....to not heat our dinnerplates?

[LaContessaDiPlumpOnSea]

MIL does. I don't.

Please discuss.

But why is it a faff?! Pick up plates, put them in cooling down oven whilst you take out lasagne or cottage pie and cut it up. No faff AFAIC. I like to slowly enjoy my food and if it was on a cold plate, it would be cold by the time I finished it. I also am the last to sit down when serving lots of people, I want my food hot not lukewarm and a warmed plate sorts that!

My mum always does, But I can't be arsed, even though I like my food really really hot. MIL serves everyone's food (on a cold plate) while standing at the oven, one by one. We are supposed to start eating as soon as she brings it over. Everyone has finished by the time she sits down, why not just let everyone help themselves from the table? On warm bloody plates.

Only on a Sunday. I do love food from a hot plate but my family didn't do it when I was young either.

I think this is neither an age nor class thing but a temperature of your kitchen thing. My nan warmed plates, my mum didn't, I do. Yes our house is centrally heated but the kitchens still quite cold and like a pp the plate cupboard is on an external wall so you may as well be taking plates out of the fridge.

DH and the two teenagers eat their food so quickly, there is no time for it to go cold

I always heat plates (except if having salad on the side and can't be bothered to do different plates for salad). I just stick them in the oven as things are finishing off.

I wouldn't think of it. I'm not fussed about food being really hot. I lived in SE Asia for a while, food is often eaten lukewarm abroad.

My granddad does this

Never really seen the point. I do eat slowly and yes the food goes cold but it isn't that bad. I couldn't cope with adding an extra step to food preparation, I'm terrible enough at it as it is!

If you eat as fast as my ILs it is irrelevant what you put the food on it will be gone in 2.5 mins

Haven't read the whole thread but I heat plates for 1:30 mins in the microwave, no rubber discs, no sprinkle of water and it works just fine!

Didn't used to but do now, food keeps warmer longer and it's just generally nicer.

Just stick the plates in the microwave for a minute, job done. Not exactly adding a lot of work.

The obsession with how hot food is, plus the apparent pride in making the plates to eat it off hotter than the sun is something I can never understand.

What really then gets my goat is people blowing on each subsequent mouthful so that it's cool enough to eat. Me and DP argue about this rather a lot (ok, I am intolerant of the largely pointless, unhygienic / impolite blowing)

Drives me round the effing twist!

Bog standard requirement surely?

It isn't a "bog standard requirement" to want food that is so hot you have to blow on it or risk burning yourself when eating. I wouldn't want really cold food but that isn't going to happen in a house with central heating. Warming plates up is old fashioned because it comes from a time when houses were much colder.

We have central heating but it doesn't penetrate the plate cupboard. No need to make the plates scalding, we just warm them to take the chill off, they can still be handled. Definitely a bog standard requirement here apart from in the height of summer.

The plates are put in a warming drawer that I can set the temp.

Having a "warming drawer" where you can set the temperature sounds like an unnecessary faff/expense in the first place.

I rely on a cold plate to cool it down !

the apparent pride in making the plates to eat it off hotter than the sun

Yes, that's exactly what people who prefer hot plates are aiming for .

I put my plates in the microwave just to warm them a bit.
1 minute for 2 plates.

It makes a difference in hiw quickly the food goes cold.

I am generally disorganised and this leads to usually removing plates from the dishwasher at about the same time I need to serve food. This means that plates are often hot, but not deliberately so. The temperature of my plate just isn't one of the things I can bring myself to care about, to be honest.

We do it - unless I gobble my food, it goes cold before I finish, if the plates aren't warm. I just put them in the oven for the last three minutes of cooking time.

I don't warm them if I'm having, say, omelette and salad - I'd rather then omelette went cold than have warm salad.

Suburban - that is exactly what my mum is aiming for. Why, I have no idea, but she does take immense pride in her dangerously hot crockery.