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Summer is well underway, and that means that the season of outdoor events is upon us. Picnics, camping trips, beach bonfires… they’re all great ways to spend time with the ones you care about during the summer months. Of course, access to food is a crucial part of pulling off these kinds of events. The thing is, most foods are best when you can keep them cold until you want to eat them. You’d be amazed by the difference in quality between a food that has been kept cold up until the time of eating and the same food after sitting in a not-so-cold environment for a few hours.
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Unfortunately, keeping food cold outside is not always easy. Sure, you can throw things in a traditional cooler filled with ice. But coolers are smelly and not very aesthetically pleasing. Plus, the ice melts pretty quickly and then you’ve just got a bunch of wet, soggy food.
Luckily for you, I’ve loved picnics ever since I was a little kid and I’ve become sort of an expert on keeping food cold outside in sustainable and visually pleasing ways. In this post, I’ll drop some knowledge in the form of nine pro tips so you can become an expert too.
The Tiktok Ice Bath
I’ve got to hand it to Tiktok user Shannon McNitt – she came up with a brilliant method for keeping food cold outside that I had never used before, and it went viral in 2021. Since then, I’ve used it multiple times and I confess I’m now obsessed with it.
The method requires two relatively shallow dishes with thin sides. The best ones to use are those bendable aluminum pans that you can get at the grocery store in 24-packs that cost $5. The first step is to fill one of the pans about a third of the way with water before sticking it in the freezer and waiting for it to become solid ice. When it’s time for your outdoor event, take the pan out of the freezer and put another of the pans onto the ice. Now you have a pan that is being cooled from below by a sheet of ice. The bottom of the food tray will be literally freezing, and that cold will disperse to permeate all the food on the tray. It looks much more elegant than an icebox-style cooler, too. Plus, it’s incredibly cost-efficient and eco-friendly.
The solid sheet of ice will stay intact for hours upon hours, especially since the upper tray is blocking the ice from direct sunlight. It’s a lot more compact than ice cubes, so it works a lot better than if you use a traditional ice bath to keep the upper tray cool. Lots of commenters on McNitt’s Tiktok tutorial suggested she use saltwater to keep the food fresh longer, but that’s incorrect since saltwater actually has a much lower freezing point (and, therefore, melts much more quickly) than fresh water.
Chill Plates and Bowls in Advance
Most people don’t think to put their empty plates or bowls in the freezer beforehand to chill them in advance, but it’s actually an effective (and free) way to keep cold foods cold outside. Stainless steel and porcelain are two common serving plate materials that stay cold for a long time when chilled. Glass and plastic are both pretty terrible at holding in the cold.
There are also special stay-cold serving dishes like this 5 quart hydro flask serving bowl from REI that stay cold for much longer than regular dishes can. It has a double walled design that insulates cold or heat while keeping the exterior at room temperature, and its 18/10 stainless steel construction stays cool for a long time. Other plates and bowls are filled with saline solutions or other materials that can be frozen beforehand and retain cold extremely well.
Serve Out of the Right Size Bowls
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If you have access to a refrigerator nearby (for instance, in the case of a backyard barbecue), then you should bring out your cold food in smaller serving platters and just replace it every now and then. Bringing out big trays might be a bit more convenient, but it also means the food will be sitting out longer and will have more chance to get warm or go bad.
If you don’t have any nearby access to refrigeration, though, it’s best to pile the foods into large serving bowls. Because of the way heat works, large bowls of cold food will actually warm up a bit more slowly than smaller bowls.
The point is, think about your situation and pick the best size serving bowls for it.
Remember the Magic 40
The United States FDA and lots of other sources say that 40 degrees Fahrenheit, or 4.5 degrees Centigrade, is the warmest that cold foods can get before they start to go bad. In other words, keep your food below 40 degrees while outside and it won’t spoil or start to lose its fresh taste.
Keep Food in the Shade
Heat is part of the reason food left outside will go bad over time, but another big part of the reason is solar radiation, the element colloquially called “sunlight” that makes the shade feel cooler than sunny areas — even though they are actually the exact same temperature. Solar radiation also makes ice melt faster and provides faster heat transference in general.
When you’re setting up a spread outside, consider where you can place it so that it will be out of the reach of solar radiation. Remember to account for the fact that the sun moves throughout the day, and the shade will too.
Keep Hot and Cold Food Separate
Hot items radiate heat waves, and nearby items pick up the heat from those items. This effect is only magnified if the item picking up heat is colder to begin with. So it’s a good idea to keep your spread of hot or even room temperature foods a ways away from the cold foods. At very least, do not keep them in the same containers.
The same goes for any other heat source like a heat lamp or a barbecue — place it far away from the cold food.
Use an Inflatable Buffet
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Inflatable buffets are the most cost-effective, convenient, visually appealing, and long-lasting type of stay-cool serving tray out there. They can be blown up like a pool toy, resulting in a long, table-shaped tray with a pocket for ice. It looks nice, and most models have air-insulated edges so the ice will not melt as quickly as it would in a regular serving tray. If this sounds like a good option to you, I’d recommend this set of three 51.5” by 24.5” inflatable buffets.
Keep Food Covered
It may seem like a small matter, but keeping any kind of a cover over food will slow down it’s warming process by a lot, even if the cover is just a thin layer of foil. Not only will it insulate the cold, but it will protect the food from the solar radiation that I discussed earlier. It’s best if you can use a covering that is not see through for full cooling effect, though even a translucent or totally clear covering like plastic wrap will help quite a bit. Just make sure the covering is airtight, or it will not work nearly as well.
Use a Zeer
Most of the solutions on this list will only work for keeping food cold for a few hours, but a zeer will get the job done for longer periods of time — say, a whole weekend. It’s essentially a DIY refrigerator that does not use electricity.
You’ll need two clay pots of different sizes, some coarse sand, some water, and a damp cloth big enough to cover the small pot. Salt will interfere with the zeer working as well as it should, so it’s not recommended that you use ocean sand (which has salt in it) or saltwater.
To make a zeer, follow these steps:
- Get two clay pots, one larger than the other so that the smaller pot can sit inside the bigger one without the walls touching. It’s important the pots are clay, because clay is porous and coolness can pass through it more easily. IMPORTANT: If the pots have holes in the bottom, cover up the holes with tape that will not unstick when wet.
- Pack a bit of the sand into the bottom of the big pot. The goal here is to put in enough sand so that the lip of the small pot sits at the same level as the lip of the large pot when it is placed inside.
- Put in the small pot. Remember, at this point, the lips of the two pots should be at the same level.
- Fill the circular space between the wall of the small pot and the wall of the big pot with coarse sand. The sand should come up to the lips of the pots without spilling into the small pot.
- Pour the water onto the sand. You’ll want to soak the sand as much as possible without the water actually spilling over the lip of the small pot. Pouring in water might settle the sand and pack it down in the pot, so you might need to add more sand until there is as much sand and water in there as possible.
- You’ve now got a mobile refrigerator. Put food inside the small pot and cover it with the cloth to keep the cold in.
As long as you pour in more water every day, this solution can last for weeks without having to replace the sand. It’s not the most aesthetically pleasing way to serve cold food, so I’d recommend using it as your refrigerator and using actual serving dishes to present the food.
Keep It Cool
Some people serving foods that should be kept cold at their events just take the “screw it” approach and figure it’ll be fine at room temperature. Please, for the love of all that is good, don’t be one of those people. Lukewarm foods that are not supposed to be that way are just gross. None of your guests will tell you that to your face, but at least some of them will be thinking it.
So take some of my recommendations for keeping cold foods cold outside and organize an event that will make everyone happy — and not anyone food poisoning.
Last update on 2023-10-27 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
Source: https://gardencourte.com
Categories: Outdoor