I have one of those Kenmore electric roaster/ovens and it has the cover and 3 food pans to convert to a warmer/steam table setup.

It say to heat the water at 450 until water is “very hot” but are it supposed to boil water or just have steam?

I remember I used to work serving food at the air show, and I had small warmer and the water wasn’t boiling, but had some steam when the pan was taken out.

I remember in school in lunch line, once the pan was removed from steam table and the water was boiling, while other times it wasn’t. But sometimes I’d see the pans taken out at end of lunch and huge clouds of vapor would come up.

What I have seen in our canteen here, it had the option to do both: Boil the water, so it condenses back on the colder pans and so transfers the heat quickly (when fast reheating something), as well as just keep it hot, so to maintain the dew point high without actually boiling off the water (to keep the food in the pans just "serving warm"), with a selector switch.

But if there is no mode switch, it will more likely not be supposed to boil the water, so either bad or misaligned thermostat.

I see, yeah my toaster has settings from 150-450 on the dial so you can do steaming or cook turkey, or bake stuff etc in the roaster pan itself.

Might have to just experiment and see, I would think hot water should keep it hot enough if the food is already hot when put into the pans. It says to only use the buffet serving pans for food that’s already cooked and hot.

When I was working at the air show, the dial on that warner was set to maybe setting 6 or 7 of 10, so possibly it could turn higher to simmering, but as I wasn’t in charge of it I didn’t mess with the setting other than turning off. The food was already hot from the fryer when put into the pans.