What’s the secret to a delicious hot meal? It’s a “secret” that’s openly delivered in every quality restaurant. Often this is the difference between an average meal and a great one. With a simple product, we all can enjoy this same “secret” at home or at the RV campsite. Although it’s the key to a hot meal, surprisingly few people seem to realize its importance. Can you guess what we’re talking about here?
The answer is… a hot plate.
We’re not talking about the type of hot plate used for cooking. We’re talking about a physically hot plate for serving hot food.
The key to enjoying a hot meal is keeping the food warm. Yet often people serve hot home cooked meals on icy cold plates.
What happens when you place hot food on cold plates? Well, after extensive scientific analysis involving slide rules and supercomputers, we’ve learned that hot food gets cold – often quickly.
When you place hot food on a cold or room temperature plate, the clock starts ticking. In a matter of minutes, a delicious meal will be reduced to something far less appetizing.
Restaurants understand that the key to a satisfying hot meal is serving hot food. That’s why they typically serve food on warm, sometimes scalding hot, plates.
Have you ever heard a water say, “Be careful, the plate is hot”? Of course you have.
One of our favorite meals when RV camping is grilled steak. That’s why we carry a couple of Nordic Ware Indoor/Outdoor Sizzling Servers. The importance of warm food is especially apparent when we are grilling.
When grilling, we serve steaks sizzling hot straight from the grill.
When not cooking steak, we’ve found these platters useful for all sorts of hot foods. They do fine with hot side items like hot vegetables. I occasionally use ours when enjoying hot pizza (one of the regular staples of my diet).
These Nordic Ware platter servers actually consist of two pieces.
The key piece is a metal platter. The metal platter can be safely preheated in an oven. It’s even safe to set this platter directly on a grill.
The platter is housed by an insulated bakelite holder. You simply insert the hot metal plate into the bakelite holder and voila! You now have a hot plate that you can safely carry.
We have owned our Nordic Ware Indoor/Outdoor Sizzling Servers for several camping seasons and they have held up well.
They could be a little larger, but otherwise we don’t really have any complaints.