Help
If you have a small amount of food to keep warm, insulated thermoses are precisely what you need right now. Even for storing food at home to use later, you can make use of these. A thermos is made up of stainless steel. The working principle of this container is different from a cooler.
There is a vacuum between the inner and outer walls of a thermos. The vacuum works similarly to an insulator. Such insulation can help keep the food content warm for 4 to 6 hours. You can even find some thermoses that can do it for even longer durations.
- Thermal Cooker Does Exactly What You Need
A thermal cooker shares a similar principle to a thermos. Additionally, you can use it for cooking food without using any electricity. After cooking, the food can be stored in the same utensil to keep it warm. Similar to a thermos, there is a vacuum that provides insulation.
Various thermal cookers have cast-iron bottoms. These bottoms provide extra insulation, thus keeping the food extra warm. Due to this, if you put sizzling food inside the cooker, it will stay warm at 77 degrees Celsius for 8 hours. However, the same food will stay above 60 degrees if put in the cooker for more than 15 hours.
Such a temperature range will ensure that no bacteria get inside your food. Hence, a thermal cooker can be the right choice if you are looking for a utensil that can be used both for cooking and keeping.
- Make Use Of Thermal Bags
If you are looking for a way to keep the dish meal warm and require no hassle, thermal bags are the one. These bags almost weigh nothing, making them the handiest option available. Along with weight, they are pretty cheap and can be bought from anywhere.
These bags can do the job for occasions like picnics where you do not wish to carry heavy containers. There is aluminum used to make them, which you already know is great for maintaining the food’s heat. If you want extra insulation, wrap these bags in towels, it is that simple.
- Trap The Steam
You can easily spot the strings of steam escaping when the food is hot enough. The steam is the moisture coming out of the food due to the hotness. Though the process is entirely natural and can’t be stopped, it makes the food colder.
The steams take up a lot of energy from the food. Thus, as a result, the temperature of the food starts going down. So, to solve this issue, there is one thing you can do, which is trapping the steam. For this, you would need an airtight container that does not let the air inside and outside get mixed.
If you are unsure about the container you are using, you can use the foils to retain the moisture. Doing this little step will let you have hot food when you want to eat.
- Cooke The Food Extra Hot
Since there is no electricity involved, the food needs an extra push of energy to stay warm. You can use the methods mentioned above, but this one will help you increase the effectiveness of these measures. It is cooking the meal a little extra hot.
This method is pretty practical as all you need to do is put the food on flame for a little longer. Just ensure that you are not overheating the food to let it burn. Since all the methods mentioned above focus on retaining the food’s heat rather than adding more of that, this method will let them work perfectly.
If you put the food that is already very hot, the heat will stay inside for a longer duration without any doubt. As long as you are not planning to eat it right after packing, adding a little extra hot food will not hurt anybody.
As the temperature of the food is high, it will not have any bacteria growing inside. The bacteria grow at lower temperatures, and since the food is hot, it will stay safe as well.
- Quantity Matters!
Have you ever realized how a little soup in the pot gets colder much faster than the while pan filled with the same soup? It is because of the quantity of the matter you take. In fact, it is a fact backed by science that more molecules have more energy.
Since you are taking a considerable amount, it has more food molecules. The more the molecules, the more is the energy. So rather than taking a little of the food in the container, it is better that you take a good amount of it.
Another factor that helps you keep the food warm is that the larger quantity takes up the space that could be taken by air. Since no extra air molecules are inside, no heat is being transferred. In the case of coolers or thermos, these factors can be a great way to maintain the hotness of the food.
- Use Hot Bricks
Most of the foods cannot thrive on the heat using which they are cooked. Hence the need to have an external source is birthed. For instance, a hot pastry will lose its warmth compared to a soup. So for such pastry, you will need some extra heat.
To provide external heat, you can use hot bricks. You have to warm the brick first to transfer its heat later on. It is a great way to keep food lower density and light warm. You can even use a water bottle instead of a brick to serve the exact same purpose.
Conclusion
There can be nothing else better than the food that is served hot and fresh. However, you may not have excess electricity to keep the meal warm enough to eat. So to lend a helping hand to you in such cases, here are the measures that will help you keep in the hotness of the finger-licking food. All of these will help you keep the meal hot for a good period, letting you compromise neither on taste nor health.
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