The portable oven has saved us so much money. This is what you need if you are trying to avoid eating fast food.
Portable ovens make it really easy to eat good food while you are away from home. They heat and even cook food while you roll down the road. They allow you to meal prep and adhere to any diet no matter where you are.
My husband was a truck driver for 6 years and he has never met a cold lunch he likes. We spent the first two years spending lots of money on gas station food. I felt like such a failure for not packing his lunch, but he wouldn’t eat cold food and there is no microwave in the truck.
We discovered the Hot Logic Mini and it changed the game for us.
We have used our (now totally disgusting) Hot Logic Mini daily for two years. I would prepare meals in 3 cup rectangular Pyrex containers and he would grab one and cook it on the road.
You can see one of my meal preps in this video.
With the Hot Logic I could pack really healthy meals for him that he would actually eat.
It has also saved me now that I am back at work as a teacher. I can throw some frozen ravioli and sauce into a container and have a delicious hot lunch with a bagged salad.
How to Keep Food Hot While Traveling
Bringing food to a gathering or your mom’s house for Christmas can be a very messy affair. I have loved my latching lid crock pot, but it only keeps the food contained.
A portable food warmer plugs into your car’s 12v outlets and keeps the food hot during the drive. Some are adjustable so you can keep warm or cook the food while you are on the way. They have a hot plate in the bottom of a soft sided lunch box. They come in small and large sizes.
We have used the Hot Logic for years, it comes in a personal size and a family size that you can find on Amazon.
We recently received the Sabot Heat which has a lot more features like auto shut off and adjustable temperature. Sabot Heat only has one size of food warmer, but they do offer models with a built in cooler you could use to carry anything you may want to add when you arrive; chives, cheese, sour cream.
How To Heat Food While Traveling
We live pretty rurally so we need a meal every time we leave the house. We use a portable mini oven in the car to heat food while we are traveling.
When away from home you can heat food three ways, stop and use a microwave, pack hot food into a thermos, or use a 12v portable food warmer. It can be difficult and inconvenient to try to find a microwave on the road, but a food warmer is a low cost solution that you will use again and again.
I make mac and cheese and throw it in the Sabot Heat portable oven, when we have played hard at the park, or chosen our library books, I serve up the mac and cheese and everyone is happy to nap on the ride home.
You can meal prep for these events on the weekends. I like to make a butternut mac and cheese and pack up a few days worth of meals to grab and go.
I also keep a clear container like this one under the seat with plastic forks, spoons, knives, spoons, cups, and bowls for eating on the go.
This is super helpful even when we are eating fast food in the car. Having extra cups and straws are really helpful when splitting up a milkshake for my 4 young kids. They don’t need a whole milkshake and I get kinda embarrassed asking for 3 extra cups…
What is a Food Warmer Good For?
Food warmers are good for heating up leftovers and for cooking raw meats and vegetables. They are best for foods that are not too wet and not too dry. Soup will be difficult, but lasagna will be delicious.
Casseroles are the best thing for a food warmer. I like using frozen ravioli and sauce to make a pseudo lasagna, or to reheat baked chicken and rice. Almost anything you could cook in a crock pot can be heated in a food warmer. I also really like cooking meat for meals like tacos, nachos and sandwiches. This makes the food go further for my family as most food warmers are really small.
Food warmers vary in their capabilities, some only have one heat setting and work more like a slow cooker, while some work more like a hot plate with multiple heat settings.
How can I heat food without a microwave?
Many families choose to avoid a microwave, but how do we melt butter, how do you heat leftovers?
A countertop oven or portable food warmer are great replacements for a microwave. Countertop ovens or large toaster ovens will heat up most food in 20 to 30 minutes. Portable food warmers are more like slow cookers, they will heat up food in one to two hours, and keep it warm until it is time to eat.
I like the food warmer, because I can plug it in after breakfast and we can eat whenever we are ready. We also like it because we can heat up leftovers in glass, plastic or paper containers.
We choose to use 3 or 6 cup pyrex containers for almost all our heating, because we can easily pack away leftovers in containers like these, and heat them up in the same container.
Food warmers can also heat up food in containers that you cannot use in the microwave. Metal containers and tinfoil are fine in food warmers. This post explains the best containers for food warmers.
Hot Logic vs. Sabot Heat
I have the Hot Logic and I have a Sabot Heat. I think they have very different applications.
The Hot Logic has one heat setting. This is the food warmer I keep in my classroom at school to heat up my lunch.
I love having my lunch hot whenever I get the time to eat, and it is so simple to use the Hot Logic. I bring in my lunch, put it right in the Hot Logic (I have the 120 for work) and plug it in. So simple.
We have the Sabot Heat in the 12v model so we can use it in the car. We used it yesterday when we were running errands. We had some leftover Taco Bell, we put it in the Sabot Heat and set the heat to level 4 and they were ready in 30 minutes.
Sabot Heat makes more sense in the car because you can heat things much more quickly. We recently used it to heat meat for tacos after church.
The Hot Logic has been used daily in my family for 3 years and it has never failed us. We have only had the Sabot Heat for 2 weeks, but it seems to be the same technology.
The Hot Logic soft container has been difficult to keep clean, but if you wipe it out after each use and leave it unzipped to dry out, it will last for a long time.
