I have one and do use it every so often. But, I think if I did not have one I would not miss it.
When you are preparing meals for every day or for a gathering, do you often think "I wish I had a place to keep this warm" ?
For example, I just got the new iPhone. I am not one to automatically upgrade but I kept finding myself saying that ifI had the iPhone I would now be able to do...or that.... So, I knew I caould justify the added expense.
If it is in your budget I agree that you will find a use for it once you have it.

We got one but we put it in the dining room instead of the kitchen. We haven't moved in yet, but I have delightful visions of keeping warm bread in it at meals :)

I thought they were unnecessary. However, my range is freestanding and I wanted an integrated work surface/prep space plus the 6 burners. That model had three ovens, one a warming oven.

I knew it would be popular with a chef and with caterers for parties -- and it is -- but didn't realize how much we would use it just everyday. It helps address the trickiest part of fine multi-course meals - timing.

We use ours all the time. IF ours were to give up the ghost, I would replace it without hesitation.

We have a 30" KitchenAid, and I LOVE it!

We use it mostly for:
-Saturday breakfasts (this is our big family breakfast day)
-Evening meals--DH is often on-call, and I keep his dinner warm. Also with kids' sporting events, dinner can be kept warm.
-Proofing bread.
-warming plates
-multi-dish meals
-Holidays!

We use ours frequently too. It's great when we make pancakes or have pizza, when one of the kids has late sports practice, and especially for holidays and parties. Very handy.

Oh thank you all - this is such good feedback. (although my husband may not agree!:) Any thoughts on location? I think the only place I can put mine is beneath my DWO, but I have heard people comment on putting the drawer up higher, vs lower.

I love mine (Miele) , and use it for nearly every meal cooked. However, I think a lot depends on your family situation, entertaining style, cooking personality and just plain "what you're used to". For me, dinners can be husband coming from work, older teen+ children and their friends coming from work/school/activities plus extended family. Only the extended family members are punctual. That used to mean either sitting down without those running a tad late or trying to keep things warm in their pans on the cooktop or in the oven. Now everything goes into its serving dish in the warming drawer and any extra time waiting is spent relaxed talking to the others and/or cleaning up cooktop and prep pans. I'm also somewhat of a "frazzled" cook when it comes to trying to time everything. The drawer eliminated that worry for me and has made cooking much more relaxing and enjoyable.

My warming drawer is in my peninsula and only takes up the space of one middle drawer in a 3 drawer stack. For me it's a great location, but if I could only have it under a double wall oven stack I'd still go for it!

We use ours frequently for many of the scenarios listed above. I will say that I am disappointed with the bread proofing feature... our drawer is too small to proof most bread dough (unless it's the final rise of something like rolls). Once I put dough in a loaf pan in there, and it rose to the top of the drawer -- huge mess. I wish the drawer were just a little taller!

The general wisdom is that the closer the warming drawer is to top drawer under the counter height, the more you'll use it. OTOH, some of those who really only have floor level report using it with no hesitation. I think some of it comes down to circumstances, personality, physical limitations and lifestyle.

Circumstances: I think a lot of the floor-level-never-use-it people either got theirs with the house/range and found them inconvenient, or kind of said, sure, let's get one, when being sold an appliance package and never thought through exactly what to use it for. With a new kitchen, or just a new stove, there's a whole learning curve of how to do things in a new way. The warming drawer is one more variable that can be left out of the flurry. It seems that the people who report being just fine with a floor level location are either those who have always had one and don't have to think it through, are just glad it's there, or those who know that everyone says not to put it there, but that's all the room they have (applies more to wall units than ranges--with ranges you expect all the ovens to be low) and defiantly they go for it. Then they're emotionally invested in the warming drawer and in using it, so they add it in to the learning the new kitchen equation, and refuse to be dissuaded from using it. That way they learn to cope with the limitations and how best to utilize it for their needs and kitchens.

Personality: Some people would just rather rewarm stuff. Some people have warming settings on their ovens and don't need the oven space and warming at the same time, so they think having another appliance is a waste. Some people don't want something they'll only use a few times a month, while others see themselves using it daily, and still others think it's great use for only a few days per year. In other words, one's perspective on how great it is depends on how use you think makes it a good purchase.

Physical limitations: A lot of people do not do well bending and lifting. They have knee problems, back problems, shoulder problems, etc. Additionally, in a kitchen, this often means twisting and/or pivoting in addition. Some people just can't do it.

Physical limitations on the appliance side: A use that many people with busy families have for a warming drawer by the stove at counter level is to put all the pots in the warming drawer, and dish up plates from the warming drawer. This is especially useful in the Winter in a house that is kept fairly chilly and a kitchen that doesn't warm up with the cooking. It's very hard to keep pots warm on the stove without further cooking when there's cool air all around. The warming drawer is ideal exactly for doing that by providing low, no-cook temperatures with warm air around the pots. As family members come home they can grab a plate and have a nice, hot meal, and seconds stay warm and fresh. That doesn't work nearly as well with a floor level warming drawer. The pots hold fine, but not that many people want to squat down by the WD and dish up plates. The alternative would be lifting out each pot separately, then putting them all back. In some households, the warming drawer is better positioned between the stove and the eating area, rather than right by the stove, but the vertical positioning issues are the same.

Lifestyle: Some people's cooking/serving styles, and food choices, just don't make a warming drawer particularly useful. Non-cooks love one for take-out (make sure your favorite pizza box fits) and for recrisping crackers. Some folks like to keep the bread in a cold (i.e., off) warming drawer. Since most models have the controls on the inside, it's unlikely to turn it on and forget the bread. Many bakers don't need an appliance to make their bread rise. For entertaining three times a year, a portable warming drawer (they do make them) or hot tray or chaffing dishes make more sense if there's a place to store the portables (garage rafters?) but no room for the WD built into the kitchen, plus the portables are cheaper and can even be had at garage sales. (For entertaining a portable can be set up on the dryer or a desk or some other area that's out of use while there's company.) Alternatively, some people want to sit down with the whole family together to a waffle breakfast, with only one waffle iron. Some people have coming and goings and need extended meal times. Some people aren't great with timing, or they can handle 7 things at once to all come out, but they want to talk to their company/family and would rather finish some things a bit ahead of time.

whoaa. I bought a range with a low warming drawer specifically because I wanted to make pizza dough. It's terrific, super simple and consistent for our Friday night pizza. If you have something in mind (warming dishes, proofing dough) you'll love it.

I've known many people who had a warming draw and never used it. When I remodeled our kitchen in our previous home, I really wanted one but was talked out of getting one. After a horror story (long story) that resulted in me having to rip out my brand new kitchen, I ended up getting the warming drawer and I'm so glad I did! I used it just about every day. Feb 13th is the start date for the kitchen remodel in our current home and I can't wait to have a warming drawer again.

Like many said, it takes the guess work out of the timing of having your whole meal ready at the same time. So easy to just pop things in the warming drawer as things are done. It is fabulous for entertaining and those big holiday meals but it goes way beyond that. We eat a lot of brown rice n our house and the only drawback is how long it takes to cook. I often would make it in the afternoon, pop it in the warming drawer and it is ready to go when I make dinner. Great place to keep pizza and take out warm. Keep dinner warm for hubby when he works late. The more you use it, the more uses you'll find for it.

The plan right now is to install it under my double ovens but it may end up in the island. Won't matter to me either way because it will get used.

Good luck!

If you search back earlier threads, you will see that the consensus was that the closer the drawer is to where you cook, the more likely you are to use it. YMMV.

Our old coil range from two decades ago would allow us to set it for very very low. Our new electronic ovens do not allow a low setting, although one has an overwarm "warm" setting.

I love our warming drawer. I'd say my list of uses is the same as shelayne's. It is located to the left of the double ovens. It is the middle "drawer" in a cabinet bank of three drawers.

Since not being allowed to hook up our stove (still!) and therefore cooking on a single burner, I find that I use my wall oven as a warming drawer more often than I ever needed one before. I either use the proof setting or heat to 200 and then turn it off. I can sometimes use the low broil setting for the food that needs oven cooking and put the "warming" item on the lowest rack.
I also pull a pot off the burner and put it on a soft hot pad and put 2 kitchen towels over it if the oven is busy. I have found that many things can finish cooking off of the heat source, so will take a pot of pasta or rice off the burner, leaving the lid on and keep it warm while it continues to cook from its own heat.
I also use the micro as a place to put a warm item that needs to hold (not turned on, or at power 1 very briefly and then don't open the door).
It has made me quite adept at timing and managing keeping things warm. To add to the confusion, I have one picky kid who often eats different food than us and my dh went vegan for a few months before dropping down to a vegetarian who will have an occasional dish that has meat in it, but not as a separate entity. For a while, I'd cook 3 meals for 4 people to some extent. There would be some crossover for us, but it took some real careful coordinating to get things to the table at the same time, all with my 1 burner!

If you have a huge kitchen and a high budget, then why not? If you are looking to cut costs, this would be the first thing I'd chop off my list. I can better see the uses for it now, but I am doing fine without it and won't need it half as much when I get my stove working and therefore also have its ovens at my disposal.

We don't have one, but we are roughed in for one. There is just a drawer there for now with an outlet in case we want to put one in sometime in the future. After reading this thread, I wish we would've just gone ahead with it!

I don't have one YET. It's in the plans for the new house. I want one because I have a husband who works as a mechanic and can come home in the late evening after I've cooked. I don't like putting it in the fridge because I hate for him to have to either have cold food or use the microwave to reheat it. I figure the warming drawer would come in handy because it would keep food safe for him to eat even if he is an hour later than when food is cooked.

All - thank you so much for your very helpful responses. It seems that for the most part, people agree that once you have one, you use it and love or really like it - no matter where it is located.

@pillog - thanks for your thoughtful insights. You have given me a lot to think about.

@ anna_chosnak and dianalo - you both say you use your ovens for warming drawers. Do you find food gets dried out in the oven when you use it for warming? Are there any negatives you can think of for using the oven instead of a WD?

Does anyone know what, if any, the difference is in using ovens as warming drawers? I believe the WD has a humidity feature, correct? Does anyone who has a WD find that if food sits in there for a while that it gets overcooked? Or how about pizza? Does the crust get mushy or soft? What is the general consensus on what the WD does to the food?

Thank you all again - this has been so helpful!

We have had ours about a month now (we have a psuedo functioning kitchen--no permanent counters, but functioning appliances and a dishwasher hooked up--hallelujah). My husband really loves the warming drawer--it has some "new toy" factor to it. It's in the middle drawer of a stack of three near the rangetop (not directly beneath it). We almost put in under the double ovens which are further out the workflow, but I think we would not use it near as much if it was (A) so far to bend down to use if under the ovens and (B) not really close to the cooktop.

Does anyone have a panel-ready warming drawer? If so, any issues with heat/moisture?

Mine is panelled and the vent (moist/dry) works fine. There are slits in the bottom of the bit of metal that folds from from the interior wall, between that and the panel. That's where the moisture vents. It's not much moisture when you're venting something you're trying to keep crispy. It's not perfect. Something inherently moist, like waffles, won't be as crispy outside as if they were right out of the waffle iron, but should be somewhat crisper than without the vent. With the vent you can recrisp crackers. ;) No problems, but I don't have a damp kitchen. It doesn't get hot enough to affect the panel. Mine are solid bamboo, which is a kind of plywood. If you have veneer on MDF or something like that, there might be a greater issue.

There are ovens with temperatures which will go down as far as a warming drawer. Traditionally, 225-250 was the "keep warm" setting and that would continue to cook the food. The temperature they have for rising bread dough is 90-100 degrees, the point being to "prove" the yeast (make it rise) rather than kill it. :) Some jump from there to 250. Others have dehydrate and warming settings between 100-250. Those are the ones you can use the same way you would a warming drawer. If you had full extension racks you could even dish up from it.

Plate warming can be done on the dough mode. Keep it under 100 degrees for pleasantly warm. That also shouldn't discolor your metalics, but test it first.

Safe warming settings for food range from 140-240 depending on the type of food, quantity, etc. That said, Jews have been keeping food warm for Sabbath at temperatures below 120 degrees, lest it be hot enough to cook (the test is that it be less than the temperature that causes you to withdraw your hand), for centuries without ill consequences. The trick to that is to have something that is thoroughly cooked enough to have no chance of still having bacteria. If you have a medium rare roast, which is heavy and dense and isn't cooked to a faretheewell, you'll want to use a higher temperature. The government recommends temperatures that are too high, and will cause further cooking, but they have to err on the side of safety. In reality, if you have good quality food and cook it to safe temperatures to begin with, you don't need to go that far and can use a temperature that will hold the heat without further cooking.

Most warming drawers have settings of low/medium/high, sometimes with the additions of "proof" or plate warming. You can usually find out what the total range is, but the temperatures aren't exact. They'll give you a guide to go with it from which you can find something that is most like the thing you want to keep warm. There are some more precise warming drawers, but it's unnecessary. The whole point is that it's just a warm box. Very simple. Very reliable. Very easy to use. Some also have an automatic off after four hours, which you can disable for a day in dehydrate mode, and for a few days in Sabbath mode (for said Jews). That's overly complex, in my opinion, but people have been known to forget it for a week, and they probably need it. My kitchen isn't that cold, so I turn mine off when people go for seconds. It stays warm enough until I can put the food away.

If you don't have that temperature range, you can still keep things warm in an oven for awhile. Just warm the oven up to its lowest temperature and turn it off. Even the nervous nellies admit that you can safely keep food in a warming drawer for four hours, however, and your regular oven without a warming setting is probably going to get too cool in that kind of time if it's not on, and you don't want to be shocking you food by raising and lowering and raising the temperature again.

The KitchenAid (and Jenn-Air) warming drawers have slow cook settings whereas other warming drawers specifically caution against it. There's no reason for that, however. Having looked at them, I infer that what the low/high slow cook switch gives you is specific target temperatures. Low is equivalent to an old fashioned crock pot, which took 8-10 hours to cook, and high is the equivalent of the current models, which take about five hours to cook. If you use an oven thermometer to figure out the temperatures on your dial, you can do this without the special setting. People do it all the time. :)

As long as the temperature is low and the food is covered it's fine. Crispy things won't stay crispy, even uncovered...but I doubt they would in a warming drawer either. Maybe if I cracked the oven door and kept it slightly open with chopsticks to vent it as plllog mentions it'd help keep the crisp. I suppose it's worth a try.

I keep a pizza stone in my oven and if I need to keep things warm, I can just turn off the oven and it will stay warm for a long time.
If I am ordering pizza, I turn on the oven to 200 and when it arrives, I pop into the oven.
I also use my deLonghi oven for keeping things warm.
I was sure I wanted this with the remodel, but it just didn't fit, so back to my old tricks.