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I’ve largely moved to using the air fryer / toaster oven to heat things up, but the biggest “life hack” for microwaving is doubling the time and halving the power. That, and stirring halfway through.
The real life hack is having a crappy low powered microwave so you don’t even have to set it to half power.
I used to have one of those. Think it was 600W on highest setting. Only problem with it was it was tiny and barely anything fit in it. Pretty sure it was meant for RVs but it was $10 at a garage sale and I needed a microwave at the time.
Honestly 3-5 minutes at 50-60% reheats food perfectly for me most of the time.
Can confirm, lol. For breakfast, I heated up some leftover spaghetti and meatballs I made last night, and 5 minutes at 60% was the perfect amount.
Also if possible leave a void in the center of the plate/bowl. If I remember correctly something about the distribution of microwaves around something like 1" of the center are weaker than the area around it.
I think the general reason for that is more about the turntable. There are always going to be hot and cold spots in a microwave just based on how they work, they can’t eliminate them. So spinning the food around means that sometimes it is in a hot spot and sometimes in a cold spot… Except the very center where it is basically just rotating in place. It is either going to be a hot or a cold spot more than likely, and whatever food is stuck there is going to burn or never cook.
1000w microwaves for me are 50% more time and either 70 or 80% power depending on how evenly the food heats up. Sometimes I do stuff at 90 if I want edge cheese to overcook a little.
100% power is for popcorn!
Popcorn in a pan is so much better, really easy, and SO much cheaper than bagged microwave popcorn. I bought a flat-bottom wok specifically for cooking popcorn because I like it that way so much, but I made it for years in just a normal pasta pot.
Microwave popcorn hits different.
Half the power, double the time. This is how I use it and it works great for me.
People really don’t know how to use a microwave.
They think the timer is everything.
That is like cooking everything in the oven at 450F.
Tbf most microwaves are designed in a dumb way where half power means turning on the magnetron to max power anyway just for half the time, with something like 20 second on cycles. They’re like putting food into the oven to 450F but pulling it out every so often.
Pretty sure that is how all of them work and it is perfectly fine. Stopping the blast of energy frequently lets the heat evenly distribute while cooking to keep any part from overcooking.
Panasonic owns the patent for an inverter microwave that can actually do 50% power.
With inverters being common in solar installations and electric cars, it would seem that someone else could just put that part in a microwave, but fortunately the patent prevents that.
It’s nice to know that although I can’t buy the model of microwave that I want with the features I want, at least a single company can prevent everyone else’s progress and even make a tiny bit of extra profit at the same time.
But my microwave does this?
This is real data from my LG microwave just now. The first peak is at 100% power, the second peak is 30% power, the last three peaks are 10% power.
You can see that under 30% it has to cycle the inverter on and off like old microwaves, but still it’s way better than doing that at 100%.
I love my inverter microwave, I feel like I’m living in the future. Bought this thing like 4 years ago 🤷♂️
Panasonic does sometimes licence the patent to other companies. I would love an inverter microwave, but they aren’t made with the other features I want.
What app is that?
Fair enough.
It’s the emporia app, I installed whole home monitoring in my breaker panel. It’s occasionally useful, expensive, but I’ve had it long enough to make it worth it in my mind 🤷♂️
Seriously, is it really that fucking difficult for the average person to understand how the power setting works? My microwaved food comes out evenly-heated every time, because I’m not a fucking idiot.
It would help if most of them didn’t completely cheap out on the power modulation. Most of them do this half assed PWM over like 10 seconds, so they’re on at max power or off, which to be fair is a pretty unintuitive way to cook for most people. It would be much better if they just put out some fraction of full power continuously. It makes much more sense and removes the annoying complexity. Some microwaves do it but they’re few and far between.
Literally every microwave I’ve ever known uses PWM for power control, but alternating between off and full blast still heats more evenly than just leaving it on the default non-stop full blast setting that literally everyone uses and never changes.
Let’s make one side too hot and the other side too cold. Everybody happy!
Have a microwave with a steam sensor perfectly cooked food everytime.
Came here to point out most microwave’s auto-cook features, or just using lower power settings and longer cook times.
Mine works really well on sensor reheat unless it’s soup, then it’s gonna boil it dry after exploding it all over like a crime scene.
Problem with sensor microwaves is that they still blast the food at full power when you use the Sensor Cook setting, and I don’t know of any microwave that lets you reduce the power by half when in Sensor Cook, resulting uneven heating regardless. They’re usually just a one button operation. I need finer control!
It seems as if there’s a large chunk of multiple generations that were never taught by their guardians and teachers how to use a microwave properly.
You wouldn’t use an oven the same way as a frying pan and expect the same results. Microwaves are great for some things and not for others, and can easily heat things through evenly.
It’s not the fault of people who don’t know though, it’s a fault of their educators.
Boomers:
Wait more than two seconds after the microwave dings before cramming it down your gullett and maybe the temperature will be a little more even.
No, just learn how to adjust the power setting, and enjoy evenly-cooked food every time.
This https://what-if.xkcd.com/131/ should be helpful to everyone who has these kinds of problems.
So my advice to James is simple: Use a lower power level, stir your food partway through microwaving, and let it sit for a few minutes before you eat it.
Nice that they Dep. of Ag. Microwave safety page is gone.
skill issue
Most definitely. Learn what the power button on the microwave does, and use it every time you heat up food. The only time you should ever leave it at the default of 100%/10/HIGH is when you’re boiling water.
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May not be on the cheaper microwaves, but the combination of the sensor heating button and inverter technology makes reheating perfect every time.
I have had zero luck with any of the sensor options on the handful of microwaves that I have tried it on. Might just be bad luck.
My only interface complaint with my current microwave is that the turntable doesn’t do a full revolution in an even amount of time. That is, it takes about nine seconds to do a full revolution, but since I put the food in for one minute, or some number of 30-second intervals, the bowl, or cup always ends up away from the front of the oven, so I need to reach in to get it. What’s needed is a variable speed drive that ensures the cup always comes back to the same point at which you put it in, regardless of time.
But, really, I’d put up with almost anything for a microwave that lasted 20 years, like my old microwave did.
Put it in the back of the microwave, then it’s at the front when you take it out.
Until this day I assumed that everyone put their food in the centre of the turntable, where presumably the cooking power is most concentrated. But now I know that people like you exist.
in the centre of the turntable
That’s how you get the center burnt and the outside cold. The food should move through the microwave, not sit in one place.
Well, then you presumed poorly, because it cooks better along the outside. Why would it even have a turn table, otherwise?
There is an easy solution to this.
Don’t put your food in the middle.
Also, stir.
I’ll give the microwave a pass. It doesn’t heat up food evenly but all You have to do is stir it half way through. It’s not like You can heat up anything on the stove without stirring.
While on the subject. I have a microwave, electric oven combo. I can use it both to heat things up quickly and to bake. It takes space for only one allowance and is smaller than an average oven so it heats up quicker and I could fit one more drawer into my kitchen. I’m always wondering why they aren’t more popular. Whenever I tell people about it, they are surprised that a thing like that exists.
I’ve never lived in a society where a microwave is used for anything other than heating things up—all be it, poorly.
Then I hear of people in some countries use themi cook. What a waste your time, food, and mone?
In the apocalypse; Microwavers.are.day 1 done at best.
all be it
Albeit… I mean, pedantically at least.
It’s certainly one of the more forgivable boneappleteas I’ve ever seen… but the rest of the comment is such a hot mess of typos and unwarranted aggression that my sympathy evaporated.
