Crock-Pot Lunch Crock Food Warmer, Black Medium

UPDATE (8/23/14): Both warmers that I have still work really well. I used them less this summer since we have had a hot one. I do use one about once a week and am very pleased with it.UPDATE (12/16/13): The warmer is still going strong! I have two inserts and alternate them almost daily. Still love having this to use at work. :)UPDATE (7/25/12): One of the commenters posted a link where you can buy extra food containers for $5 off the crockpot website. Sweet!ORIGINAL REVIEW:Pros:* It looks cool. It made a couple of my co-workers "ooh" and "aah".* It is compact, light, and easy to carry.* It warms food great as long as you remember to plug it in! On average, it warmed my food to comfortable eating temperature within 1 ½ hours. This has included all kinds of foods from basic pureed soup to liver and onions. (I like liver).* There is no smell from the food until you take the lid off to eat.* The inner bowl cools quickly. I unplug the warmer, leave the inner container in the warmer while I eat so I don't have to mess with how to remove a hot metal bowl. By the time I finish eating my lunch, the inner bowl is cool enough at the top for me to remove it.* I like the fact that I don't have to use the work microwave. It saves me time because I used to take a Lysol wipe to the office kitchen counter and a soapy paper towel to the microwave before using it. My office has a high population of folks who bring their own lunch (maybe around 70), which is great for budgets, but not so great when you get skeeved out over the residual gunk that was all over the microwave over the course of the week. With this little warmer, I put my food in the container, and plug it in and it's done. I rinse out the container at work, but it goes in the dishwasher at home. I save 5 to 10 minutes of pre-cleaning the office kitchen space, and I don't have to wait until it's past the "lunch rush".Cons:* It would be great if you could buy extra containers for it. I could see myself packing a whole week's worth of containers on Sunday night. There are also some days when I work past dinner, and it would be nice to be able to bring food in a second container. I did buy a second warmer, but I'd rather pay half the price and get extra inner containers.* Don't heat spinach in it. Turns out bitter.Other information:* The lid on the inner container usually pops up slightly after 10 minutes of warming. The instructions did note this might happen and to not try to put the lid back on.Based on a couple of other reviews stating concerns about bacteria and food safety, I decided to do a little experiment. I put tap water in the inner container and tested the temperature of water every hour for three hours. I also decided to test the temperature of actual food, again testing the temperature every hour for 3 hours. I used a Thermapen Instant Read digital thermometer to measure the temperatures. The results are in the table below. According to the NSF (National Sanitation Foundation) website, precooked foods need to be reheated to 165 °F when using a microwave. The FDA website states that hot foods at picnics should be kept at 140 °F. As you can see from the results I got, the water temperature surpassed the 165°F within an hour. The food surpassed the 140°F within 2 hours, and was just under 165 °F at about the 3 hour mark.Time ----- Temperature Water ----- Temperature Food9:45 am ----- 67.4°F ----------- 36 °F10:47 am ---- 168.5°F ---------- 126.2 °F11:45 am ---- 170 °F ---------- 145.1 °F12:50 pm ---- 170.8°F ---------- 164.9 °F

Still goin. Keep it in my tool box at work. Bring the insert from home with left overs. Sometimes i do canned soup. Set it up when i get to work and lunch is waiting for me when its lunchtime. Forgot it was plugged in a couple of times overnight and weekend . yet it lives on. Worth it!

I prefer this mini crockpot to heat up soup, chili, Ramen, 100% better than a microwave or having the mess of cooking on a stove. It evenly heats up your food, something the microwave can't do, and that slow, thorough heating improves the taste of the food.Yes, it makes a fine pot of Ramen. Just break up the dry noodles into the pot, sprinkle in the seasoning packet and add water to the fill line. Plug it in and in an hour you'll have perfectly made, thoroughly heated Ramen and the noodles will not be mushy. You're welcome.That said, I don't recommend it for reheating leftover noodles or rice. In my experience those do become mushy. But it does fine with dry noodles like Ramen. But for canned soup that has noodles in it, like chicken noodle soup - it does great.I love that a can of soup fits perfectly in it. Pop open the can of soup, pour it in, close up the crock with both the inner and outer lid on and plug it in. It will be hot and ready to eat in about an hour.Pro tip: you can order multiple inserts with lids directly from the Crock Pot company and just transport those instead of the whole crock pot back and forth between work and home. I found that securing the lids with a thick rubber band or two kept them from leaking while being transported to work.Before pandemic: I took my mini crockpot to work and left it there at my desk. I brought in cans of soup and packets of Ramen that I kept in my desk to heat up whenever I wanted to have that for lunch. I either washed the insert and inner lid at work, or took it home to wash and just brought it back to work with me, sometimes filled with leftovers that I just popped into the mini crock and plugged in once I got to work. I personally found that if I turned it on to start heating up food at 8am or 11am, that food would be heated to the same ready-to-eat temp by lunch time and I never had any problems with it overheating anything.And if I wanted to use it to heat up something homemade, I'd fill up one of my extra inserts kept at home and take just that to work (with rubber bands over it to keep it closed) and pop it into the mini crock pot once I got to work. I'd pop out the insert already in there, pop in the one I brought from home, and then when I was done with lunch, I'd put the clean one back in and put it away for the day. I'd take back home the one I'd brought in.During pandemic: I took my mini crockpot home and have continued using it because I prefer the taste of evenly heated soups and Ramen cooked in it instead of the microwave. And now the one that I had just died and I'm immediately ordering a new one. I got A LOT of use out of the old one and I consider the price a good deal.