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How to Keep Hot Food Warmer Longer

Here's how to keep your dishes looking and tasting their best for as long as possible.

Restaurant chefs often warm serving dishes to keep pastas and soups, scrambled eggs and omelets, and other dishes looking and tasting their best for as long as possible, and it’s worth doing at home. In side-by-side tests, we found that our Creamy White Bean Soup with Herb Oil and Crispy Capers, when heated to a piping-hot 190 degrees, stayed about 10 degrees hotter for 10 minutes in a warmed bowl than it did in a room-temperature bowl (a reasonably hot 145 degrees versus a tepid 135 degrees). Warm ovensafe dishes directly on the rack of a 350-degree oven, stacking no more than two pieces so they heat evenly, until they’re very hot to the touch. Check after 30 seconds; if the pieces aren’t hot enough, check every minute for up to 3 minutes. You can use boiling water to warm dishes that aren’t ovensafe, but be sure that the water is really boiling. We found that hot tap water wasn’t hot enough to significantly warm a serving bowl.

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