There’s a moment when reheating goes wrong that most people have experienced at least once. You pull a beautiful braise from the fridge — something you spent two hours on — tip it into a pan, turn the heat too high, and within four minutes it’s seized up, the sauce has separated, and the meat has gone stringy and tight.
The food isn’t ruined because the recipe was bad. It’s ruined because reheating is a different form of cooking, and it deserves to be treated as one.
Why braised food needs a gentle hand
When you braise meat — whether that’s chicken thighs, lamb shanks or short rib — you’re essentially doing two things simultaneously: slowly breaking down tough connective tissue into gelatin, and keeping the muscle fibres from contracting too aggressively. The first process makes the dish silky. The second keeps the meat tender.
Both of those achievements are reversible. Apply too much heat on reheating and the muscle fibres seize up again. The gelatin, which gives the sauce its body, can also break if you push the temperature hard and fast.
Good reheating is about bringing the food back to temperature slowly enough that you undo nothing you built in the original cook.
What to do instead
Cover everything. Whether you’re reheating on the hob or in the oven, keep the dish covered. A lid or tight foil wrap keeps the moisture inside the pot rather than evaporating from the surface, which is what causes the sauce to reduce to a sticky, unpleasant paste.
Add liquid. Any braise that’s been refrigerated will have tightened. Before you heat it, add a splash of water, stock, or even wine — two to four tablespoons is usually enough. Stir it in so it’s not just sitting on top.
Use low, slow heat. On the hob, use your lowest flame with a heat diffuser if you have one. In the oven, 150°C is almost always sufficient to bring a braise back up without overcooking. For a portion-sized serving from the fridge, 20–25 minutes at low heat is usually all you need.
Don’t stir too early. Let it warm for the first 10 minutes without stirring. Moving cold, set meat around in a warm pan too aggressively causes it to break up before it’s ready.
On microwave reheating
It works — we won’t pretend otherwise. But if you use one, cover the dish and use the medium power setting rather than full. Full power creates uneven, high-temperature hot spots which cook some parts of the dish while leaving others still cold. Medium power takes 30 seconds longer and produces a noticeably better result.
The NOURISH meals in your fridge are all designed to reheat well. We test everything at reheat as well as when first cooked, because we know that’s when most of you will eat them.
The instructions on the label aren’t there for legal reasons. They’re there because they’re the fastest route back to the food at its best.