To not heat my dinner plate?

[Jaggy1]

Just a silly one really..

My MIL has been coming to us once a week for a little while now. Every single time we have dinner whether we serve up or she does, even if we get a takeaway she always asks if I want my plate heated? Either with boiling water or in the oven if it’s being used. I just think it’s strange as I’d never do that on a random Tuesday night dinner or anything but she does it all the time 🤣
Also weird that DH never asks or cares for his plate heated any other time but he’ll always have it when she’s here.

Is this a thing? Am I the strange one 🤣
YABU- you religiously heat your plate
YANBU- never heat your plate

Think it’s a generational thing, as a busy mum I rarely get to eat mine straight away anyway so makes no difference if I heat the plate. My grandparents use to heat plates. So I’ve tried it both ways and honestly I don’t see the difference

Nothing to deal with being “fancy”. Everything to do with having hot food. Maybe a bit generational because houses were colder before most people had central heating.

If you treat a meal as a social occasion and talk to the other people at the table then heating the plates and serving dishes to keep the food warm for as long as possible is essential. Nothing worse than cold food. If you don't converse while eating then maybe it's not an issue 💁. Not a generational thing though, my entire family heat plates (except MIL who is 89).

That assumes everyone wants a roast dinner - no thank you!

Perhaps a lot of people have very large meals or eat very slowly?

Oh gosh my mum does this.....total faff IMO! Think it's quite an old fashioned thing (she's mid 70s)

Why is it a total faff? You only have to put the plates in the hot oven for a few minutes. If the oven isn't hot, you put them in the microwave for one minute.

The obsession with ridiculously hot food is definitely something from the older generations. may well be younger people who prefer it nowadays too but it’s probably just been ingrained. Sometimes wonder if it’s to do with food hygiene/ standards not being what they are now, so things being piping hot was just another defence against illness…lukewarm food maybe being a sign someone hadn’t cooked something properly/ had no idea what they were doing in the kitchen.

PIL’s drive me to distraction with it. They’ll pick up a Chinese takeaway and bung it straight in the microwave when they get it home (5 mins later) before they let you touch it. Soggy noodles and a burned tongue 🙄

Very much generational, both my parents and PIL heated plates. I heat for a roast (due to gravy and generally it takes longer to eat) or dinner parties but can't be bothered the rest of the time.

My aunt used to heat the plates. It’s rather nice. She’d be over 100 now. Maybe it’s a generational thing.

This ^

My parents used to do it when we were having fish and chips from the chippy. I don't recall it being done at any other time.

I think it depends, I’d heat the plates if doing a roast, partly cause oven is on anyway and also gravy loses temp fast on a cold plate. Wouldn’t bother for say pasta as a generous portion will nicely warm the plate by itself.

Both of us grew up warming plates and still do it now. It definitely keeps food hotter for longer.

It doesn’t have to take extra energy or water resources either. My parents had a warming rack attached to the grill, and it would warm up the plates using the heat from the grill, oven, or stovetop, as appropriate.

We use the bottom of our grill oven just above the main oven in a similar way - essentially it’s the top of the main oven and warms up nicely while cooking.

I warm pasta bowls in the steam from the cooking pasta. Granted, I have to wipe them down, but it’s quick and effective.

Roast dinners & pasta, I hear the plates because the spaghetti & broccoli go cold quickly.

Anything else, not as fussed.

We used to, for probably the first 15 years of marriage. Can no longer be bothered.

I would heat hers though as it's clearly important to her.

I don't think your DH is being weird at all. He prefers a heated plate, bit can't bother to do it himself.

I only really do it in winter when it's so cold that the food will get cold fast. I just bung them in the microwave for a minute.

My kitchen is a bit chilly, particularly in the winter. And my plates are stoneware, so if they are cold (or room temperature) they will make any freshly cooked meal go tepid or cool by the time you sit down to eat. I never used to heat my plates, but now I do (in this house). If I have the oven on, they’ll go in for a minute or two at the end after I’ve turned it off, not usually long enough to need oven gloves. Sometimes I use the hot tap.

Not particularly.

My Mum started doing it when Sunday Roast numbers expanded due to partners/grandchildren - dishing up took longer.
She put them in a pile in the microwave. It's not something she'd ever done before and I'm sure my Nan didnt.

There is a reason why restaurants serve food on hot plates and it's nothing to do with older generations or cold houses.

I always heat plates. Maybe it's a generational thing, but perhaps younger people do not realise how much colder houses used to be. When I was a child central heating wasn't common, you usually just heated the living room, so having a hot meal that was still hot when you got it was very nice.
It could also be a left-over from the type of food that was served... a tepid congealed roast with two veg is a lot less palatable than a merely warm slice of pizza or bowl of chilli.

YANBU. My MIL is exactly the same and I think she's barking! Absolutely unnecessary.

I always do it (unless having salad as part of the meal). My gran was a stickler for it. She used to massively judge my uncle (in a lighthearted way) for not doing it when we ate at his house.

Always heat plates...... hot food on cold plates is vile.

Cold plate cold dinner. Yuck

Even worse than her faffing about with heating plates is my MILs insistence on plates and cutlery for eating a fish supper. The eye brows getting raised when you use your fingers...you have to just treat it as funny and enjoy winding her up or you'd go mad.