How to Reheat Wings and Cheesesteaks

Almost everything about reheating takeaway comes down to one thing: getting the outside hot and dry again without cooking the inside a second time. A microwave does the opposite of that. It heats the water in the food, which softens crisp skin and turns a good roll into a damp one.

Wings and cheesesteaks are the two orders most likely to come home in a bag, and they need different treatment. Here is what actually works for each.

First, get the storage right

Most reheating failures happen the night before. Cooked food left out on a counter for hours is not a texture problem, it is a safety one, and no oven fixes it. The FDA’s guidance on storing food safely is the reference worth having.

• Get leftovers into the fridge rather than leaving them out to cool
• Take wings out of a sealed container and into something with a lid you can crack — trapped steam is what makes them soggy
• Keep a cheesesteak wrapped, but unwrap it before it goes cold in the fridge
• Keep any sauce or au jus in its own container

Reheating wings

Wings reheat better than almost anything else, because the skin will crisp again if you give it dry heat. The ranking is not close:

Two rules whichever you use. Single layer, always — wings stacked on top of each other steam each other. And do not add sauce until they are out and hot, because sauce burns before the skin crisps.

Sauced wings are harder than plain ones, which is a good argument for ordering the sauce on the side if you already know some of the order is coming home with you.

Reheating a cheesesteak

Harder, because a cheesesteak is three things that want different treatment: bread that needs to be dry, meat that needs to be hot, and cheese that needs to melt without splitting.

The method that works is to take it apart:

1. Open the roll and scrape the filling out onto a plate.
2. Reheat the meat and cheese in a dry skillet over medium heat, two or three minutes, stirring once.
3. Meanwhile put the roll cut-side up in a hot oven for two minutes, or in a dry skillet cut-side down for thirty seconds.
4. Put it back together and eat it immediately.

Reheating it whole and wrapped is the common approach and it is the worst one. The roll steams from the inside, the filling stays cool in the middle, and you have to overheat the whole thing to fix that — at which point the cheese splits and goes greasy.

What does not reheat, at all

Some things are better eaten cold than reheated, and a few are simply gone:

• Fries — an air fryer gets them close; a microwave never will
• Anything battered and already sauced — the coating has softened for good
• A dressed sandwich — warm lettuce and mayonnaise is not worth saving
• A French dip — the roll has already done its work
• Rolled ice cream — for obvious reasons

The honest answer with fries is to order fewer of them rather than plan to reheat them. If you are going to try anyway, an air fryer at a high setting for three or four minutes gets them closer than anything else — but they will be a different thing rather than the same thing again. Cold fries reheated are crisp on the outside and mealy in the middle, because the starch has already set once.

The one genuine exception is loaded fries, which are past saving in a way plain fries are not. Once cheese has set on a cold fry, reheating melts the cheese and does nothing at all for the fry underneath.

How long you have

Cooked leftovers keep in the fridge for a few days rather than a week, and the clock starts when the food comes off the heat, not when you put it away. If you are not going to get to it within that window, freezing it the same day is better than reheating it late.

For quantities, the honest fix is upstream: our guide to how many wings per person exists partly so that there is less to reheat in the first place.

Freezing changes the rules. Wings freeze well and come back close to their original texture if you reheat them from frozen in an oven rather than defrosting them first. A cheesesteak does not freeze well as a sandwich, but the filling on its own does — scrape it out, freeze that, and put it in a fresh roll later.

The short version

Air fryer or oven for wings, single layer, sauce added afterwards. Take a cheesesteak apart and reheat the filling and the roll separately. Never a microwave for either. And order the amount you are actually going to eat — nothing reheats as well as it was the first time.

Better than reheating: order it fresh

Wings from 5 pieces to 200, and nine Phillys in two sizes, all made to order.

Wings

Bone-in or boneless, every count.

Philly Cheesesteaks

7-inch and 12-inch.

Explore the Menu Order Online

Frequently asked questions