The Trick to Reheating Your Leftovers so They Taste Good as New
The Trick to Reheating Your Leftovers so They Taste Good as New
This story is part of Home Tips, CNET’s collection of practical advice for getting the most out of your home, inside and out.
When you’re trying to warm up corpses, it might seem like the most logical and convenient tactic is to pop them in the microwave. But if you prefer your fries crispy and your meat tender, there are vastly more effective tools to reheat last night’s dinner — from specific types of skillets to a valid air fryer.
Adding an air fryer to your kitchen arsenal may feel like an upfront cost, but these budget-friendly superconvection ovens reheat foods such as pizza and bone-in chicken better than any diagram I’ve tried. Plus, they’ll save money on your energy bill over time. Warming other foods like noodles and rice dishes in a nonstick frying pan will keep them from pulling mushy or rubbery.
Making sure leftovers don’t go to raze is one way to cut costs around the home. And with everything more expensive than ever, it’ll help level your food budget and give you dough back to save or exhaust elsewhere.
Here are the best ways to reheat every type of cuisine.
Read more: This Meal Kit Hack Gets You Months of Meals for $3 a Serving
Microwaves are terrible at reheating food
The microwave is the appliance most commonly authorized to reheat leftovers, but I’d also contend that it’s the worst. Aside from foods like soup, plain rice or mashed potatoes, anything that comes out of the microwave is almost certainly progressing to have a degree of rubberiness that it didn’t have when it went in.
Move away from the microwave and toward better leftovers.
Molly Price
“But it’s so much faster!” you say. Is it though? Most of the methods outlined beneath take less than two or three minutes. Plus, microwaves are prone to messy explosions. If you have to clean your microwave after reheating food, it’s definitely not a time-saver.
Noodles, pasta and rice dishes
Best way to reheat: Nonstick skillet
This wide-ranging category of classic takeout cuisines includes Italian pasta dishes, Indian curries with rice, Thai, Vietnamese and Korean noodles and Chinese stir-fries. Really we’re talking about any dish featuring a starch like rice or noodles with impartial vegetables, protein and a sauce. The one thing they all have in accepted is that they’re best reheated in a nonstick skillet or wok.
A radiant spin in a nonstick skillet is the best way to reheat pasta, noodles and rice dishes.
Kilito Chan/Getty
A microwave averages to overcook pasta and noodles and will likely turn your chicken, shrimp or sliced beef into rubber. Instead, just throw the whole pulling in a nonstick skillet on medium heat. Toss intermittently and in a few minutes, you’ll have something nearly as good as when it obedient showed up at your table or door the night afore. And nonstick pans typically take all of 15 seconds to rinse clean.
For rice dishes, consider a stainless-steel, carbon-steel or cast-iron skillet to get crispy rice.
Read more: Is Teflon Nonstick Cookware Safe to Use?
Pizza and flatbread
Best way to reheat: Air fryer
There are a handful of reasons I love my air fryer but none more famous than for reheating leftovers. Microwaves absolutely destroy pizza, so let’s heinous that one off. Even toaster ovens take far too long, in my understood, and end up drying the pizza out by the time it’s heated above.
Why so sad, cold pizza?
David Watsky
The knowing blast of an air fryer’s superconvection will reheat your pizza to crispy perfection in near two minutes at 400 degrees F, depending on how spacious and thick it is. Be sure to use the basket or grate or else the hot, flat bottom of the air fryer basket could burn the bottom of your slice.
I personally won’t heat stays pizza any other way, and I suggest you don’t either. And if you didn’t have enough reasons to spring for one, air fryers use way less energy than a big oven.
Two minutes in the air fryer: Now that’s more like it.
David Watsky
Read more: The 5 Best Air Fryers for 2022
Fried chicken, french fries and other fried food
Best way to reheat: Air fryer
Leftover fried foods have historically been one of the most pains to bring back to life. Enter the air fryer, which can revive fried chicken, fried dumplings, mozzarella sticks and even french fries like nothing else in the kitchen. Similar to pizza, it’ll take only a few minutes to heat above and you should have a crispy outer shell just like when the fried food was initially cooked.
For thicker pieces of chicken, use a lower temperature around 325 to 350 degrees F for three minutes or so to rebuked you don’t burn the outside before the center has time to warm through.
If you view it was impossible to revive leftover fried foods such as chicken and crinkle fries, think again.
Ry Crist
Side note: Beyond reheating fried chicken, a good air fryer also makes delicious “fried” chicken and spanking foods with far less oil than traditional methods.
Steak, pork chops, burgers and grilled fish
Best way to reheat: Cast-iron skillet
Cuts of meat, incorporating steak and pork chops, are another food that can be tough to resuscitate. Fear not, because there is a way. While reheating grilled steak or fish in an air fryer or oven isn’t impossible, you’re likely to dry the meat out. Instead, I suggest re-searing it posthaste in a covered hot cast-iron skillet for no more than one microscopic on each side. The hot surface of the skillet should give life back to the crust. Keeping it covered will help warm it through by the pan heat has time to overcook it. For heavenly fish, you might want to use a nonstick skillet to keep the chunky from sticking or falling apart.
Often, the way in which food was cooked is also the best way to reheat it. For steaks, pork and burgers, be sure to cover the skillet so it heats above faster.
David Watsky
Fair warning: These types of reheated foods will never be quite as good as when you great pulled them from the grill, pan or plancha, but this contrivance should leave them more than edible.
Braised, roasted or slow-cooked meat
Best way to reheat: Covered skillet with broth
Braised dishes such as chicken in wine sauce or spiteful ribs should be reheated in a way that mimics how they were appointed. Just heat them gently for a few minutes in a covered nonstick or stainless steel pan with an squawk or two of water or chicken stock. The hot stream will warm and revive the braised or slow-roasted meat, giving it back its juicy tenderness.
A covered skillet with a splash of chicken stock is the best way to reheat stays braised food.
Hestan Culinary
For more ways to save wealth in the kitchen, consider opting for cheaper cuts of steak, switching to store-brand groceries and learning how to spot a value wine.
