I thought you were supposed to drink directly from the pot if you used a French press.
Oh good lord. Now Unfogged is going on about this? My boyfriend and my cousin about both in favor of warming the mugs, which I consider unnecessary fussing. After that comes measuring your grounds and dandified things like being able to taste the difference.
I have always been indifferent to food temperature. I don't care if hot food is room temperature. I don't care if cold food is room temperature. I am indifferent. It is very convenient. I am only now learning to serve people food at the temperature they would prefer.
Warming the mug is an essential step in hot toddy preparation.
My ex was very into the warmed mug thing, which I think comes from working at fancy restaurants where the dishes must be the same temperature as the things they serve. It seems elegant, and something I'm glad I know how to do in case someone needs impressing with my elegance. But I do not find that anyone particularly looks for elegance in me.
...which I consider unnecessary fussing
yep.
Yeah, my mum was and is obsessive about pre-warming the pot/cup for any hot drink, including warming a thermos-style pot, which just seems ridiculous to me. For me, it's just not an issue. I don't like my coffee to be super hot, so the chances of it over-cooling before I'm finished are very low.
As for timing, I'd say 3-5 minutes, depending on your patience.
5: A woman never knows if she really thinks something until a man affirms it.
I'm not a serious tea drinker, but I always understood you prewarmed teacups and teapots because it tastes different if it steeps at, say, 205 F instead of 190 F. Coffee, on the other hand... it comes out of the pot too hot to drink and already steeped enough -- the flavor's not changing after you pour it. Why would you want it to cool to drinking temperature slower?
I'd be sexist if I agreed with you, apparently.
8 makes sense to me; I definitely know more people who pre-warm tea cups/pots/mugs than coffee. OTOH, if you're already boiling water for your french press....
Speaking of sexist verbal tics, I was having a conversation with a guy last weekend who began EVERY SINGLE RESPONSE to any woman who spoke with "Not even that!" It was so weird. We were talking about our students, and I'd say something about something I'd noticed while grading and he'd interrupt with, "Not even that!" Over and over. I tried to relegate my thoughts to my own personal experience, and he'd shout, "Not even that!" and then go on to say something about his own theory about whatever.
The only observation I made that he didn't respond that way to was when I said our college is not a pleasant or friendly environment for queer people. Like a switch, suddenly he stopped yelling "Not even that!" at me.
I didn't know that "Not even that" was a thing and I can't figure out what it means.
12: I couldn't either. He seemed to use it to mean that whatever evidence or experience I was talking about was not sufficient for the conclusion I wanted to draw, but he had a much better and more interesting example for a much stronger conclusion.
13: Not even that! Usually he just wanted to hear himself talk.
14: Not even that! He also wanted other people to hear him talk.
Not even that! You guys are giving me hives.
Seriously, AWB, that's even weirder than the day we went to the nature center with my parents and Mara chanted "not at all!" constantly for about 45 minutes. And she's 4.
11: I think you're allowed punch them in the throat for that.
It's even weirder than how Hawaiian Punch likes to chug toothpaste when we're not looking. This is a thing we have to police. Granted, it's baby toothpaste without fluoride in it, so it's not dangerous, but it still tastes nasty.
But to the OP, I will try this! Except I don't use a french press. But I could nuke some water in my mug for 30 seconds.
We had the same issue with the baby toothpaste. It think it doesn't taste nasty to a small child.
17: I said nothing but "quack" for several days at that age. I announced I was now a duck and then really stuck to it. There is a reason why four has to be the cutest age of all, so that one is not smothered with a pillow.
You should also prewarm your French press, while you're at it. You don't have to use water from the kettle - a hot tap will do - but it does make a difference what temp the coffee brews at, and that helps keep it more regulated.
You should also either a) take your water just before it hits the full roiling boiling or b) wait a bit after it boils, since coffee brews best below 100 C. I think the optimal temperature is something like 90 C. Water fr tea, you always want to be boiling when you pour it in.
(Disclaimer: I don't actually care about much of this, but my new job has imparted much information about coffee and tea.)
(Sigh. So many mistakes in that last comment; I've forgotten how to write!)
19: Granted, it's baby toothpaste without fluoride in it, so it's not dangerous, but it still tastes nasty.
Yeah, one of my things was for orange aspergum. In retrospect it just seems weird that people would have it around. What could possibly go wrong?
Water fr tea, you always want to be boiling when you pour it in.
I gather, from my tea making friends, that this isn't always true and depends on the tea.
20: That works quite well. I do that when it's chilly+windy here and coffee cools down too fast otherwise.
27: Indeed, I was being facile. It's true for most standard black teas; herbal teas you want the temperature much lower, and green tea is also a special beast, etc, etc.
I don't have a strong position on preheating (to me, it's nice but not necessary) but this thread is making my drought-o-meter to go ding, ding, ding!
I know you're all returning this water to the tea kettle to boil for tomorrow's pre-heating, or letting it cool and filling the cat or dog bowl, or at least pouring it into the bucket you use to dampen the compost heap, right? (The latter being something I'm far too lazy to do, but M/tch is not, god bless 'im.)
Even before I lived in a state that's about to run out of water, I've always cringed at wasting it. The only major renovation I want to make to our house is to install a gray water system.
Black teas you generally want boiling water. Green teas, 180-190F. Either way, you're supposed to warm up the teapot before steeping so that you don't mess up the steeping temp (I never do this--it is way too much bother). Warming up the cups makes no sense to me since it means it'll be that much longer before you can drink it and it won't affect the taste of the tea (or coffee for that matter).
30: Is that drought on Arrakis? I really think that saving that much water isn't going to help.
I would want warm cups for a hot beverage served with milk, but not for a hot beverage served without dilution.
33: Your mother was a drought on Arrakis.
I always thought that restaurants served you food on warm plates because the food had been in an oven or under a heat lamp or something because they did a shitty job of getting it out promptly. Sorry, restaurants!
I think my MIL just dumps her cup-warming water in the sink (although she might not; she can be thrifty), but the electric kettle will sit on the counter until someone has a use for the water in it.
We live in a fairly wet climate with almost literally infinite water supplies (Allegheny River is not drying up anytime soon), but I'm still pretty fanatical about saving water. For our third floor bathroom, I installed a shower head with a little toggle so that it won't run while you soap up.
36: Now you have to go back and top off all those tips when you rounded down.
We now have functional rainbarrels! I think we can store 5000 gallons.
Does it have to be 5,000 gallons of rain?
I really think that saving that much water isn't going to help.
And that one piece of litter isn't going to make the Indian cry. OR IS IT?!!
40: Are you asking if we pee in them?
This is how you drink fancy Chinese tea. Boil water, pour water in the teapot and cups to warm them, dump, add tea and water to the pot, dump the water, add more, and bob's your uncle. Works pretty well if you have the time.
Now you have to go back and top off all those tips when you rounded down.
I initially read this in reverse and thought JRoth was suggesting Tweety round off the sharp points of the shivs he was going to stick into restaurant kitchen staff.
And that one piece of litter isn't going to make the Indian Italian cry.
Thanks for nothing, strikethrough tag.
43 is clearly just some minor way of hazing the foreigners.
45: Yeah, yeah. But he signifies an Indian. (Or does he? It's been a long damn time since I talked like that.)
8.first is correct, and it's amazing how much better green tea tastes if you don't cook it to death.
Although I have no sense of timing and would screw up the temperature if left to my own devices, I have found a cast-iron teapot with just the right heat capacity so that if I pour in boiling water, it within seconds cools to the exact right temperature for green tea.
8.second is I think a matter of personal preference. I am much more bothered by my coffee getting too cold too quickly, than staying too hot too long. And at least when I use a French press, by the time it's ready to pour it's already cool enough to drink.
There is a big push to get people to use rainbarrels here, but the main idea seems to be to cut down on the surge of water into the storm sewers after a rain.
I don't usually do this for coffee, though I've been known to ponder whether, if I'm adding milk to tea, I should let it cool down first or not (since rate of cooling is related to the difference in temperature).
For serving hot dinner, though, I've come to love my in-wall oven, and often turn it on to the minimum temperature and heat up plates and bowls before putting food on them. My wife doesn't like food to be as warm as I do for some strange reason, so this occasionally overdoes things, but nobody likes lukewarm spaghetti carbonara.
because the food had been in an oven or under a heat lamp or something because they did a shitty job of getting it out promptly. Sorry, restaurants!
For the record, when I was a waiter at a BBQ restaurant, getting your food on a hot plate was definitely an indication that I had done a shitty job of getting your food from the heat-lamp-blasting pick-up window in the kitchen to your table. Although if the plate was too hot to carry that usually meant the various meats had already dried out too much and would prompt a customer complaint anyway, so in those cases I'd usually go ahead apologize to the kitchen staff and request new food on a new plate.
That's just wasting water. You could have used the same plate.
52: hmmm, the plot thicks. Because I really am not sure that I've ever gotten food on a hot plate in a genuinely excellent restaurant. I've most often gotten food on a hot plate in restaurants that are expensive but not really all that good. And if I had to come up with heuristic I would say that they may have tended to coincide with not terribly speedy service, but I could be misremembering that.
Hot plate = shitty service
Cold plate = shitty restaurant
Warm plate = good restaurant
I am unconvinced that my plates at the very fancy restaurants I've been to have been all that warm, but it's possible I just wasn't paying that much attention to plate temperature. They weren't cold, certainly, but I don't really know how that would happen in any case.
Now, room temperature butter, that's always a good sign.
In other plate warming news, be careful out there.
The proper way to warm your plates is to fill them with hot food and then throw out that food and put on the other food.
Can't you just immerse them in hot soup and then use the hot soup to bathe the next day?
They weren't cold, certainly, but I don't really know how that would happen in any case.
Stored in an unconditioned cabinet in winter? Kitchens are often unconditioned (because it's incredibly expensive to heat or cool the volume of air required, and it all goes up the exhaust hood anyway), so once you get away from the cooking line, you can get all sorts of temperature variation.
Also, bear in mind that, for food purposes, a plate at room temperature (say 68°) is too cold - the sauce and vegetables will drop in temp instantly.
Like so:
Just-cooked food is (mostly) going to be between 150° and 200°. It's going to seem suitably hot to eat between about 120° and 140°. A plate will feel "warm" above 100°, which means a delta between 50° and 100° when it's plated, bringing the food towards, but not below, the target temp (assuming that the plate has enough thermal mass to roughly match the food, which I think is the norm for most restaurants).
BUT, if your plate is 70° or below, your delta could be 130°, and even super-hot food would very quickly come to the target temp, and start sinking from there. Cooler just-cooked food (say, slices of a roast) will have a delta of 80° and pretty much instantly drop below desired eating temp.
All of which is to say that I endorse 55.
25 (Sigh. So many mistakes in that last comment; I've forgotten how to write!)
You should comment here more often, then!
Maybe I should start to compare the temperature of the wrapper with the quality of the McDouble.
64: you say that, but did you support the McDLT when you had the chance?
But with the McDLT you could just fling the tomato aside to no ill-effect. Or used it to cool down your coffee mug if that seemed wasteful.
With the McDouble, nobody has to grow, harvest, wash, ship, or slice a tomato, leaving aside the liquified ones.
62, 63: I should, I should, if only to lower the bar! It's hard to keep up now that I'm on the wrong side of the pond. I have a new-found admiration for how well the actual Brits manage to comment - I always find that I'm reading at the wrong time of the day.
Speaking of Brits, they've introduced me to the idea of a warm plate at home, which I'd never encountered outside of restaurants before. It's rather civilised.
Wow, I had no idea that Parenthetical had gone so far away. Hello over there!
Helllllooooooooooooo! I may well be loud enough to cross the Atlantic, actually.
Helllllooooooooooooo! I may well be loud enough to cross the Atlantic, actually.
And clumsy enough to click twice!
I always thought warmed plates were the result of the restaurant trying to serve everyone at about the same time when not everyone's food had been done at the same time.
70: this is one of the things the bottom oven of an Aga (actually a Rayburn in my childhood home) is good for.
70 surprises me. I don't warm plates for the two of us eating leftovers, but for company, it's always been a thing. I sort of supposed everybody did. Putting the plates to cover the vegetable pots while you're setting the table also works.
You wipe the bottoms of them with a cloth before you serve up the food.
Wipe them??? I'm using the drips to fill our paddling pool.
Not being used to food on warmed plates, this seems like too much bother to me. But I'm sure there's probably some extra thing I do in the kitchen that you'd find silly, too.
But I'm sure there's probably some extra thing I do in the kitchen that you'd find silly, too.
The little kick-step and half-twirl before putting a dish in the oven is definitely an Americanism.
there's probably some extra thing I do in the kitchen that you'd find silly, too.
Ooh! Mine is: leave the dishes to soak extra long so that maybe someone else will do them they'll be extra clean tomorrow.
82: Like urple doing a fist pump when he opens the fridge and sees there's fresh milk for his cereal.
A friend of my Dad used to keep beer glasses in the fridge so that the beer and the glass would be at the same temperature. The first time I saw this I commented on it and he responded with "Any damn fool can be uncivilized." It's a phrase with remarkable utility.
For a while I had a plastic mug with hollow walls filled with water. You put it in the freezer and it kept your beer cold. Naturally the thing cracked after a while.
This presumes you want your beer that cold. Lots of bars keep beer glasses in some kind of freezer; I always ask them for one that's at room temperature, since the beer is usually about 33F to begin with.
"Beer," said my grandfather, who worked in a brewery for about 35 years, "should be kept and served at cellar temperature." By general consent, that's around 50 degrees in old money, 10 celsius.
Lager should be a bit colder.
Warm plates yes. Chilled glasses, maybe in the country with no AC or if drinking from a glass with thick walls. But a simpler solution is a glass with lower heat capacity, one with thin walls. Don't bars use those big thick mugs because they stand up to rough handling rather than for their magical beer-enhancing properties?
You just needed something more robust than plastic. Imagine bringing an ice-cold stainless steel mug up to your lips.
By way of temperature anality, I started using the little kitchen thermometer to brew coffee at 80c [with the aeropress squashy doofer], and it does make a difference. My sceptical wife, who mocks this stuff [I've mentioned this before] is now a total convert as the coffee is much less bitter. Something which bothers her more than me, tbh, anyway.
My girlfriend seems to be under the impression that glass will shatter if left in the freezer.
I've confidently assured her that this is not a problem unless we're talking about a glass container filled with a freezable mostly-water liquid.
Am I right, or was she?
92. You are right. I have observed an accidental experiment where somebody has had a warm bottle of white wine, shoved it in the freezer to chill it quickly and forgotten about it. When we found it some days later the wine had frozen and expanded, but had pushed the cork out; the bottle was intact.
93: No, I convinced her. So if I were wrong, then she'd no longer be right either.
Glass will shatter if you take it directly from the freezer and fill it with something hot before dropping it on concrete.
I don't warm plates for the two of us eating leftovers, but for company, it's always been a thing. I sort of supposed everybody did.
I don't feel like it's very common in American homes (though I thought perhaps it was due to being from California and not a colder state). It seems to be the norm here in England. I wonder if it possibly could be related to having Agas and Rayburns and the like that are just always on - I don't think we really have that type of range in the US.
(Could I be any more hand wavey in this comment? I think not!)
I wonder if it possibly could be related to having Agas and Rayburns and the like that are just always on
Gotta be the combo of always-on ovens, cold climate, and a tradition of poor central heating in homes.
Maybe it's also a hangover from the period where central heating was much less common in the UK than in the US, with the result that English shelf-temperature plates would be that much colder before heating? It is certainly true that something like an omelet is noticeably ill served by being plonked onto a chilly plate. Indeed, I always notice it! But I don't warm our plates, I just observe how not-hot I have let everything become.
I went to an expensive but not great steak restaurant. The plate was piping hot. It was so hot that they told us not to touch it. The steak did seem to be freshly cooked.