How do I keep food hot until everyone is ready to eat?

Nearly every big meal involves something being ready before everything else, and the usual response — turn the oven off and leave it in there, or cover it on the hob — is exactly what food safety guidance warns against. Doing it properly is easy and it also produces better food.

Safety

Step by step

1. Know the number: 63°C.UK food safety guidance for hot holding is 63°C or above. Above that, bacteria do not multiply. Between roughly 8°C and 63°C they do, and food should pass through that band quickly rather than sitting in it. Everything below follows from keeping the food above the line.
2. Use the oven at its lowest setting, covered.Most ovens go down to around 70–80°C, which holds food safely above the line. Cover the dish with foil or a lid to stop it drying out. This is the best method for roast meat, roast vegetables, pies and anything already cooked through. Check with a probe the first time — some ovens run much hotter than their lowest mark.
3. Use a slow cooker or multicooker on keep-warm.Purpose-built for exactly this, and it holds wet food — stews, curries, chilli, gravy, mulled wine, soup — at a safe temperature for hours. Keep the lid on. Do not use it to reheat cold food; put food in already hot.
4. Use a bain-marie for anything delicate.Dishes standing in a tray of hot water, or a bowl over a pan of hot water with the heat off, hold sauces, custards, mash and vegetables gently without a hot surface underneath to catch and split them. This is what a catering hot cabinet is.
5. For short holds, warm the dish and insulate it.Twenty to thirty minutes can be handled by transferring the food to a preheated serving dish, covering it tightly with foil and wrapping the whole thing in a clean tea towel. Warm the plates too — cold plates take a surprising amount of heat out of the food in the first minute.
6. Understand what holding costs the food.Above 63°C the food is safe but not unchanged. Meat continues to dry, green vegetables go drab and soft, anything crisp goes limp within minutes, and starches keep absorbing liquid. Plan the crisp and green elements to be the last things you cook rather than the first.
7. Choose the other option deliberately: cool it fast.If the wait will be long, do not hold it — cool it quickly and reheat properly later. Get it out of the hot pan into a shallow container, get it into the fridge within an hour or two, and reheat until steaming hot right through. That is a legitimate route; the illegitimate one is leaving it out in between.

Tips

• Roast meat is the exception that benefits: resting a joint loosely covered for 20–30 minutes improves it, and a large joint stays well above 63°C throughout that time on its own.
• Gravy, sauces and anything liquid holds far better than solids and can be kept in a pan on the lowest hob setting or in a jug in a bain-marie.
• Keep a probe thermometer on the worktop during a big meal and actually check the held food once. It is the only way to know whether your 'low' oven setting is above or below the line.
• Never hold rice for hours. Cooked rice is the classic risk for Bacillus cereus, which survives cooking and grows in the danger zone, so serve it fresh or cool it fast and refrigerate.

Common mistakes

• Turning the oven off and leaving the food in it — The oven cools through the danger zone over the next hour and the food sits in it. Leave the oven on at its lowest setting instead — the running cost of an oven at 70°C is small.
• Covering food and leaving it on a switched-off hob — It is the worst of both — it cools into the danger zone and the trapped steam makes everything soggy. Move it to a low oven or a warm bain-marie.

Questions people ask