For your parents' birthday, you plan to bring home cooking, but have no idea how to transport cooked meals? Do you need to transport fresh food while preserving its flavor throughout the trip? We can help you by showing you how to transport ready-made meals.
It's definitely nice to have a meal with family, friends and relatives. However, the hardest part comes when you are asked to come and enhance the party with your own home-cooked meals. Of course, this can also be a personal request. In any case, carrying food is not always an easy task. You always want the food to taste delicious and fresh from the moment it is cooked until it is delivered. And to achieve this, it is important to master some key tips.
Obviously, to know how to transport ready meals, whether hot or fresh, you need to ensure temperature control beforehand. Then, invest in insulated containers for efficient storage and transportation of meals to their destinations.
To reveal all these details, we will focus the article on transporting hot and fresh foods by car. You will also have the opportunity to discover our best isothermal boxes for a better transport of your meals.
How to transport a hot meal in a car?
When you want to transport food in the car, your first reflex should not be to choose a lunch box. Beforehand, it is important to secure the food inside the vehicle.
Control the temperature
Temperature control means packing hot and cold food separately. Because this section is dedicated to hot preparations, we advise you to avoid temperature conflicts. Failure to do so could result in cross-contamination and have a significant impact on food quality.
The other phase of temperature control is to keep hot food at the right temperature. Specifically, it is recommended that you keep the food at or above 63°C throughout the transportation process.
Invest in insulated containers
The best way to move your homemade meals is to adopt containers, but not just any containers. Typically, many travelers resort to conventional methods like plastic bags and waxed cotton food wrap. Unfortunately, these containers do not prove to be effective and durable over time.
For a hassle-free transport, we suggest isothermal lunch boxes reinforced in cooler bags. They are known to offer the best shelf life of room temperature. Even if you make a long trip, the food will travel hot and land hot. But the advantage of this type of container goes far beyond that.
You'll probably be driving on impassable roads with potholes where you'll make sharp turns. In such conditions, your prepared meals are likely to fall out or be completely destroyed. So this is where insulated containers come in, offering excellent security for all your food in the back. Just remember to choose the models that embody durable design materials as well as perfectly sealed lids.
How to transport a hot pie?
Basically, foil is your best friend when transporting pies. If you're only transporting one pie, take an extra metal pie pan, turn it upside down and use it to line the pie. Then seal the edges of the two pie pans with a strip of aluminum foil.
Quick reminder: to prevent a pie from hitting you in the back of the head if you have an accident, secure it in the trunk. Failing that whole procedure, you can simply take your hot pie with you in a food safe box made of stainless steel. It will retain its flavor and keep it from slipping or falling out during travel.
How to transport fresh produce?
Fresh produce takes into account various elements such as:
- Seafood;
- Desserts such as handmade cakes;
- Salads;
- Organic vegetable lasagna;
- Yoghurt and many others.
For a knowledgeable person, the transportation of these meals that are eaten fresh requires the respect of two criteria that we will now discover.
Ensure accurate temperature control
Precise temperature control is absolutely essential to maintaining the quality, condition and safety of your fresh food. If the temperature is too low, it could damage all the preparation done from home. If it is too high, it can promote microbial growth. To ensure better control, make sure that fresh products are packed at a temperature between +2°C and +8°C.
Use insulated coolers
Transporting fresh food requires the use of a portable cooler. It can be a flexible or rigid cooler that you can reinforce with ice crystals. This will allow for better packaging of meals. No matter which model you choose, it must have an airtight seal to prevent spills. The rest will depend on your preferences. We also point out that there are electric coolers that offer total protection to your meals.
Finally, be strategic in packing your cooler. It is crucial to store your food in the right order so that you don't find it crushed when you arrive at your destination.
Some considerations for the transportation of cooked food
Here are a few friendly tips that may help you with the transportation of your food:
- When transporting fresh food, consider placing coolers in the coldest part of the vehicle. For example, if the interior is air conditioned, those meals will be better off there than in the trunk.
- Vehicles should be clean. If yours is normally used to transport pets or dirty equipment, the food transport area should be thoroughly cleaned or lined to avoid contamination. You can also enhance this food safety by always transporting food in insulated containers with tight fitting lids.
- The trip should be properly planned and should be as short as possible to avoid compromising the temperature of the food. This advice will prevent you from getting food poisoning
- When you arrive on site, start by unloading hot or cold food and place it in temperature-controlled equipment.
Which insulated box should I choose for transporting ready meals?
There are thousands of insulated containers on the market to help you transport your prepared foods. To make it easier for you, we have selected our two best insulated food boxes that are sure to win you over.
The Purple Floor Lunch Box
Underneath its three-tiered design, this thermos offers you a stainless steel and PP lining for added strength and performance. You can use its different compartments to divide your cooked dishes according to the order of restoration. Moreover, the lunch box offers a perfectly waterproof design that prevents any leakage of your food during the trip. Further, its size is totally ergonomic and will fit in your vehicle without any difficulty. Once you arrive at your destination, you can empty the interior and wash it easily, as our product is dishwasher safe.
Finally, the great advantage of the box is that it comes with a free isothermal bag. It opens easily and also stays secure and airtight with its cozy interior and zipper.
The Mini Soft Cooler Black
Here is one of our bestsellers that will wrap you up in its world of performance. First of all, it is a cooler that has a nice capacity of 6.5 liters. So you'll have enough space to store any type of cooked food. Better yet, the interior of the cooler is designed with high quality isothermal materials. The walls are well-padded to offer a nice resistance to shocks.
The other special feature of this model is that it is made for long transports. You can store hot food in it and keep it at the right temperature for up to 4 hours. At the same time, fresh food will stay fresh for at least 6 hours on the road. Finally, the cooler is waterproof and we deliver it for free.
At the end of this guide, you have certainly understood that transporting ready-made meals requires a lot of precautions. It's not just a matter of putting the food on the seat or in the trunk. Temperature control and the choice of a lunch box or insulated cooler are a must when it comes to transporting home cooking.
