Crock-Pot Electric Lunch Box, Portable Food Warmer for On-the-Go, 20-Ounce, Grey/Lime

I work, for the most part, on the road and I've seen all too often how easy it is to get caught in the fast food life style. I simply refuse to eat out for lunch while working. It's costly and, depending on where I am, often there are no healthy choices nearby. So for years I would bring boring cold sandwiches in my lunch bag because I never knew if I'd have access to a microwave or, even if I did, what its level of cleanliness was. One winter day I had just had enough of the cold sandwich so I checked Amazon to see options for portable food warmers and discovered this wonderful device.I'm not joking when I say the Lunch Crock changed my life. With the use of a power inverter, It makes it possible to bring such healthier foods to eat on the road. I've brought everything from organic canned soups to a mix of homemade lean meat, rice, and veggies. I'm sworn off of all artificial ingredients, flavor enhancers, so called "natural flavor" additives, and most processed foods in general. Without this, I don't even know what I would be eating. Ok, enough about why I use it, let's talk about how it works.The food container is a removable and dishwasher safe bowl that fits an entire can of soup easily. You wouldn't think so by looking at it, but it holds more than I can comfortably eat in one sitting and I'm 6'1" and 260lbs. Generally I think it's safe to say it holds about 2 servings. Keep the bowl in the fridge or insulated lunch bag until at least 30 minutes before you are ready to eat. Pop the bowl in the Crock Pot, secure the cap, and plug it in. Usually in about 30-45 minutes, depending on the food and the amount, you will have a hot meal.Soups tend to take longer than loose solid food but you can pretty much put anything in there and it will heat it up. It's designed only to heat and never over cook so you can technically leave it on for hours before eating but keep in mind the food will be very hot if you do so.Cleanup is fairly easy. Everything but the base unit itself is dishwasher safe which includes the metal food bowl, rubber cap, and outer plastic cover. These are also easily cleaned by hand although sometimes the rubber cap picks up odors from the food and is better cleaned in the machine. The base unit usually just gets dirty on the rim and outside if eating something messy, but again, easily cleaned by hand.A couple of points to note from experience.* The inner rubber lid will usually pop off during heating. This is normal and is even stated in the manual as nothing to be concerned about. You can try to pop it back in but because it expands with heat it might not stay in, once cooled it will fit snugly again.* There are various different SKUs for this product that all appear to be the same design but just with different color styles and then color choices within each style. My father bought one with a slightly different model number, but functionally it's exactly the same. The one difference I noticed is that his rubber cap does not fit as tightly as might does and has lead to the occasional spill when the bowl accidentally tips over. Mine doesn't spill.* I actually had to return the first unit I bought because the power cord was just a little too short to wrap around and secure the plug underneath without a some stretching which eventually caused the wire insulation to split where the cord attaches to the base and expose bare wire. This is not safe when running 50W at 115V. Again, comparing to my father's unit, I noticed his cord was significantly longer and effortlessly wrapped around the unit. The replacement unit I received did have the longer cord and has not split at all after months of use. Nevertheless I advise keeping the beginning of the cord in its natural orientation of resting flat under the unit and not bending it away from the base.* If you are using an inverter as I am to power this in a vehicle make sure it can handle more than 50W which is what the sticker underneath the base states for the power consumption.I've recommended this to everyone and anyone. Some have even jumped on the bandwagon and were equally happy. If you want to have home made lunches or just not incur the daily expense of dining out, getting this is a must.

Love this. Works perfect for warming my lunch at work. Works best for things like soup, and pasta's but I have warmed cabbage rolls and other items as well.

I tend to eat a lot of freezer meals at work. But I don't like using the microwave. I used to heat some freezer meals in the conventional oven but I really don't like having to spend so much time in the communal office kitchen - preheating the oven, putting the food in (sometimes takes prep like covering it with foil or putting on an ovensafe dish, etc,) checking on it, sometimes having to stir or flip something over, retrieving the food then finally skulking with my food smells past everyone to get back to my desk to eat it! I was so excited to try this little crockpot food warmer at work. It has been a success. I plug it in near my desk and when it's ready I take a few steps over to unplug it and I'm ready to dig in.The first day I didn't give it enough time to heat up completely so now I know that frozen meals with meat need about 4 hours. The second try was pretty good, a chicken entree with rice - I put it in the crock as soon as I got to work and I had to break the meal up in its frozen state to fit everything into the cooker but I don't mind that at all. After around 4 hours it was perfectly heated. There was a little bit of rice that got crunchy and stuck to the cooker but it wasn't much. So the third try, I had similar meal but this time I purposefully placed the sauce and meat part of the entree on the bottom and then the rice on top. I think my previous attempt I had put the rice on the bottom. So putting the rice on top of the meat so it gets "steamed" seemed to work really well, I didn't get any extra crunchy bits like before. The rice was actually a bit mushy but hey, it was hot and edible. Today's entree was really easy to put in the crock - I don't know if it made any difference that it was vegetarian and it had a few minutes to thaw before I remembered to put it in the crock, but it crumbled apart a lot easier than the others so I didn't have to crack a big frozen block apart to fit everything in there! Also today's meal turned out perfectly, the rice was fluffy and steamed and not too mushy even though it was plugged in over 4 hours, and I didn't have to pay any particular attention to how the food was stacked in there. My vegetable biryani adventure is pictured here with my review.It's only been a few days and I am super pleased with the results so far! I hope to try doing stuff with it other than tossing a freezer meal in. It's processed food and not the best for you so hopefully I will figure out some healthier options, like steaming vegetables or something. I wish there was a cookbook or idea book for this type of crock warmer! I'll be using it a lot. It's just so convenient to heat food up right in my office space.