Foods That Are Better at Room Temp
by Miranda Kaplan from the Web site Serious Eats
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and because perceptions of flavor and texture are so subjective, there's no single best temperature for serving a particular food (more on that below). But if you're entertaining a group and want to improve your chances of knocking their socks off—with some planning, but precisely no extra effort, required—consider allowing the following foods to come to room temp before serving:
Many dips, such as salsa, guacamole, and hummus. Despite the online brouhaha, it really is okay to store your fully ripe tomatoes in the refrigerator, as long as you bring them to room temperature before you use them. A salsa that includes raw tomatoes, such as pico de gallo, will consequently also be more flavorful when served at room temperature, even if previously refrigerated. The acid in many salsas—from tomatoes, vinegar, and/or lime juice—also acts as a preservative, helping them stay safe to eat at room temperature for longer.
Guacamole and hummus are both best served immediately after making, but if you're serving store-bought, or if you must chill them for later, let them come to room temperature before serving. Of course, all dips that depend on melted cheese, like fondue or queso, ought to be served fresh and hot.
Cheese should always sit for about an hour outside the fridge before it's served. Soft cheeses, like Brie, need that time to take on their proper half-runny (or fully runny) consistency, but the flavor of even semi-firm or hard cheeses benefits when you take the chill off. Let them sit out too long, though (especially if they're thinly sliced), and they can start to sweat.
Sasha, who managed the cheese program at one of the restaurants where he worked before Serious Eats, reports that before service each night, he'd set out a calculated quantity of cheese, based on the reservation count, in a relatively cool spot well away from busy cooking stations. Follow his lead by slicing up only the cheese you and your guests will eat and keeping it far from the heat of the kitchen.
You don't need us to tell you that baked goods are better at room temperature than they are cold, and best of all hot from the oven. But many people still make the mistake of refrigerating breads, pastries, and cakes for storage, then not letting them return to room temperature before serving.
Refrigeration of baked goods accelerates staling, so it should only be employed to harden the crumb coat on a cake or prepare it for transportation (chilled buttercream will lock the layers of a cake in place, preventing them from sliding back and forth in a moving car), or if you're working on a really fancy wedding cake that will require several hours to decorate. And it can take a very long time to bring a chilled cake back to life so that the butter in it feels smooth and creamy, not waxy and dense; Stella recommends eight to 12 hours for an eight-inch layer cake. Don't mistreat the coconut cake you ushered into this world by serving it cold. Get yourself a nice cake stand, pop a cake dome (or inverted pot or mixing bowl) over that baby, keep it on display where it belongs, and eat it up or give it away within a couple of days.
Not only are pies best unrefrigerated, they shouldn't be stored, period, for longer than necessary, as the crust will slowly absorb moisture and turn soggy. But that's especially true for pumpkin and sweet potato pies, whose heady blends of spices will start to fade over time. The cold temperature of a fridge will only exacerbate that phenomenon.
Chocolate-covered strawberries or truffles. Chocolate is best consumed at temperatures approaching its melting point, which is roughly body temperature; it takes on a waxy feel if it's served much colder than that, and its flavor is dulled.
Foods That Are Better at Somewhere Just Above or Below Room Temp
Serving temperature is a spectrum, not a finite set of distinct categories. Some dishes do better closer to the ends of that spectrum, though not necessarily at the extremes of ice-cold or steaming-hot. To wit:
Many pasta dishes, including carbonara, cacio e pepe, and pesto pasta, shouldn't be served piping-hot, in order to avoid breaking the emulsion that forms the sauce. Aim for a serving temperature you'd describe as "very warm."
As mentioned above, charcuterie and salumi should be served at slightly-cooler-than-room-temp, so the fat doesn't melt as they sit out.
Raw fish, whether in the form of sashimi, poke, or aguachile, should be stored at very cold temperatures to ensure food safety and longevity, but for the best texture, don't serve it ice-cold.
Because levels of bacterial growth depend on both temperature and time, you can keep some raw fish above fridge-level temps for a short period with little risk. If you're feeling ambitious, check out table A-2 in this document from the FDA, which lists how long fish can be held in various temperature ranges before dangerous bacteria begin to multiply. Your best protection against getting sick from raw fish is to buy it as fresh as possible and store it as cold as possible.
Science Isn't Everything
Taste is highly subjective, so the "ideal" serving temperature for a given food will always be subjective, too. Our cultures, traditions, and individual habits play at least as significant a role as science does. In the US, for instance, it's customary to eat cooked vegetable dishes hot, but in Mediterranean countries, wilted greens and braised artichokes, among other dishes, are often served at room temperature. You may try that out and decide it's not for you. But recognizing that it's a possibility means expanding your culinary repertoire—potentially finding along the way that the flavor of some of your favorite dishes actually improves—and that can't be a bad thing.
