keeping food hot in a thermos?

M

michelle

Well-known member
does anyone have experience in trying to keep food at proper holding temperatures in a good quality thermos (ie. with the mirrored glass interior)? would it stay hot, long enough? I want to provide samples of curries at my 1st farmer's market next saturday (!) & apparently i won't be able to be guaranteed access to electricity, so I don't want to show up with a crockpot full of curry.

thanks

 
It will probably work.What will definitely work is the

Pyrex dish that has the insulated cover and an insert that you heat in the microwave to keep the food hot. Stays hot for hours. Also has an insert that you can freeze for cold foods. They have come 'way down in price.

 
I have burned myself on hot tea that was in a good-quality thermos for 5 hours.

Failing that, how about a warming dish with a gel burner like for fondue?

 
Hi michelle, when I was serving hot soup and samples of soup..

I used one of those portable butane burners to heat up the soup and keep it hot. It worked really well for me. Because of selling food that is prepared on site, I had to follow different health department rules. The people next to me served hot corn on the cob and off the cob, and kept it hot in a small 6-pack size cooler. It maintained the heat pretty well, they always passed the health inspector's inspection. A regular thermos that you described will keep things hot, but since you will be removing the top constantly, I do not think it will keep your curries hot enough. What are you planning on selling at your market? How exciting!

 
Be sure to warm the thermos with boiling water first. Also, when you...

...open and close the thermos a lot in order to dole out samples, you may lose a lot of heat.

Michael

 
it's the opening & closing that I know will make the difference>>

the market is open from 8:00 - 2:00. i'm thinking that if i put out samples over a 2 hr span over lunch (i don't think people will want curry at 8:00), that will minimize how much i open & close it. i thought if i quickly pour about 1/4 of the thermos at a time into a bowl, then spoon small samples into paper sample cups, that should do it.

i'll be selling sushi, curries, mustards & decadent-type squares. soup, if i can find time to get it done before then! i figure it's my 1st market day, so i don't want to bring too much/too much variety.

would you concur?

 
michelle I know that in these conditions ANYTHING sort of HOT would suffice but we have used.....

the thermos for years while sailing and when it came time to eat the stew/soup etc was plenty warm enough on a rough and windy sea. Infact I unfortunately got a bit of a burnt leg when I was serving some stew after 3 hours of the stew being in the flask.
I have not found that the food got that cold as we would have seconds and it was still hot enough to blow on before taking a mouthful BUT we were not in snow sort of weather, just very cold sort of weather and that may make a small diff. in keeping the food hot.

We used the wide mouth kind of flask for food.

A very good and easy way to make rice is in a wide mouth flask too.
I washed the rice in hot water, added it to the prewarmed flask, added salt and filled with boiling water, almost to the top (for expansion of the rice) and there in one flask is hot stew and in the other hot rice which took about an hour but was fine to leave for a few hours unopened..
Sometimes I stir fried the rice with a 1/2 chicken stock cube first and proceeded from there
I had half sized flasks as well and can't remember exactly how much rice or water went into each flask but I spent a few occasions measuring it all before we set off cruising.
An easy thing to do

 
According to the "Four Hour Rule," once the temperature drops below 141*F

the food will be safe for 4 hours before it should be reheated above 165* again. I'd say bring the crockpot anyway, with an extension cord and a thermometer for good measure, but the thermos should be fine for a short period.

 
thank you all for your input ! - i think i'll bring my thermometer along as well, so I

know when i'm entering 'the danger zone'.

 
All good ideas but one more....

coolers have gotten so cheap these days - why not go ahead and make a hot 'cooler'. I somewhat ruined one of my coolers the other day but it worked BEAUTIFULLY.

Poor hot water in the cooler to get it warmed up. Then put layers of towels and newpaper. Put in a layer of bricks that have been heated in about a 400 degree oven for a while (until good and hot - I would say at least 20 minutes). Then another layer of newspaper and then the hot food the more newpaper and finally a towel on top. This should keep food well above the Danger Zone for hours if you don't open it too often. That way you could keep some in the thermos and refill it with hot samples.

Alton Brown gives exact directions for making this in his episode on calamari but I just went from memory. Only thing I did was place the food directly on the bricks and it was too hot so I had to try and get something in between to keep it from really 'cooking' the food more.

 
actually, i could do that with a small beer cooler - i'm already going to have

a plethora of large coolers to haul. sometimes you can get the tiny ones as a bonus when you buy a large cooler.

great idea - thanks!

 
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