How do you keep your food warm on Shabbos/Yom Tov?

LiLIsraeli

Thu, Jun 02 2011, 6:43 pm

If you make cholent in a crock pot, how do you keep the other foods warm on Shabbos/YT? Do you use a blech or hot plate?

I'm wondering what other people do.

I made cholent in a crock pot only twice so far and we haven't figured out an effective way to keep the other foods warm.

YALT

Thu, Jun 02 2011, 7:00 pm

do u mean for shabbos day or for fri night?
my food for friday night, I do as follows:
warm up all food right b4 shabbos
place on shelf in oven with oven off
place cookie sheet with 4 tealights inside the oven under the shelf (on the floor of the oven)
keep oven closed. But when u open and close to take food out, be sure to do so slowly so as not to put out the fires.

like this I dont have the heat of my stove/hotplate making my apt unbearable.

we don't make cholent too often. for shabbos day we have cold foods. like chicken nuggets, cold cuts, deli salad, deli club sandwich, franks&blankets, .... and the kugel we also don't leave on all night. I just place them in the off oven shabbos morning and it comes to room temp

LiLIsraeli

Thu, Jun 02 2011, 7:01 pm

Thanks for your answer!

What about the oven on YT? Does anyone leave it on, and if so, on what temperature? If not, what do you do?

RachelEve14

Fri, Jun 03 2011, 1:31 am

I just use a plata for my other foods, if there are any. If I have hot food for Friday night but only chullent for Shabbot day, I put the plata on a timer and it goes off after the evening meal.

LiLIsraeli

Fri, Jun 03 2011, 11:37 am

We used to use a plata but it broke. So we are looking into other options. What do other people do?

LiLIsraeli

Fri, Jun 03 2011, 1:53 pm

We had a plata and it broke. We do not want another plata; we want to try another method.

Are there other methods besides YALT's tealights, or does everybody either use a plata or eat cold food?

suzyq

Fri, Jun 03 2011, 1:56 pm

Friday night I warm everything in the oven and turn it off right before I light candles. Things are usually warm enough for that meal. If you don't want a plata, and you're going to have something in your crockpot, you can put stuff on top of your crockpot - it will do a decent job of warming stuff, though not as well as a plata. Or you can try a blech on top of the stove, but that always made me nervous and raised our gas bill tremendously.

chocolate moose

Fri, Jun 03 2011, 2:29 pm

the tealighyt thing is a terrible idea. iirc, ovens have exploded with fire so close to gas.

Barbara

Fri, Jun 03 2011, 2:36 pm

chocolate moose wrote:

the tealighyt thing is a terrible idea. iirc, ovens have exploded with fire so close to gas.

It may be an electric oven. Moreover, ovens no longer have pilot lights, which should obviate the problem.

Our oven has a timer, so we leave it on Friday night to keep food warm.

We use a warming drawer on Shabbat.

Chana Miriam S

Fri, Jun 03 2011, 3:03 pm

I have a kedeira blech which is a steam table tray with a flat lid which I fill with water before shabbat. the whole thing is uniformly hot and depending on how high you make the temp, it will not boil away.

Mommy3.5

Fri, Jun 03 2011, 3:23 pm

For shabbat I leave my ovens automatic 12 hour shut off on. All the friday night food goes in the oven on warm. The oven shuts itself off sometime during the night. My MIL has a timer feature on her oven which makes it go off 2 hours after shabbat when the meal is over.

Shabbat day. we have cholent. I invert the lid on the crock pot, and place whatever I want warmed up on top. it works well.

Yom tov, I leave on one flame, and the oven on 200 with shabbat mode enabled, which allows me to raise the heat as I see fit, I usually don’t. I turn the oven off after YT.

shaini

Sat, Jun 04 2011, 6:15 am

I agree with the others, invert the lid of the crockpot. If you have an electric urn you can put things to warm on its lid. Also if you don't want to buy another hotplate you can use an electric frypan/skillet if you own one, although you also can't put food straight onto it. YT I have a gas oven, so either I heat food up for 1st night and turn the oven off just before YT and wrap everything up if I don't need the oven the next day or if I don't need it 1st night I light it from an existing flame 2nd night.

amother

Sun, Jun 05 2011, 5:39 pm

in winter months it's nice, no need for anything really as dinner is after shabbat and we don't have chulent that much for lunch just cold foods really with lots of salads, cakes etc