How to Heat Your Lunch at Work Without a Microwave

It's midday on site, in a hotel room, or in the cab of a van. Lunch is a tub of last night's dinner, and it's cold. The nearest microwave is in a lobby, a petrol station, or a staff room with nine people already waiting for it.

If you work somewhere with no microwave, or one microwave and thirty colleagues, there's a way round it. Truck drivers and flight crews have used it for years. It's slow. It's also hands-off, and that's the part that matters.

Three ways to get a hot lunch with no microwave

Strip it back and there are three. A thermos keeps food hot but can't heat it. A battery lunch box heats without an outlet. A plug-in warmer, an insulated bag with a heating plate in the bottom, does the job over a couple of hours, and it's the one working people keep coming back to in the threads.

What a plug-in lunch warmer does

The one that comes up most is the HotLogic Mini. It's a zip-up insulated bag, a little bigger than a lunch box, with a flat heating plate in the base.

You put your food in a lidded container, set the container on the plate, zip the bag and plug it in. Then you leave it alone.

A trucker in r/Truckers posted after their first meal with one. Asked what the thing does, they put it this way.

It's a portable hot plate/slow cooker. It actually cooks food. I had broccoli stuffed chicken breast with cream sauce and a side of peas. All started cold in a flat bottom glass dish with lid. 2.5 hours later, fully cooked meal!

u/MadFoss1, in r/Truckers

They run a day-cab delivery route and stay in a hotel twice a week. Fast food was getting expensive, so now they pack fresh meat and vegetables and it cooks while they drive.

Another driver in the same thread uses theirs every day on the road and says frozen meals taste far better than from a microwave. The bag is insulated, too, so food stays cold until you plug it in two hours before mealtime.

How long does a heated lunch box take to heat up?

Longer than you'd like, and the owners say so themselves.

Danielle at Project Meal Plan owns three and uses at least one almost every day. Her review doesn't dress it up: "It's going to take time to heat up anything in HotLogic."

In her tests a frozen mac and cheese was done after 90 minutes. A soup took about three hours. She says the bag holds food at around 165 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as it stays plugged in.

Steve Myers is a flooring contractor who's run one off the inverter in his work truck for several years. He gets a meal in one to two hours.

The flight attendants' thread shows how people live with that. One likes theirs because the hotel room often has no microwave, and they can't face the lobby just to heat food. It takes longer, but by the time they've showered, done their skin care and changed into comfy clothes, the food's usually ready.

Others plug in lunch and go for a run or to the gym, or put food in long before they're hungry, since it can stay plugged in for hours.

Not everyone makes peace with the wait. One crew member in the same thread has used theirs about five times in six months and calls it painfully slow, though great for when you're too tired to go and find the microwave. Another's is collecting dust, because they'd rather buy food than wait that long.

Who's a plug-in warmer for?

Across the threads, it suits anyone who can plug it in an hour or two before they eat, somewhere they'll be anyway. Danielle recommends it for an office desk with an outlet and no microwave.

It suits a van, too. One long-time owner calls it set and forget, as long as you plan a couple of hours ahead.

It doesn't suit anyone who decides they're hungry and wants food in ten minutes. Nothing about it is quick, and there's no dial to make it quicker: it's on when it's plugged in and off when it isn't.

Before you buy one

What the owners would tell you first.

• It needs an outlet it can sit at for a couple of hours. You don't have to stay with it. A break-room counter where you can leave it plugged in works fine.
• Plan two hours ahead. Plug it in mid-morning for a midday lunch. Frozen food takes longer; one flight attendant reckons on about four hours for frozen meat.
• Use a flat, lidded container. Danielle's rule is that any container works as long as the bag zips closed over it: plastic, glass or compostable. The trucker's cooked dinner started in a flat-bottomed glass dish with a lid.
• Don't expect it to bake or boil pasta. Danielle is blunt about it: no cookies, and no cooking pasta.
• One owner reports the plug breaking. A trucker on their second one says the prongs tend to break at the solder point, and calls it an easy fix. One voice, but worth knowing if yours is going to live in a truck.

The wall-timer trick, and the question nobody answered

A well-liked tip in the flight attendants' thread is a timer that plugs into the wall outlet. With one, the bag can start cooking breakfast before you wake up.

One reply asked whether the food spoils, sitting out all night before the bag turns on. Nobody in the thread answered. One owner skips the timer and plugs lunch in when they get up.

The faster rival: the SabotHeat

Not everyone recommends the HotLogic. One flight attendant's advice is to get the SabotHeat instead, because many who have it prefer it. The person who started the thread admitted that's what they'd bought, and had only said HotLogic because it's the more recognisable name.

Asked what makes it better, an owner of both pointed to the temperature settings and a timer, and says it heats food faster than their HotLogic. They also had a unit replaced by the seller six months in, though they think they broke it themselves. One owner's story, not a warranty.

That's the SabotHeat portable oven. Same idea, an insulated bag with a plate, plus the heat levels and the timer the Mini doesn't have.

The caveat is that nobody in these sources has had a SabotHeat for years. The one blogger we found who's written up both is Sabina at Mom Van Up.

When she first compared them, she'd had her HotLogic Mini for three years of daily use and her SabotHeat for two weeks. Hers is the car model, too.

In her account it heats things much more quickly, with leftovers ready in about 30 minutes on its fourth heat level. But it turns itself off after two hours, which rules it out for the chili she leaves warming all day.

Her verdict is that they're for different jobs. The Mini is the one she keeps in her classroom for lunch. The SabotHeat lives in the car.

On speed, then, nobody's run the two against a clock. The owners who prefer the SabotHeat say it's faster, and the one person who's written up both agrees, two weeks in. That's the evidence, and that's all of it.

Two other names come up once each. One flight attendant has the bigger HotLogic, the casserole size, and finds it heats faster and hotter than the Mini.

Two others mention the Hot Bento, a battery box that needs no outlet, and one of them puts it at 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the food. Neither has enough voices behind it here to recommend.

No outlet at all: the thermos

Someone who works in the field through winter asked r/BuyItForLife for a lunch box that keeps food hot. The HotLogic Mini got one mention. Most of the other answers didn't plug in at all.

One Thermos in the thread is a decade old and still keeps soup piping hot for hours. Another trick is two hot water bottles in a cooler, with plastic over the food to cut the air space. Zojirushi's bento boxes and flasks got a mention too.

The catch is that none of them heat anything. Hot soup goes in hot, in the morning, and stays that way. If there's no outlet anywhere near where you eat, that's the route, and it costs nothing if you already own a flask.

Start with the outlet. If there's one near where you eat, and you can plug lunch in an hour or two early, buy the HotLogic Mini. It's the one the drivers and crews keep, with years of daily use behind it. Pick the SabotHeat instead if you want heat levels and a timer and don't need it to hold food all day. If there's no outlet at all, a thermos filled hot in the morning beats both.