On a normal Sunday, you can stick the plates in the oven for the last ten minutes and nobody thinks twice about it. Christmas Day is different. The oven’s got the turkey resting under foil, then the roasties, the pigs in blankets and the stuffing all fighting for the top shelf, and there’s no room for a stack of plates. So they go out cold, and you’ve spent all morning on a dinner that’s lukewarm by the time the gravy has gone round the table.
A plate warmer solves exactly that. It’s not glamorous, and you’ll only use it a handful of times a year. If it’s usually two or three of you and your oven has a warming drawer, skip it: a few plates in a sink of hot water for five minutes, dried off quickly, does the job for a small table. It earns its keep when you’re feeding eight or more and every bit of oven space is spoken for.
Cold plates, cold dinner
A cold ceramic plate pulls heat out of food fast. With a roast it’s worse, because everything is plated in stages and the first portions sit there while you’re carving and dishing up the rest. A warm plate buys you a few extra minutes before the gravy skins over and the sprouts go tepid. If you’re keeping the serving dishes hot as well, you’ll notice the difference even more.
More electric blanket than cabinet
Most of them are a padded fabric sleeve with heating wires sewn into each layer. You lay a few plates in each section, fold it up like a concertina, zip or wrap it closed and plug it in.
The VonShef 12 plate warmer is a good example, and one of the better reviewed ones on Amazon UK. It’s 200W, holds up to twelve plates up to 30cm across, and according to VonShef it gets to around 60°C in ten minutes and tops out at 75°C after fifteen. That’s warm enough to matter without being too hot to pick up. There’s a built-in overheat thermostat, and the outer sleeve is a double layer of cotton, so it isn’t hot to handle.
The bit I like most is the storage. Open, it’s long (189cm laid flat), but it folds down to a 30cm square, so it lives in the same cupboard as your tablecloths until December.
Timing-wise, switch it on when the turkey comes out to rest, not when you start the veg. Fifteen minutes is plenty, and it means the plates are ready exactly when you need them.
