The Biggest Mistakes Everyone Makes When Reheating Food

If you know the phrase, "what you don't eat today, you'll eat tomorrow," you probably grew up in a leftover-friendly household. Both leftovers and strategic meal-prepped foods are easy ways to reduce time in the kitchen on busy weeknights or combat food waste from whatever restaurant you went to for dinner last night. And while some cold foods, like green salads, cold noodle bowls, and deli salads, don't require you to reheat them, other foods require you to take special care in reheating them.

Finding out how to reheat some foods can be a nightmare — and a reason why some people despise leftovers. We're happy to report that gone are the days of shoving your T.V. dinner tray in the microwave for three minutes — an arbitrary number you conjured up in your brain — and having it come out more like a savory soup than lasagna. Here are some of the ways you might be incorrectly reheating foods.

If you are a "set it and forget it" food reheater, you should rethink your methods. Stirring your food helps eliminate the impact of microwave cold spots. The cold spots emerge when the waves enter the microwave and hit the food irregularly. Neglecting to stir your food while it's cooking may result in unappetizing cold pockets and foodborne pathogens still lurking in the food. Instead, we recommend stirring or rotating the food midway through the cooking time. You can also flip the food over to ensure both sides cook evenly when working with large food, such as chicken breasts or pork chops.

You should also allocate some time at the end of cooking for your food to stand. This interval of time allows your food to continue cooking in the residual heat of the container, thus killing off potential pathogens and ensuring every piece of food is cooked through.

Your go-to appliance for reheating your food is likely your microwave, but you can use many different kitchen appliances to reheat food instead. The ideal type of appliance to reheat food depends on the food's texture. The best pairing is usually whatever the food was cooked in initially. By this premise, stir fry would be best reheated in a wok or skillet, while breaded pork chops would be best reheated in an oven.

Tabletop appliances, like air fryers and toaster ovens, can also be helpful tools for reheating food. Reheating crispy foods, pizza, and meat in an air fryer is the best way to go. We recommend layering the food in a single layer and shaking it halfway to get the most even reheat. A toaster oven is an invaluable tool for wraps, bread, and sandwiches because it can make the exterior of these foods perfectly crispy in less than 15 minutes.

You should eat the food you reheat right away. Leaving your food on the counter while you attend to other tasks can cause an increased risk for pathogen exposure since the food is likely within the USDA's temperature danger zone of 40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition, the agency notes that bacteria can be introduced to the food after it's reheated. Therefore, you should keep all the leftovers you don't plan on eating in a shallow container and in your refrigerator — where the temperature is below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

If for some reason, you need to leave your reheated leftovers out to attend to something else, you need to keep its temperature hot — greater than 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This might include leaving the food in a hot skillet to finish cooking or turning your oven on to keep the food warm.

Keeping the moisture in is vital to warm up your leftovers effectively. You should always cover food in the microwave to efficiently trap the heat and moisture the food releases. This can help the food cook while preventing overcooking. Moreover, a steamy environment helps kill off any lingering bacteria or pathogens in the food.

There are several different options for covering your food. A plastic wrap is a good option for covering food because it traps moisture and can easily cover most foods. You can lift a corner of the plastic wrap if you want to mitigate the amount of steam produced. Glass covers provide a more foolproof seal, but caution must be expressed when removing the cover to prevent burns. You should avoid using aluminum foil and paper products containing nylon or nylon filament when reheating foods in the microwave — since both of these products can ignite.

There are some kitchen appliances you should use to reheat food. But the slow cooker is not one of them.

You should not reheat leftovers in a slow cooker, like a Crock Pot, because the temperature won't get above the "danger zone" quickly enough, per Southern Living. These appliances are designed to warm food incrementally, thus increasing the potential pathogen exposure for reheated foods like casseroles, soups, and grains. Stick to using an appliance that can more readily reach a safe reheating temperature — like a microwave or an air fryer.

You should also avoid using the slow cooker to reheat food, even if you made the food in the slow cooker, to begin with. Southern Living also notes that if you refrigerate food in the slow cooker insert, adding it back to a hot appliance base can cause cracking. The outlet adds that you should never freeze food in your slow cooker basin because the dramatic temperature change can damage the basin.

One of the golden rules of baking is always to preheat your oven. But is preheating your oven important for leftovers, too? Preheating your oven before putting in the food you plan to reheat is essential because it reduces the time the food is in the "temperature danger zone." This means that your food can go from the cold of your refrigerator to the blazing hot temperature of your oven in a matter of minutes.

You might be dragging your feet on this one since preheating an oven is kind of like watching paint dry. But pathogens can multiply in the food "danger zone" in as little as 20 minutes. Isn't it better to take 10 minutes to preheat your oven than to contract a foodborne illness? Plus, you can set your oven and prepare the food while waiting for it to preheat.

You need some essential tools if you're planning on reheating meal-prepped portions of food throughout the week — most notably, containers. We recommend storing all food portions in air-tight containers for maximum freshness and longevity. These sealed boxes minimize airflow through your food, which may alter its taste or aroma. In addition, these containers can come in lightweight plastic and glass, which makes for customizable storage options for every meal prepper.

We recommend keeping sauces, dressings, fruits, or foods that don't need to be reheated in separate containers. That way, when you're ready to reheat, you can pop the container in the microwave (with a lid already on), and you're ready to start cooking. And while many of your foods may need to be reheated, it's likely that some foods are less dense than others and will require a different amount of time in the microwave. So you'll find the whole process much more manageable if you store your food to maximize reheating efficiency.