You can absolutely use your cooler to keep food hot! The two inches of insulation that do such an amazing job retaining ice will do just as good a job at retaining heat. We’ve seen Pelican Elite Coolers used to hold boiled peanuts or to rest large cuts of barbeque. We’ve even seen someone set up their immersion circulator in their cooler in order to sous vide a huge tomahawk ribeye.Just exercise care that the contents in your cooler don’t exceed 250°F. You don’t want to accidentally melt your cooler.