Tired of Coming Home to Cold Food? You Should Use This!
We live in a very unpredictable world. Anything from unusual traffic jams to unseasonal weather or an unexpected load of work can easily make us late for dinner. The result? Stone cold dinner waiting for us to stow it down our throats.
If you are traveling in the same boat, having a car food warmer in your vehicle can nicely do the trick. It allows you to keep a cooked meal warm, with some models going as far as to cook your meal while you drive on the road. Here are the different types of car food warmers currently available for sale.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF CAR FOOD WARMERS?
Car food warmers are essentially categorized into four types. These range from lunch boxes to microwaves and dedicated cookers fitted with a heating element. All of these run off the 12 Volt cigarette lighter port in your car. Let’s take a closer look at these below:
Hotpot
Hotpots are one of the best ways to serve warm food. They look like crockpot-type cookers that run low and slow. They are slow to heat up which makes them well-suited for drivers who spend a lot of time on the road.
These car food warmers are available in two designs. One that runs off the power from the 12 Volt DC port in your car. Others are dual port AC/DC units that run on both direct and alternative power supplies. With any of these in your car, you’ll have warm food waiting for you. And at times when you are short on time, you can set the device up to slowly cook your meal for you. That too inside your car.
Combination car food warmer and cooler
You will also come across models that can both warm and cool foods simultaneously. These combination car food warmers and coolers let you heat your food when you want to eat it and chill your salad when you want it cold. They can also bring your drinks to the right temperature when you want to drink them.
These car food warmers do sound great in theory but are a tad bit difficult to execute because you have to add and replace food items depending upon what temperature you want them at. Plus, some of these are actually quite big to comfortably fit inside a car.
Electric lunch boxes
Like regular lunch boxes, electric ones also keep your food warm. But they go a step ahead and use your car’s DC port to reheat it when you want.
These car food warmers also act as a storage solution for your meal. They obviously can’t cook it, but you can use one to keep pre-cooked food warm or to reheat the one that has gone cold. Not every electric lunch box, however, can do that so be sure to check the specifications to make sure you get what you are paying for.
Car microwaves
Car microwaves are perhaps the most expensive and power-consuming car food warmers. But they make up for it by reheating your food in very little time. Plus, they are also capable of cooking food for you.
Setting up a car microwave is a bit tricky. Because of the difference in amperage requirements, you cannot operate it off the cigarette lighter port, rather you’ll have to wire the unit directly into the fuse panel or the battery of your vehicle with an in line. Be warned that using this car food warmer too much will quickly deplete your battery.
IN A NUTSHELL
When choosing a car food warmer, you should always prioritize your unique application. A traditional lunch box-type warmer may serve you well when you are on the road for longer time periods. But a car microwave accomplishes the task faster. And these are not the only options. There are a lot of other devices in the category, including warmers, cookers, and other food prep gadgets. And all of these run on the DC power port in your car, you won’t have any difficulty in operating one.