When restaurant food is better than home cooking, and I certainly don't think it always is,
but when it is, I think one reason why is a simple warmed plate. A warm plate is magic.
Not only can this stop food from going cold — it can actually reheat food that needs
it, like, say, slices of well-rested roast chicken.
But what’s the best way to warm a plate at home? Honestly, I think that it depends
on the circumstance. I’m gonna talk about three options. Option #1 was my favorite for
many years: the microwave. 20 or 30 seconds in my microwave is enough to warm a plate
real well.
Obviously, this only works with a microwave-safe plates. Metal plates are gonna be a no-go,
as would be plates with metallic trim or metals in their glazes. Metal can spark in a microwave.
And a plastic plate could melt. But with a normal ceramic plate, this does work. Demonstrably,
there are enough polar molecules in this thing to absorb some of the microwave energy and
get this thing hot.
However, I have heard this might be dangerous. So I decided to consult someone vastly overqualified
to answer such a question.
“I’m Caroline Ross, I’m a professor in the Department of Materials Science and
Engineering at MIT.”
And Dr. Ross says yes, counterintuitively, it can be unsafe to microwave a microwave-safe
plate — if it’s empty. Because what makes this thing microwave-safe is that it doesn’t
absorb much microwave energy.
“Then that energy just bounces around inside the oven, and eventually something will get
hot, possibly the magnetron where the microwaves are generated. So, you’ll damage the microwave
eventually. It may not happen instantly, so you may be OK with a minute or half a minute’s
worth of empty operation, but it’s not really a good idea. It’s not going to make the
microwave happy.”
Now look, I've been doing this for years, and my microwave is still working just fine.
But who are you gonna listen to, a guy in his kitchen with a camera or the MIT professor?
I don’t even know why I’m listening to myself right now. I’m gonna listen to the
MIT professor. I'm gonna stop microwaving my plates. Actually, Dr. Ross says one solution
to this problem would be to put a microwave-safe container of water on top of the plate as
you microwave it.
“Because then the water absorbs the energy, and the plate itself shouldn’t really be
absorbing much energy, but it gets hot through conduction of the heat from the hot water
through the plate.”
But I don’t know, I think at that point this method has really just lost its convenience.
So let’s go to method #2: run the plate under hot running water at the sink. I really
think this may be the best method for just warming one plate, assuming your oven isn’t
already hot, but we’re gonna get back to the oven later. To warm a plate under hot
water, at my sink, takes about 30 seconds. Pretty effective.
“Water takes a lot of energy to get it hot, so hot water has a lot of thermal energy in
it. So if you’re running it under hot water, you’re covering the whole plate with a water
that’s giving a lot of energy to the plate, so I think it’s quite an effective way of
doing it. It’s just you then have to dry the plates afterwards.”
Which is a pain, but hot water does dry off of a plate a lot more easily than cold water,
as anyone who’s ever done dishes by hand can tell you. You might thinking, “Wow,
what a waste of water.” I don’t know, I “waste” that much water many times,
every single time I cook, just washing my hands. Where I live, fresh water just isn’t
scarce, and it all gets recycled back into the environment anyway. Maybe things are different
where you live. Though, let’s be honest, the least sustainable thing in this scene
is probably the beef.
But if you want to talk about efficiency, let's talk about option #3, and here it is.
If you’ve already made your dinner in the oven, just put your plates in there too. Even
if the oven has been off for a while, this is a great way of using all of the residual
energy that’s still left in there.
This ceramic plate was fired in a 2,000-degree kiln, it can handle an oven just fine, I guess
unless you keep your plates in the freezer or something, then then they might break from
thermal shock.
The only real hitch here is that it can be too effective. A plate can get burn-your-hands
hot in seconds in a really hot oven. So you gotta be sure to use oven mitts. Or, what
I like to do is wrap the plates in a kitchen towel and then just put the whole thing in
the oven. This protects the plates from getting scratched or getting dirty, and then it also
protects your hands on the way out. I suppose there’s a chance the towel could catch fire
in there, but I don't think you want to leave this in there for that long anyway. This works
in seconds.
I might even use the oven method even if the oven wasn’t already hot if I needed to heat
up a whole bunch of plates at once. This is great to do for a big holiday dinner or a
potluck where of the food all tends to be kinda cold anyway.
However you do it, just give warming your plates a shot. Yes I feel kinda pretentious
when I do it, but honestly, it's worth it. It just makes food better.