Lakeland Electrical Plate Warmer

 One of the maxims of my childhood was that hot food should be put onto hot plates, but that proved difficult when we moved to Cyprus nearly fifteen years ago. There were no hostess trolleys, no double ovens... our only option seemed to be to balance plates precariously on simmering saucepans, or immerse them in boiling water in the sink. 

So, nearly ten years ago, we were delighted to come across the Lakeland plate warmer in use at a friend’s house in the UK. We decided to buy one, by mail order, on her recommendation. 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

When it arrived, I have to admit I was dubious at first. The box looked rather basic, and had been squashed in the post. The plate-warmer itself seemed oddly flimsy. It’s rather like a scarf-shaped electric blanket, which folds into four sections, concertina style, to provide spaces to heat plates when it’s plugged in. 

Inside the plate-warmer is a flexible metallic element which heats up when it’s plugged in; it’s enclosed in a removable green and blue tartan patterned cover. The instructions and safety warnings are, sensibly, on a white label attached to the plate-warmer, so can’t get lost.

WARMING OUR PLATES

The plate-warmer must be put on a heatproof non-glazed surface, as it does get quite warm, so could potentially cause damage. We use ours on the top of a convenient Billy bookcase, and it hasn’t made any marks. It would be easy enough to put a heatproof mat underneath if necessary.

The unit folds into four, giving three spaces for plates. Up to twelve plates can be heated, four in each space, but it’s only rarely that we entertain ten guests. We’ve most often used it to heat just four or six plates, which works very well. With six, I put two in each space; with four, I put two in the middle fold, then just one each in the top and bottom. 

After plugging in, the unit warms up fairly rapidly. Even on a cold day, six plates are pleasantly hot within about fifteen or twenty minutes. However, if I forget to switch it on in good time, even five minutes is sufficient to take the chill off cold plates. 

On the rare occasions when I’ve put twelve plates in to warm, it’s needed rather longer - about half an hour, usually - with some plates warming better than others. I tend to move them around half way through if I have more than six, as the ones in the middle of each individual pile of plates tend not to warm so well. 

LONGEVITY

We’ve had our plate-warmer for about ten years now, and it’s still going strong. We use it regularly during the cooler months. 

CAT-WARMER?

After the plates are removed and the gadget switched off, it takes a while to cool down completely so we usually leave it where it is while we eat. One of our cats was under the impression that we had left a warmed blanket on the bookcase for her benefit, and spread herself out happily on top of it.  Happily, this did not damage the plate-warmer at all, but it did leave rather a lot of cat hairs on it, meaning we had to think about cleaning it...

CLEANING THE PLATE WARMER

Naturally, as an electrical gadget, this can’t be immersed in water. However, the outside can be wiped with a damp cloth, which is what we did after the cat adopted it as an electric blanket.  And the second time, and the third... the plates, after all, go in the middle and the cat was on top, so we weren’t too worried.

However, we don’t use the plate-warmer during the summer. Temperatures here are so high that we prefer hot food to cool down somewhat before eating it, so usually I put it away during the summer months. But one year I forgot to do so. We went away, and the cats apparently slept on it regularly, despite it being at room temperature. And there was a great deal of dust. By the time I wanted to use it again in the late Autumn, the whole thing looked decidedly grubby.

The outer cover is washable, so I followed the instructions to remove it, which proved to be quite simple. I straightened the whole thing out, undid the poppers at the end, and pulled the cover off. I washed it in my washing machine at 40 degrees, and hung it out to dry.

The cover looked clean and fresh, considerably more appealing than it had been. Unfortunately, it was unbelievably difficult to get it back onto the inside heating element! I didn’t want to damage it, and it seemed at first that the cover wouldn’t fit at all. I don’t know if it shrunk slightly in the wash, or whether it was always a tight fit. 

Eventually I did get it on, but it was not an experience I wish to repeat, so we’re now much more careful to put the plate-warmer away when we’re not using it. 

DISADVANTAGES

Other than the tendency to be adopted by cats, and the difficulty of replacing the cover after washing, the only real problem is that it’s too easy to leave it switched on by mistake after removing the plates. We’ve only done this a couple of times, and thankfully noticed within an hour or so, so no damage was done. But there’s no indicator light or on/off switch, so it must be unplugged or switched off at the wall after use. 

It’s also important to make sure that there’s at least one plate in each section of the plate-warmer. That’s fine when we’re entertaining, but when there are just two of us at home, we only really want to warm two plates. But there are three sections; leaving any of them empty would risk letting the thing over-heat. So either we must heat a third plate, or - as is our growing tendency - go against our upbringing and eat from cold plates after all. 

At the other extreme it can’t be used for more than twelve plates, but if we were entertaining that number of people regularly we’d either invest in another plate-warmer of the same kind, or a more solid Hostess-style warmer. 

RECOMMENDED?

If space is limited and you want a simple but effective way to warm plates then I would certainly recommend this. We’ve had no problems with it at all.

On the other hand, I don’t know if we’ll buy another one like this when it eventually perishes. There are many more reasonably-priced plate-warming devices available than there were ten years ago, at Amazon and elsewhere, so we’ll keep our options open. 

But in the meantime, the Lakeland plate warmer works well and we have no need to consider anything different.

2022 UPDATE

Another decade on, and our electric plate-warmer still works without problem. At least, it did so last Christmas, and on one or two other occasions when we entertained more than two guests, and brought it out to use. Not many gadgets last twenty years, even with the limited use that ours now has.

The main reason for its lack of regular use in the past few years is that we now have microwave plate warmers, also bought from Lakeland, which work instantly, can be used for just one or two plates, and have none of the disadvantages mentioned.

I see that this particular model of electric plate warmers is no longer available, but has been replaced by something that works similarly, but probably more safely. If you entertain more than a few people regularly but have limited space, a concertina-style electric plate warmer still seems to me like an excellent idea.