Dear lord, your food is cold. Now you need some way to heat it. The food is already cooked, so you need to make sure of the method you use. You want to make sure the food still tastes good in the end. Some methods work for certain foods while other methods may ruin the integrity of the original product.

The microwave is the most common device to reheat your food. It gets the job done quickly and is easy to use. However, it can ruin your food. People love to reheat pizza in the microwave, except for the fact that it can make the crust soggy. One method that people use is putting a cup of water in there. Apparently, it’s supposed to keep the crust crispy to some level. I never tried it but I’ve seen it work from watching YouTube videos. A food you should never reheat in the microwave is eggs. Eggs do not go well in the microwave and can actually explode due to the reaction. It’s one of those foods that you have to eat right away or eat cold. Most food tends to be super soggy when you microwave them, but because of how quickly you can reheat things, people will still use them. You can reheat almost anything else but I still wouldn’t recommend it.

(Twentyfour Students / Flickr)

Toaster ovens are also pretty popular for reheating food. It’s easier to adjust the temperature so you can get it right. I used to reheat my pizza with this method all the time because of how crisp the crust would be. One thing that is wrong with this method is that not everything can work here. Reheating fried chicken for some reason just never worked. The skin would taste and smell weird and the meat will feel a little overdone. You also can’t reheat soup well in a toaster oven other than maybe canned coup, but that’s a whole other story. Regular toasters are generally made for sliced bread. Thanks to the invention of toaster bags, you can heat up full sandwiches in there. You can even heat up pizza in there without any risk. Some people like using the method where you put the toaster on its side but it’s pretty risky. People have even used these bags to cook chicken nuggets which I don’t trust. The big problem with heating full sandwiches using this method is whether can it even fit. Generally, if you can put a whole bagel in there, you can heat up a full sandwich. If not, then you won’t be able to use this method. Using your regular oven is also a good method but it can be a bit overkill unless you’re heating up multip things at once. One of my relatives used to reheat fried chicken using the oven but it would taste exactly like the toaster oven method, which makes sense.

(John Bell / Flickr)

The stovetop is pretty good at reheating things. We once had leftover soup from a Korean restaurant and I wanted to eat it the next day. I poured the soup and noodles into a pot along with a little bit of water to tone down some of the spice. After it was done, I ate it and it tasted just as good as the day we had it. Another thing I like to reheat on the stove is steak. Having proper control over your steak is crucial if you don’t want it overdone. I will usually slice it before reheating it just so then it’s easy to eat. While it doesn’t taste as good as having it fresh, it still tastes good for what it is. Reheating pizza on a pan is also a great thing to do. You do have to put a lid over the pan just so then the top gets heated but other than that it tastes pretty good. I also use a pan to reheat bacon. Even if the bacon is already pretty crispy, it doesn’t make it any harder to eat. More of the fat gets out which makes it enjoyable to eat. Eggs still can’t be reheated with this method. There’s no way you can heat up boiled eggs in water without overcooking them and other forms of eggs get hard when heated in a pan.

We used to have a specialized broiler machine where we would cook stuff like pork, chicken, and fish. I’m not sure what weird magic it had but it was different from the broil function on our oven. I know it’s different because whenever I reheated fried chicken in there, it would taste significantly better than whatever the hell happened in the oven or microwave. This was the way I heated up meat to make sure it stayed crisp until we got our air fryer.

(J Wynia / Flickr)

The air fryer is pretty much a godsend. Everything stays crisp, it’s quick, and you can pretty much put anything in there except soup and eggs. Pizza is the best way to measure this and it doesn’t disappoint. The crust stays, crisp, the toppings still taste good, and the cheese pull is still immaculate. I started reheating my fried chicken using the air fryer and it’s easily the best way to reheat it since it doesn’t alter the taste or feel too much. Most air fryers also drain the fast with helps food like pork. However, you really need to make sure you clean it after a few uses, especially if the food has a lot of fat. It can get smokey quickly if there’s a lot of fat in there and can trigger your smoke alarm. I once cooked fries that dripped a lot of oil and it was always more than enough to trigger the smoke detector. I usually face the vent out the window to prevent this issue.

You don’t want to eat cold food and you still want it to taste good. Any of these methods will work depending on what the food is. It might not taste the same as yesterday, but it might still be better than eating it cold.