Sometimes you need to cook way ahead of time, and learn how to keep food warm for hours before serving. You cannot predict when a huge joint of meat will be ready from your BBQ, so take heed of the following advice instead.
In this article, I outline some ways you can avoid making your guests wait for their supper, while at the same time ensuring you serve a hot meal.
The following scene has played out many times for me, and I’m sure it’s happened to many of you too.
Your guests are here. Drinks have been had. You have the dinner table set, and all the sides are ready.
You told your friends to be ready to eat around 5:30, but now it’s quarter past six, and the tribe is getting restless. “Another 15 minutes” you assuredly tell-all, but even you don’t believe yourself.
As the adage says, the problem when it comes to serving barbecue is “it’s done when it’s done.” A 10-pound pork butt might take 9 hours to cook, or it might take 13.
This makes planning a time to serve your guests difficult. Let’s fix this problem!
Contents (Jump to Topic)
Time Your Cook to be Ready Hours Early, then Keep it Warm
Essentially what you want to do, is make your food WAY ahead of time, and then keep it warm for when they arrive.
As an example, a brisket can take anything from 12 to 16 hours to cook, so set aside 18 hours to cook and rest it.
This way, if it takes the full 16 hours, you can rest it for 2 and serve. If it finishes in 12, you can rest and then keep it warm for 6 hours.
Problems arise when you start your cook 14 hours before guests arrive, and unbeknownst to you — because we cannot reliably estimate these things — the particular brisket you have requires 16 hours to cook.
In this scenario, you would have to serve it 2 hours late, and that’s without any resting time, reducing the quality of your meat.
Alternatively, you could cook your meats a day or more before, and then reheat on the day?
We have guides on how to best reheat brisket, and how to reheat pulled pork. But honestly, although still damn good, it’s not as good as fresh cooked on the day now, is it?
Also See
- A guide to resting meat
- The best ways to reheat steak
Keeping Meat Warm for Hours Isn’t Easy — But It’s Possible
Keeping your meat warm for anything up to 6 hours isn’t easy.
The main danger you face is your food drying out, becoming tough, and hence being of severely lower quality compared to when you’d finished cooking it, and it was initially ready to eat.
But fear not, we have solutions!
Following are recommendations on how to keep your meat warm for hours on end, without sacrificing quality. Some professional solutions may be quite costly. However, we’ve something economical for everybody too.
Commercial Food Warmer
Restaurants and professional caterers need to be able to keep food hot, especially if the food they’re cooking needs to be prepared for some time before they expect it to be served — i.e., cooked in one location and transported to another to be served.
The reason for this is two-fold, obviously, they need to be able to serve hot food, and they need to keep food out of the “danger zone” between 40 °F – 140 °F. At this temperature bacteria can multiply, doubling in as little as 20 minutes.
While there are many options for commercial warmers, the most popular would be the Insulated Food Transport Carriers made by Cambro.
Available in both electric and non-electric models, they’re able to keep food above 150 °F for up to 4 hours in the non-electric models; longer in electric models.
While these units are indeed costly and impractical for the home cook, you can find them used on sites like eBay and Craigslist.
Pros
Easy to use and can keep temps for hours.
Frequently these devices are meant to be portable to accommodate caterers. That means they’re great if you want to cook at your house, then transport the meat to your final destination and still have it be piping hot when you dig in.
Cons
As mentioned, these devices run into the thousands of dollars brand-new and aren’t necessarily easy to come by second hand.
Hold at a Low Temp in the Oven
While not ideal, many dishes can be kept warm in the oven. According to Alice Henneman, MS, RDN with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, you can keep foods hot in a preheated oven set to 200 °F – 250 °F.
Personally, I prefer between 160 °F and 170 °F as an oven temperature to keep food warm. This is way above required food safety levels, yet isn’t so high that it keeps the food cooking.
If you’re going to be keeping your food hot for an extended period, check your food frequently to make sure it stays above 140 °F. If your food is getting too hot and is at risk of drying out you can turn your oven off for a period of time and then turn it back on; your food will stay hot while the oven is turned off due to residual heat in the oven.
I find this method works best for something like pulled pork. Remove your pork shoulder and let it rest before pulling then placing in a covered roasting pan with a little braising liquid — i.e., the dripping’s reserved from the meat, and place in your preheated oven.
Pros
Since almost anyone would have an oven and a roasting pan in their home, this is a great standby when you don’t have a better option available to you.
Cons
The most obvious con is this method will continue to cook your food as it hot holds. A no-go for foods like steaks, chicken, and brisket that will dry out and become tough. Pork though is far more forgiving.
How to Keep Food Warm in a Faux Cambro
This method, made famous by Meathead from AmazingRibs.com, involves utilizing a standard, highly affordable cooler to mimic an expensive commercial food warmer — i.e., a Cambro.
Coolers are highly thermally insulated, the very property they are designed for to keep things inside cool. However, this property also works the same for keeping warm, hot foods placed inside.
A cooler is actually good at maintaining ANY stable temperature inside, be that cold or hot. And this is what makes them so great at keeping food warm for hours.
How to Keep Food Warm in a Cooler — The Method:
In order to use the ‘faux Cambro method’, you need a few items: An insulated cooler, some tin foil and two or more towels. If you don’t have a cooler, perhaps check out our guides to the best soft cooler, or our search for the best cooler on wheels if you want something more mobile and versatile.
Shortly before your meat is cooked, add a couple of gallons of hot tap water to the empty cooler. Close the lid for at least 30 minutes, then ditch the water. This preheats the cooler; it brings it up to a good warm temperature ready to receive hot food. Without this step, the food you place inside would initially lose some heat bringing the cooler up to temp.
Next, remove your meat from the cooker and wrap it tightly in aluminum foil, if not already done.
Now place a clean towel or two in your cooler, place your wrapped meat on top of the towels, and place a couple more towels on top and close the lid.
Your meat will stay hot for hours using this method.
I’ve taken pork shoulders out of the tinfoil after being in the “faux Cambro” for 4.5 hours, to still see steam rising off the meat it’s that hot!
Pros
Have a cooler? Towels? Access to hot water? Good, you have all the tools necessary to build a faux Cambro.
Cons
Will not work indefinitely. Eventually, your food will reach the danger zone.
You COULD Bail Out of Low n Slow: Just Cook Fresh, Serve Hot
This isn’t a joke. Lots of times I’m asked what I would do if I had many people coming to my home for a good BBQ?
I would mostly steer clear of unpredictable cuts of meat like pulled pork and brisket and instead opt to grill steaks, chops, even hot dogs, and hamburgers.
How would I serve 20+ people and not serve them cold food? Easy, I’d serve it right off the grill.
Before your guests arrive, have all your sides ready. Have your salads made and in the fridge. Have anything like mashed potatoes or glazed carrots in the oven or on the stove, and ready to eat. Have your meat seasoned and ready to cook and your grill hot and ready.
Then all you have left to do is grill these quick-cooking cuts of meat and serve it as your guests take their seats.
Pros
Obviously, the most significant advantage to cooking fresh is that all of your guests will be able to enjoy their food hot, while it’s at its ideal stage. As an added benefit, your guests can enjoy the show as you effortlessly cook them their dinner.
Cons
This isn’t an option for something that is going to take hours to cook — i.e., brisket, but it will work for foods that can cook in 20 minutes or less like steaks, chops, hamburgers and hot dogs.
You’re not going to be able to enjoy the beginning of the party because you’re going to be busy cooking.
Conclusion
How do you keep your food warm? Have you ever been in a jam and had to come up with your own way to keep your food from going cold? Did you use a method similar to one of the ones listed above? Do you think it worked better than our methods?
Leave us a comment below telling us all about it, so we can all learn from each other.
Happy grilling!
Mark Jenner says:
Hi Ben.
I wouldn’t like to personally guarantee it, as there are many variables. How big your brisket is, how good the insulation of your cooler is, the weather and temperature outside, etc. Personally, I would be happy to do so and am pretty sure it will still be warm and not have dropped into the ‘food safety danger zone’ in that time, but mileage may vary.
If you follow the process to the letter, yes. By which I mean: Have the cooler full of HOT water, to preheat it and hence take less heat away from the meat. And once the meat is off the grill, wrap it in foil, wrap it in towels, put in the cooler, and then set off on your journey. You want to be ready to go as soon as the meat as ready. This will give you the best chance.
Have you considered coking, sealing and reheating? It may not be QUITE as good, but you can at least be sure it’s safe? Cook your brisket a day early, portion it off and seal it with a vacuum sealer, or watertight zip lock bags, and put in the fridge. In each, put a bit of the cooking juices from the pink butcher paper or foil if you wrapped, perhaps a small (couple of Tbsp) bit of beef broth if you have no juices. Transport chilled in a cooler packed with some ice.
At the other end, reheat in a sous vide manner. If you have no sous vide equipment, I assume you have thermometers (every grill enthusiast does), you can just reheat sous vide in any big enough container on the stove, keeping the water at the right temp by controlling the gas / electric and measuring the water with your thermometer. Aim for 60c / 140f water temp, and cook until the brisket is that temp throughout. It will take a few hours, so prepare for that.
Mark.
Mark Jenner says:
Hi Jimmy,
In theory, sure, this MIGHT work. I do have two issues with it though:
First is that some ovens only go as low as 90 / 195f (maybe 80?) and at this temperature it would actually carry on cooking somewhat if it holds this temperature for any length of time, potentially taking your cook past the perfect doneness that you strived for in your cook.
Secondly, my oven tends to cool down relatively quickly when turned off to be honest. I mean, it’s far from instant, but certainly way more heat is escaping when compared to a sealed cooler. So I don’t think it would be as effective as the faux Cambro method. It would be better than keeping your meat wrapped on the side and placed in nothing, but I’m certain the faux Cambro would hold it warmer for longer. You could mess around firing up your oven on a very low heat for a few minutes every half hour or so, but really it would just be easier to use a faux Cambro and be completely hands-off
Kevin P says:
Here is what I want to do, but I am not sure if it’s ok? I routinely cook brisket and pork shoulder, then when done I leave it in the butcher paper, then wrap it in cellophane, so it won’t leak, then wrap it in aluminum foil, then wrap in towels and put it in a cooler. This works for a good 4 to 5 hours. But what I would like to do, is once I pull the meat, wrap it the same way in cellophane and aluminum foil, and then vacuum seal the bag and put the meat in a sous vide set to 170 degrees, then hold for 6 hours. I figure that the meat is cooked to 200 degrees and the sous vide is 170. So the meat won’t cook anymore, but its temp will drop slower, and never get below 170. Does this sound like a viable option?
Mark Jenner says:
Hi, Valerie. Sorry for the very delayed reply, I was traveling over Christmas and unable to check and reply to comments.
I honestly don’t see a good way of holding chicken breasts for 2 hours without at least some loss of quality. Because they are so small, they don’t hold much heat and hence cool quickly and need an external heat source to keep them in the safe zone above 140f where bacteria grow, so they will continue to cook I’m afraid.
So if keeping warm, the best bet is likely to transport them in warm water, always making sure to keep them above 140 F, as going below puts it into the danger zone of bacteria growth. So advice would be to keep them in warm water at 150 F, and have some even hotter water (near boiling) to top up the water in the cooler at intervals if the water starts nearing 140f, to make sure it doesn’t go below.
But honestly, I don’t like this idea as the breasts WILL continue to cook. Better would probably be to allow them to cool, vacuum seal, and then reheat sous vide when they are needed.
It’s a bit of a tricky one.
Hi, Matthew.
In your situation I would cook the pork butt, then use the faux cambro with a leave in thermometer inserted to monitor the internal temperature. If it cools too much, place it in a warm oven between 160 and 170 degrees Fahrenheit to hold it at a safe food temp until ready to serve. Pork butt is very fatty, and can stand up to this treatment, it’ll be fine.
Alternatively, cook the pork butt a day or two before. Pull it, mix with your sauce etc., then vacuum seal it and reheat on the day. I do this all the time. Wood pellets and charcoal are quite expensive, so when I smoke I try to load up my smoker, and then vacuum pack and seal portioned off food for later reheating. This is fine with pulled pork, ribs, etc. Not so much brisket that can dry out easily.