Janolia Electric Food Heater

America, wake up! I’ve had years of awful lunches, bringing things from home to reheat in the crusty office microwave. Or sandwiches. Or spending too much on fastfood… Now I pack veggies and couscous in the stainless steel bowls and create a hot nutritious lunch at work. I store the outer housing and cord in my desk and only bring the stainless bowls back and forth. My portion control is better, I’m eating cleaner for my health, and I’ve saved the cost of the lunchbox in the first week of use by avoiding cafe splurges with coworkers. I’m going to start a pinterest board of my favorite recipes for others who may be looking at this option. My fave so far is a soup with rice vermicelli or dumplings steamed on top. I also love oatmeal and honey with fruit on the top steamer. This thing steams hardboiled eggs, can do hash and poached eggs, too. If you bring baggies of ingredients, there is no reason to go hungry or lack nutrition.

Product is not that easy to use if you’ve never had one of these before. It doesn’t come with instruction, any easy receipes, or how to use it. I had to look up videos on how to use it. I thought it was broke the first time I used it. I didn’t add water to the bottom – I just added water to the rice. Obviously it didn’t cook. Once I added a little water to the bottom it took off! It’s easy to clean. The value is ok. It’s made cheap. It can spill because there’s no seal around the lid. But for sure a healthy alternative to a microwave.

Cooks my breakfast sausages, warms up frozen food and left overs. Just fill and carry. I don’t like using a microwave because I believe they change the cell structure of food so this is perfect. I live alone with very little space so this has become one of my major appliances. I’m pleased with the quality of the plastic housing. It’s a chocolate color with a nice texture to it. It has a heavy duty cord that comes off the unit completely. And the heating element appears to be of good quality. Nice stainless steel pans too. I would not leave it plugged in after using as it may still be in the heating mode as I found out one day. It’s good that it uses very little energy too — 200 watts I believe.

I bring it every day to work. It makes perfect rice and in the other tray cooks or heats up. Steams raw vegtables. And leftovers. Meat. I never go hungry at work anymore. I let it work for 1 hour whikebi work. I let it cool down because its steaming hot. And the i eat. I love it❤

I’ll be moving soon and rather than a 2-minute commute and hour-long lunches in my comfortable kitchen, I’ll be stuck at work over lunch break since my new place is about 25 minutes away. As a result I was on the hunt for lots of lunch products and things I haven’t needed for the past 4 years, lunch bags/containers, etc. One of the things I’ll miss the most about going home over lunch is cooking my own hot meals for lunch. While doing some research, I found this little cooker, and plenty of others on Amazon, but this one had a great review and demo on YouTube, so I felt very confident in the purchase. I share an office with 3 of my library colleagues and although we all have varying schedules, there are times when we are all in the space at the same time, so I did have some concerns. I did a test run of things at home before bringing it in to work, and have made 3 different soups at work since bringing it in. Here are my observations based on all of my concerns/needs.1. NOISE: I have a Sunbeam hotshot at my desk for heating water for tea. This little powerful beast sounds like a freight train is moving through the office. On the plus side, it takes very little time, 1-2 minutes, and the noisiest bit is really only at the end, so no one usually says anything or seems at all bothered. But if I’m going to be warming broth or cooking rice for the couple of hours leading to my lunch hour, I definitely could not have something that noisy at my desk. But I’m happy to report that this little gadget did the trick. Trust me: It is anything but noisy. There is a very low simmering sound (from the water near the heating element) if you get close to it, but the others in my office would not be able to hear it unless they sat directly next to it. Since that would mean they’d have to steal my seat, it’s a pretty safe bet they won’t hear it.2. SMELLS: I did a test run of cooking rice (in a flavored broth) at home and steaming some carrots. This left virtually no odor, but removing the lid naturally releases some smells. You can’t stop these smells because well… food is food…, especially with the lid off, but if you’re smart about what you’re cooking it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I wouldn’t suggest making broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and fish at your desk using this thing. You might want to relegate those types of things to the break room. (Or better yet, skip them altogether.)3. TIME: Heating broth hot enough to gently cook ingredients (such as an egg for egg drop soup), takes hardly any time at all. Cooking rice, on the other hand, depending on what kind, will take more time. I think the black rice I cooked at home took over an hour. So you want to plan accordingly and maybe do a few test runs of your own based on what you plan to use it for. Make sure you prep ahead and take just a minute or two to turn your cooker on ahead of time so your food will be ready for your meal break.4. SAFETY: As soon as the water over the heating element evaporates, the cooker powers itself off. You can add more water and then turn it back on at that point if needed. No issues there.5. FOOD SAFETY/COOKING: I have not tried to cook MEAT in the cooker except for a few slivers of shaved beef which I added to hot broth. As anyone who eats pho on a regular basis knows, hot broth will cook thinly sliced meat within a matter of seconds. However, the YT review I watched did show meat being cooked successfully, but it must be noted that this meat (chicken I believe) was cut up into small bite-size chunks if I’m remembering correctly. I can also poach an egg (in broth or plain water I suppose) easily in this device, so for my purposes, this is perfect. If I end up trying to cook meat in this thing (likely not until after my move) I’ll come and amend my review to reflect that. I can bring my meat thermometer if I ever try it. That being said, with enough time, I don’t really see it being an issue. This appliance seems to perform well, and while does take time to cook, appears to do a great job. Much more than a “food warmer” you can rest assured!6. CLEAN UP: Easy and painless. The outer shell can be wiped down inside and out after cooling (should only have water droplets on it anyway.) And the stainless steel bowls clean up just as easily as you might expect. You can clip it all together to take home (or to the break room) for easy transport to the sink for washing. I also like that everything including cord can be stored/transported together neatly once clean *and dry.7. LAST TIP: I already keep a one quart (32 oz) glass Quattro Stagioni bottle (purchased at Target) at my desk filled with water at my desk for making tea. This would be a great thing to keep around to fill the base and cover the heating element, or if making broth/rice etc. That way you don’t have to sneak away to the bathroom/break room to get water to start the cooking process. May not be necessary but I’ve certainly found it useful!If you’re thinking about getting this, and you’ve bothered to read this review, it will definitely be worth it!

UPDATE: Have been using this almost everyday for 3 months and it’s been amazing!This product is great! We don’t have access to any kitchen appliances at work anymore because of the pandemic (need to avoid high touch surfaces). I typically pack leftovers for lunch to heat up, so when this wasn’t an available option anymore I had to find another way to have a hot lunch! There’s no way I’m having sandwiches and salads every day… I’m so glad I came across this product. There’s other styles of “electric lunch boxes” out there, but they either have a small capacity, can only warm food (not cook), and/or take longer to heat up.Tried this for the first time a couple days ago and worked like a charm! It’s basically a portable rice cooker/steamer, so anything you can typically make using those cooking/heating methods you can also do with this lunch box. I just put 2 cups of water (using the provided measuring cup) into the base, plugged this in at my desk before my lunch break, and my leftovers were piping hot in about 30 minutes. The time to heat/cook your food will vary depending on the volume of food and how hot you want it. I believe the unit will automatically shut off when there’s no water left in the base, so you can use more or less water depending on what you’re heating/cooking. I haven’t tried cooking anything from raw yet, but there’s a few YouTube videos where people have been successful with cooking rice, meats, soups, etc. from raw with their electric lunch box.Overall really happy with this product. Hopefully it lasts a while, but if it ever dies down the road I’d still look at getting another one.

It looks cute and it was kinda like a mini rice cooker. The problem is that the lid was a terrible design. There is no seal. The lid could be easily broken or come off if you grab it by the handle and walk around with it. Just to let you know how bad it is. Everything else seems to be good except for the cover/lid. If they fixed a proper lid like how a rice cooker lid is then this would be a 6/5 star product.