Room Temperature: What It Means For Your Food

This may seem like an odd topic to talk about here at Silke, but bare with us; it actually has a significant effect and impact on your food. Today, we’d like to discuss Room Temperature, and said aforementioned affect on your meals once they’ve finished cooking.

Without getting too deep into the science of the matter, Room Temperature is a colloquial term for a generally agreed upon comfortable temperature in an indoor setting. It is different from Ambient Temperature, which is the term applied to the temperature of any given set of surroundings, both outdoors and indoors, rather then the comfortable temperature of a building with temperature control. Though different variations are recommended depending on the season, the average room temp should (and often will) fall at around 18-to-22 °C. This is the temperature we usually keep our showroom by the way.

So, what does this mean for food, exactly?

Well, the first and most obvious point is that it will effect just how long it takes for your food to cool after it’s been plated and has left an open flame; the higher the room temp, the longer it’s going to take for the food to cool off. Though the effect will ultimately be fairly minuscule. The real situation upon which it becomes crucial to bare room temp in mind is when you’re preparing leftovers or second servings of a dish.

No matter what food you’ve prepared, it is absolutely imperative that you wait until it reaches the baseline room temp of whatever room it’s being left to cool in, and preferably one that sits at the lower end of the average. Sticking boiling hot food straight into a cold fridge will at best spoil the flavour and texture of a dish, and at worst can actually make the dish unsafe to eat as a result of the dramatic and sudden change in temperature the food is subjected to.