How To Reheat 7 Foods You’ve Been Reheating Incorrectly (Until Now)

[Gingersnap]

How To Reheat 7 Foods You’ve Been Reheating Incorrectly (Until Now)
By Mary Beth Quirk January 21, 2014

Last week you might’ve had your mind blown clear open by the news that you’re probably reheating pizza wrong if you’re doing it in the microwave, toaster oven or like, a blowtorch, if that’s your method. But it isn’t just pizza that needs a special touch to bring it back to life.

Gawker’s Tom Socca admitted he had no idea that the best way to revive leftover pizza was in a skillet (medium heat, cover it so the cheese melts, then remove cover to crisp up the crust for a few minutes) and Bon Appétit has picked up on that potential gap in our collective knowledge with a bunch of other foods that need a special touch the next day.

Herewith then, six other foods you’re probably treated wrong in your attempt to make them palatable the next day. Check out the source link for more.

1. Eggs: This entry has the best advice, in our opinion, so it comes first and had to be included: “Do not reheat eggs. Repeat: DO NOT REHEAT THEM. If they’re in a frittata, just slice it and eat it cold.” Do people actually try to reheat eggs? Because eww, gross. On that note — anyone who’s successfully done so and not immediately vomited can feel free to let us know how at [email protected].

On that note, here are a few readers’ suggestions:

Bev: “Make up a batch of scrambled or a big frittata and then reheat for a few days. The key is LOW heat and a short time period. Zap at power 3 or 4 (out of 10) for maybe 30 seconds for a powerful microwave or longer for a weaker one. Cheese mixed in with the eggs at original cook time really helps. And don’t try to reheat over-cooked eggs.”

Shanna: “Quiche can be reheated by wrapping it in foil and reheating it on the oven (or toaster oven) at about 300 for 20-25 minutes. It’s delicious (but I make a mean quiche).”

Suzanne: “I successfully reheat omelets and scrambled eggs by steaming them. Actually, steaming is a great way to reheat a lot of foods including meat! The food doesn’t get dried out that way!”

2. Steak and Chicken: A nicely seared cut of meat or a perfectly seasoned and not-to-dry bit of chicken can suffer in the microwave the next day. Try cutting meats into smaller bits and heating in a skillet over a medium-high heat with a bit of oil. Cook the meat until it’s warmed through, about 4-5 minutes.

3. Pancakes: If you’re like me, you don’t mind eating cold pancakes with some (freshly scrambled) eggs in the middle like some kind of genius breakfast sandwich. But they’re also easy to bring back to warm, delicious life: Pop them in the toaster oven or regular toaster to heat them through. Apparently “this works for chicken cutlets, too!” Cutlets and pancakes, more in common than previously thought.

4. Stews and soups: We know, we know — you just want to chuck that container in the microwave, zap it up on high and then wait for it to cool down from bubbling so you can eat it. But that makes the liquid evaporate, stealing precious bites from the very mouth you’re seeking to fill. Instead, learn some patience and heat soups and stews slowly in a pot over medium heat, Bon Appétit suggests.

Interesting. I did not know people reheated pizza.

More.

Consumerist

[scott]

Reheat pizza in the microwave with a glass of water and a napkin on both sides.

Reheat bread in a covered nonstick pan on the stove (low) with a measuring cup full of hot water in the pan.

Another way is to cut a slit in the top, insert butter, then heat on 2 in the microwave for 40 seconds.

[Gingersnap]

Reheat pizza in the microwave with a glass of water and a napkin on both sides.

Reheat bread in a covered nonstick pan on the stove (low) with a measuring cup full of hot water in the pan.

Another way is to cut a slit in the top, insert butter, then heat on 2 in the microwave for 40 seconds.

I can kind of see how you would do it from a technical standpoint. I just don't understand why you would want to do it.

[scott]

I can kind of see how you would do it from a technical standpoint. I just don't understand why you would want to do it.

Cold pepperoni and pineapples with chewy old cheese doesn't taste very good. Hot, mushy and stringy is great.

[Gingersnap]

Cold pepperoni and pineapples with chewy old cheese doesn't taste very good. Hot, mushy and stringy is great.

Pineapple - say no more. Your sense of taste is so perverted that nothing you could do to food would make it worse.

[Frostbit]

Reheat pizza in the microwave with a glass of water and a napkin on both sides.

.

No freakin way. Preheat oven to 500 degrees, have a pizza stone in there. Wait 5 minutes past pre-heated then throw the slices on the stone. in 3-4 minutes they are perfect.

BTW, this is an excellent way to be sure no one has dripped anything onto the bottom of the oven and to test your smoke alarm.

[Gingersnap]

I'm still not getting it. Ice cold, left-over pizza is a wonder food. God wants us to eat left-over pizza cold. It's in Corinthians or something.

Now, steak is completely different. If you won't eat it cold, gently warm it up in a skillet with a lid. Supposedly you can put it in a plastic sandwich bag in simmering water to heat it but then you've got the plastic issue.

[Michele]

Pizza (which I rarely eat but my husband loves) reheated just as Frostbit said. Steak can be heated in simmering au jus but only if it's medium rare to rare to begin with.

[Adam]

A dampened and well-wrung paper towel wrapped around quiche will usually work well for re-heating, but you need to do it slowly, a little bit at a time, and not a minute on full-blast. More like three minutes on 10%-20% power (defrost, for many microwaves).



Cold pizza is best re-heated with warm beer. If you're going to re-live your college years, you may as well do it all the way: half-ass warm over that dried-out Domino's double-pepperoni for the same minute that you chuck that beer in the freezer in hopes that you reduce the beer's temperature by 0.25°F, because that somehow makes it drinkable....




Eggs in general (outside of quiche): forget it. They're like 14¢ a piece: fry/scramble/poach/hard boil/eat raw some other ones. You'll spend more in electricity trying to re-heat them than you will just making some more.

Pancakes: forget it. Throw those sumbitches out and make some new ones. It's freaking flour, an egg, milk, and some baking soda. Buck up and make some new ones, or else go to McDonald's and get their nuked pancakes.

Steak: this is a tricky one for me, because I often keep half a steak from a Sunday afternoon/evening dinner out (sort of my one little treat to myself each week). To make this work, you need to enjoy eating cows that haven't stopped breathing yet as I do. I get very rare steaks, eat half of them while they're still "hot" at the restaurant, and then doggie-bag the rest. I then heat them up carefully and slowly in the microwave at the office: about three minutes, but at on 20% power, so that they ultimately wind up a little bit more cooked in the middle, but still cool and red.

Potatoes: just re-heat them slowly instead of at full power and you'll be fine. If they have a bunch of stuff on/in them, then they're never going to re-heat properly regardless of how you do it, so simply remove all cheese/chives/bacon bits/butter/sour cream/sardines/whatever the hell else you weirdos put in your potatoes and heat them as just potatoes (take the foil off of the outside, dummy), then put fresh ingredients back in and enjoy. Add some cracked pepper if you want to eat like a human being.

Soup: in 80% of cases, if you do it slowly, you're OK. If you're trying to re-heat lobster bisque, then give it up. Your soup needs to have either a lot of water (e.g. chicken noodle) or a lot of something else that absorbs heat and then re-radiates it well (such as potato, chicken, or steak). Creamy soups don't generally re-heat well.

Bread: see quiche. They act about the same in the microwave. If you want to do it in the oven, go right ahead, but you'll either wind up with sloppy, sticky bread (which is fine if that bread is sticky buns or the like), or dried out bread (which is fine if you're re-heating toast for some strange reason, but sucks if you want to re-heat a bran muffin).