In many cases, people find themselves travelling to be with family for the holidays. For some of these people, they might find that they want to cook something special and bring it over.
On the other hand, you might be the one having family come over to your place, and you find that you need to keep several helpings of food warm so that everything will be ready to serve by the time everyone arrives. When you find yourself in this kind of situation, you might not know what to do at first.
With this being said, everything depends on what you are trying to keep warm. The method for keeping something like cornbread warm is going to be vastly different than keeping a cut of brisket warm.
Thankfully, keeping cornbread warm is a relatively easy process, assuming you have the equipment to get the job done.
Making sure that your cornbread stays warm for the guests who are going to be arriving at your house doesn’t require too many tools. Generally, you are going to want to have a crockpot, towel, aluminum foil, or at the very least, some rocks that are oven-safe.
There are a few ways you can go about keeping cornbread warm.
Warming Cornbread in a Crockpot
This is, by far, going to be the easiest way for you to keep your food warm. It is also going to be the most efficient, allowing you to keep your food warmer for a longer period of time.
If you have been cooking the cornbread in the crockpot itself, then all you have to do is keep the crockpot on its lowest heat setting and you will be good to go. Otherwise, you will need a dish towel and some aluminum foil.
First things first, you are going to need to slightly wet the dish towel before you place it at the bottom of the crockpot. This will help everything retain the amount of heat that it needs. From here, you will want to place the cornbread, still inside of the pan, inside the crockpot.
Unfortunately, this step only works if the cornbread pan is smaller than your crockpot. Once you have done this, you will want to create an aluminum foil tent to help insulate the heat even further.
The reason why you want to create a tent is because wrapping the cornbread directly will keep the steam inside of it, ultimately turning it into a mushy mess that nobody wants.
By giving the steam some space to vent out, while still trapping some of the heat inside, you will be able to keep the cornbread as warm as possible for several hours before friends and family arrive at your house.
Warming Cornbread with Bricks or Stones
This method might be far less intuitive than using your crockpot, but if you find yourself in a pinch, it can certainly keep your cornbread warm for a good amount of time.
The important part here is to make sure that you don’t heat up the stones or bricks too much. You only want to warm them enough that they act as a hot plate for the cornbread, while you wait for your friends and family to arrive.
This method is as simple as it sounds. First you will want to find rocks or bricks to heat up, and then you will want to wrap a towel around the stones or bricks. If you are using stones that are small enough, you could put them in the serving basket, underneath a towel of course.
This method will keep your cornbread warm for a few hours, giving you ample time to wait for people to arrive.
Ben has a bachelor’s degree in construction engineering. When not constructing or remodeling X-Ray Rooms, Cardiovascular Labs, and Pharmacies, you can find him at home with wife and two daughters. Outside of family, He loves grilling and barbequing on his Big Green Egg and Blackstone Griddle, as well as working on projects around the house.
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