> It’s about staring blankly at the buzzing white box, waiting for the four dreadful beeps that give you permission to eat.
I thought it was near universal that everybody staring at the microwave was engaged in a game of chicken where you try to open the door as close to zero as possible while preventing the beeps.
The beeps must not sound.
I have no idea why it’s important to prevent the beeps, but it feels like a deep primal compulsion. Our ancestors must have learned that the beeps attracted sabretooth tigers or something
Just be careful doing this if there’s a radio telescope nearby:
However, about 25 FRBs detected mainly by the Parkes Radio Telescope and a few other observatories presented signatures that were very different. Although they covered a wide frequency range just like the other FRBs, the frequency-time structures of many of these events defied any physical model, and they did not show differences in the arrival times between the higher frequencies and the lower frequencies of the burst. Also, the location of these FRBs was difficult to pinpoint; the radiation seemed to come from all directions. The Parkes astronomers, mystified, dubbed these "abnormal" FRBs "perythons" after a mythical figure invented by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The perythons’ signatures caused astronomers to doubt the extragalactic origin of FRBs [PDF] althogether. They might originate on or nearby Earth, the scientists began to believe, and some astronomers even suggested that these strange bursts might be produced by extraterrestrial civilizations.
Not long after focusing their attention on the perythons, the Parkes astronomers noticed that these FRBs seemed to take off during weekends. In 2014, they installed a radio frequency interference monitor at the observatory and decided that the culprits were probably some microwave ovens inside the observatory building. Tests with these microwave ovens yielded nothing—they emitted no radio pulses while they were running. The astronomers were flummoxed—that is, until one of the testers, during a third attempt, opened the door of a microwave oven before the magnetron was shut off by the timer.
Those extremely rare moments when you open the door literally on zero, with no sound, and the display showing 0s, are like half of the reason I use a microwave. Man vs machine at its most visceral, it makes me feel alive
I completely agree in the game of chicken. Usually I spend the time up to T-3s wondering how the crazy beepers on microwave ovens is still a thing, generations after the novelty has worn of.
I can sort of understand why beepers where a cool sales gimmick back when the microwave was the only appliance with a micro controller, but really -- it doesn't make sense: Firstly, immediate attention is not critical when the time is up: unlike a stove or an oven, energy transfer stop the moment the magnetron is de-energized. Secondly, the microwave (at least my microwave) is not exactly silent: if you are not deaf, chances are you can easily tell when it is done.
Maybe I should apply the Joe-treatment from my old lab: whenever there was a new shipment of frequency meters for the lab (we always needed more), Joe would meticulously unbox them and stick a pointed screw-driver through all the piezo buzzers to make sure the would never make a sound.
My microwave beeps regardless. It beeps with every button push. It beeps when the door is opened. It beeps when the door is not opened. I swear I heard it beep unplugged in the garden just now
I once managed to trigger what I think was a race condition in a microwave's beep routine. It was one of the type that does a single long beep rather than individual beeps, and like most it would cut the beep short when you opened the door. But one time, one single time, I managed to open the door PRECISELY as the timer finished, and the beep just didn't stop. I finally closed and opened the door after maybe 30 seconds, and that stopped it.
I was never able to trigger it again, so I have no idea whether it was a race condition or some other random one-in-a-million happenstance, but it makes a fun theory at least.
Only the people who grew up with microwaves are obsessed with the beep. For most of my life I didn't have one but wanted one, now I own one and let it sing.
> try to open the door as close to zero as possible while preventing the beeps
To go easy on the door switches, which operate at high voltage and can wear down if they're being used to break the circuit on every run, it's better to press the Stop/Cancel button instead.
But believe me, it is a hard, hard habit to break.
I thought the microwave beeps several times to ensure the radiation has completely dissipated from the chamber before you open it. I always let it beep and then some.
I hate machines that beep at me. I disable them wherever I can. My current & previous microwave have both had a built-in method to turn off the beeps, yours might too (check the manual). For devices which are safer to open than microwaves that lack such a setting, physical removal of the piezo buzzer works.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned inverter microwaves. Unlike plain old regular microwaves where power settings just adjust the time that the magnetron is running at full blast the inverter ones can actually change the power of the magnetron. Makes it tons easier to cook food evenly and calmly. Never am I buying again one without.
It's kinda hard to find them though. Most manufacturers hardly list this but Bosch seems to have inverters in most of their mid and higher-end ones. My favourite is the Bosch BFL634GB1. Bosch BFL7221B1 was a huge downgrade due to the shitty touch screen and wheel along with a multi-second boot time.
This explains a lot, American microwaves have these settings for different types of food etc, it seems most people throw something in and just 'nuke it'. European microwave ovens on the other hand, have a setting for different wattages (90W up to 720W 'Max' in my case), which, combined with instructions in the recipe or on the box, provide the right setting for this particular food.
I wonder why microwaves can't work like modern radio transmitters. Magnetrons generate ~2.4 GHz radio waves using resonance and a strong magnetic field acting on free electron orbits. That was necessary in the 1940s for radar transmitters. But today, solid state electronics generate 2.4 GHz (and higher) waves without any trouble - cf. WiFi and Bluetooth hardware. I'm not the first to have this question, and it looks like there is some ongoing work. https://www.digikey.com/en/blog/will-the-microwave-ovens-mag...
I love inverter microwaves so much. I got a cheap one at Target for maybe $100 or so. I almost never use full power, typically I go for 50% or 60%. Food heats through evenly, every time.
I try and tell friends about it and they all think I am crazy. I've had more luck with induction cook tops, probably because there is more general buzz around them.
I really with Alex on Technology Connections would do a video on inverter microwaves to get the word out!
Restaurants are doing more of this than most people think.
Here's an article from the head chef from a commercial microwave oven company, on how to get more done faster.[1] Commercial microwave ovens have about 2KW-3KW of power, and some of them have true variable power, not the on/off thing most home microwave ovens use. "I’ve shown teams how to make mug cakes, molten chocolate brownies, and steamed puddings with just a microwave. The reactions are always the same: "I had no idea a microwave could do that.”"
In 1986 I briefly lived in a squat in North London, and the gas had been disconnected. We cooked everything in the Microwave, and we ate nutritious and completely unexpected (to me) normal meals, like Lasagne made with dried pasta, which uses cottage cheese to boost the moisture content so the sheets of Pasta soften. I appreciate at this point some people are saying "normal??" but truly, compared to the alternatives, using a more liquid cheese to make a meal which conforms in all other respects to your expectations, was huge.
(gas reconnection was hard. Electricity, for reasons I never entirely understood, was easy to get reconnected to squats, at the time)
My co-occupants had a lot more experience than I of this life on the edge. I learned a lot.
> The actual recipe section starts with the recipe for a bowl of cereal, which I am 70% sure is a joke
For years, I would get up insanely early and be the first in the office, with no-one around other than the cleaners. My breakfast every day would be microwave-cooked oats - but it wasn't quite as easy as the recipe from the book makes it out to be, mostly because of the milk.
Unlike water, when you heat up milk to a high temperature in the microwave, it behaves just like it does on the stove top: it wants to crawl out of the container and nicely spread itself everywhere.
So, I developed sort of a technique that consisted of short bursts of microwaving at full blast, then stopping and stirring, and back in with bowl. I repeated that a few times, but after I had the technique down, it didn't require much attention any more, it worked quite reliably.
The oats got cooked nicely, and thanks to the pectin of an apple that I also added in, it also thickened. (And in case you wonder, the apple's acidity does sometimes split the milk somewhat, but in most cases it doesn't.) However, there's definitely a difference in smoothness between microwaved oat meal and one that's made slowly on the stove top - the latter being much nicer in texture.
But it was a quick breakfast that I really enjoyed (with a dash of cinnamon) at my desk every morning while I was going through my email from the night before.
What you say is true, but good microwave ovens have fine-enough power control to avoid any such problems caused by milk and also the problems caused by exploding eggs or exploding meat (which happens when you cook raw meat, instead of just reheating already cooked meat).
The great advantage of microwave ovens is that even if the first time when you cook something that you have not cooked before, you must experiment carefully to find the optimum time and power level for a given amount of food ingredients, once you have determined good values you can use them forever with perfect reproducibility and the food will be good every time and there will be no incidents with food exploding or overflowing in the oven.
I'd never make porridge with water at home - but in winter in the office I used to cover a 1/3 bowl of oats with boiling water and then microwave for just 30 seconds.
Once the oirriois cooked (it really should be already) add a teaspoon or two of salted butter to the middle and stir, then sugar to taste.
Suprisingly delicious, quick and repeatable.
I won a few people over who couldn't believe that porridge made with water would be any good, but it was a great winter staple, especially after cycling in, in the cold.
I’m suddenly in desperate need of a pyroceram skillet too. I’d love to be able to make proper cheeseburgers with grilled onions one at a time without using a stove or grill.
On the other hand my brother in law got himself one of those smokers that burns wood pellets. I could buy one of those and eat nothing but smoked pork shoulder for the rest of my life.
The skillet sounds cool but I'd rather not have to deal with a microwave door and control panel for searing stuff. I do, however, frequently use it in ways that others find unconventional:
- Cooking dry goods (quinoa, freekeh, couscous)
- Single-serving coffee mug surprises (omelettes, protein brownies)
- Low-carb cheese crisps (via parchment paper)
- Not-fried rice (day-old rice, light sesame oil, soy sauce, bits of egg, leftover veggies, random seasonings)
- Frozen breaded chicken (wrap really well in paper towels to absorb moisture, overshoot on time, unwrap as soon as they're out to avoid sticking - they come out like 66% as crispy as using a convection oven)
I do draw the line at pasta because the texture never seems quite right when you boil it in the microwave.
Very readable. Loved it. Perfect for the too online tech audience and brings magic of 70s/80s futurism with a nod to current AI and Cryptocurrency freaks with the use of "Maximalists". If you are a Gen X geek this is really fun read.
For whatever reason, I have an 8" floppy disk with one of these microwave cookbooks on it. Mine seems to be (part of?) one called "The Guaranteed Goof-Proof Microwave Cookbook" by Margie "Microwhiz" Kreschollek.
Sadly, I've never been able to read the book in the correct order as I don't know what system it came from - it's something that is single-sided, 77 tracks, FM (single density) encoded with 26 sectors/track, but the text is there in a hex editor.
It makes it pretty obvious that it isn't a joke or trick; someone saw it fit to fill up a 250kB disk with this, so somebody must have thought it was a good idea.
In an unrelated endeavour, my dad told me he once tried to cook an entire turkey in one of those huge 80's microwaves. He said it didn't turn out very good.
I feel like 80% of the microwave's downfall was adopting VCR-like push button interfaces.
The two dial microwave was peak UX. Quick, painless, no wondering what sequence to press on a strange 'wave, zero time delay between input and cooking, and easy use of the (essential) power function.
It even lets you change time or power mid-cook. For maximum laziness it's possible to leave the door cracked with time on the dial, throw in the food, and adjust the dial while it's already on (slightly reducing the wait before eating). Using the microwave becomes forgiving instead of foreboding, because it's so easy to change your mind.
The only downside is that it's slightly less precise, but getting the exact time down to the second is probably less important than you think. It's also a mechanical part to fail, but I've had microwaves die because the push buttons failed too, whereas my dial unit is still going strong. YMMV
There are some use cases where exact time is very important. Warming milk for a baby for instance - it’s pretty low volume and the difference between 30s and 40s is huge. I used to favour the 2 knob microwave, but since having to do that a lot I’d always choose a digital timer. Some have decent interfaces.
I quite like how mine has a rotary knob that sets preset programmes (which I never use) but also you just tap it to increase the time in 30 second increments. Tap tap tap - wait - <HUUMMMMMM> and it's on for a minute and a half.
Kettle doesn't have 90C tea settings? No problem just boil at 100C, then pop in the microwave for 2 minutes at 0 megawatts. It is even faster if you live at altitude!
The number one feature of modern microwaves that I appreciate is the humidity sensor. Figure out if your microwave has one, and it opens up a whole world of better solutions.
Know the popcorn button? Ever wondered why every popcorn manufacturer tells you not to use it, or, if you don't make a habit of taking orders from a paper bag, why it works on some microwaves, but fails miserably on others, either burning the popcorn to a crisp or, more often, leaving half the kernels unpopped? Humidity sensor. In microwaves with a humidity sensor, the microwave runs until the humidity stops rising, (which means the kernels stopped popping) then stops (well, actually mine sets ~30 second timer, then stops). This produces perfect popcorn every time. Doesn't matter the brand of popcorn, it just works.
Unfortunately, because this feature was so great, it got imitated on every microwave, regardless of whether it has a humidity sensor or not. On those microwaves, it just sets a flat timer, which cannot adapt to variations in popcorn. Since popcorn manufacturers have no idea which camp your microwave falls into, and can't assume you have any idea either, they just tell people to neglect a fantastic feature.
If you're gonna brown some onions, microwave them for a bit before tossing them into the pan. The first step of browning onions is just boiling away the water, which microwaves are great at. You may find that it begins to brown sooner this way.
No mention of the Miele Dialog which gets as close as I've seen (though not quite there) to my dream of crispy fried eggs with runny yolk in the microwave. Their big example is being able to cook a fish while it remains in a block of ice. Pretty damn cool!
The microwave has two big related issues (both mentioned in the article).
The first is that it is not easy to make a mental model of how it works. The second is that since it takes little too cook the food, it is unforgiving and you have to be very careful with both timings and amounts.
This makes it hard to learn how to properly use it just by trial and error. Also since now we have inductive stoves there is even less reason to use it.
My pet theory is that, humans have an inherent desire to spent a certain amount of time dealing with food.
If our lives are to efficient, say because we do not have to butcher a pig and cure it’s meat to get ham, we start to become obsessed with all kind of strange diets from cocovorism to paleo.
I don't know if this is common knowledge, but microwaves are great for "mug cakes" [1] (or brownies, or cobblers), where you throw the cake ingredients in a mug, mix 'em, and microwave it. Makes for a great quick dessert (for one) when you're feeling snackish.
I'm partially living in this alternative timeline as an accomplished microwave chef thanks to this thing. I mostly use it to steam veggies.
Didn't think the Maillard reaction was possible in the microwave (and that's what I miss the most). The tin-oxide pans are fascinating, though pre-heating them doesn't seem terribly convenient now that we have induction stove-tops.
Does anyone knows if using microwaves might possibly affect the nutritional value of the food? Or if radiation can leak and act upon your body if you stand very close to it. Heated plastic doesn’t sound too healthy either. And why do we never see commercials about microwaves?
I know nothing about these things, but I still only use it to heat my cold cup of coffee - and I’m standing way back while I do :) I even own a pyroceram skillet.
> Does anyone knows if using microwaves might possibly affect the nutritional value of the food?
Cooking in general affects the nutritional value of food—some nutrients are easier to absorb when cooked, so cooking effectively increases their amount, while other nutrients are destroyed [0] [1]. But given that you're probably cooking your food anyways, there's nothing specific to microwaves here.
Microwaves might actually be slightly better than other cooking methods here, since they produce a lower heat that's less likely to destroy nutrients, but the cooking method has such a minor effect that I wouldn't really worry about it either way.
> Or if radiation can leak and affect you body if you stand very close to it while it’s running.
Microwaves are classified as non-ionizing radiation [2], so their main effect is just heating things up. So if you're standing near a microwave and your body starts heating up, then something bad is happening; otherwise, you're probably fine.
The only health risk from microwaves (aside from a hypothetical accident involving someone being cooked inside one like a rotisserie chicken) is cataracts [3]. But this usually only affects radio technicians, who put their heads beside much bigger and much more powerful microwave emitters than a domestic microwave oven. And even cataracts are only due to the heating effect.
In general the nutritional value of the food is less affected by microwave cooking, because you can use much lower heating times and it is easy to ensure that the temperature is not too great.
Moreover, at microwaves it is easy to cook without adding water (whenever you are cooking meat or vegetables with high content of water, e.g. potatoes; when not adding water, using a glass vessel covered with a glass lid is normally mandatory), or only by adding a minimum amount of water, which avoids the leaching of water-soluble nutrients.
These properties ensure that food cooked at microwaves in the right way (e.g. without water whenever that is possible) is frequently tastier than when cooked by traditional means. The only exception is for people who like burned food, as this method for degrading food is more difficult to do at microwaves.
While the fact that food is less affected by microwaves than by most other methods of cooking is intuitively obvious, there have been published several research articles where it was investigated the degradation of several essential nutrients, e.g. vitamins, during cooking by various methods, and they confirmed a minimum degradation during microwave cooking, caused by shorter cooking times and lower peak temperatures.
When cooking at microwaves, you normally do not cook everything together, because meat requires different parameters than vegetables and there are 3 or 4 classes of vegetables that require different parameters. So you typically cook the ingredients separately and you mix them after cooking, when you also add ingredients like oil, which should better not be heated.
You can cook multiple classes of vegetables together, if you start with those that require the longest cooking time, and microwave them for the time difference vs. the next class of vegetables, then you add the next vegetables and microwave them for the next time difference, until you add the last kind and microwave again everything for the remaining time.
I do not have a microwave, but I remember having one, and never managed to intuitively use it to iterate on my cooking.
Meanwhile, throw stuff in the pan, move it around, adjust the temperature, add in some stuff as it goes, is a much more interactive type of cooking that is much more likely to take me where I want to go (tasty food).
It depends what you're trying to make. There are two things I almost always cook from scratch in the microwave, and that's trifle sponge (because I don't care if the sponge cake is going to be a bit dry and heavy, because I'm about to break it all up, mix it with diced fruit, and pour some sherry and quite a lot of jelly over it) and onion paste for curry.
If you want to make curry from scratch you can either do the whole thing in one pan and get "homestyle" curry - which is good - or you can make an onion paste by either cooking a very mildly spicy but ultimately rather bland onion soup for an hour to make the "base gravy", or by just chopping three or four onions and sticking them in the microwave on full blast for ten minutes before mooshing them with the hand blender.
Then you just bloom your spices in a bit of oil, chuck in some garlic and ginger paste (literally about the same amount of peeled garlic cloves and peeled ginger root mooshed up with the blender in a little oil and water) and let it bubble a bit, chuck in whatever veg and meat you're adding, and then slowly start adding your onion gloop, and boom, restaurant-style curry.
If you make the garlic and ginger paste in advance, and precook the meat a little (beef kind of wants to be stewed until it's tender, and then you can fire in the stock it's stewing in) then you can knock out an incredibly tasty curry in the same amount of time it takes to cook the rice.
And that's how restaurants do it, because you're not going to wait two hours for a homestyle curry to cook off properly.
More recent alternate universe is where everyone cooks everything in an Instant Pot, and even more recent is where everyone cooks everything in an air fryer. Every new cooking appliance is a revolution, until it isn't, and only a handful of real use cases for it remain.
This is fascinating because I remember this era when Microwave ovens were a new thing and my parents got one, along with a glossy cookbook with a roast chicken on the front. All of that 'roasting things in the microwave' gor quietly forgotten about in the late 80s, along with the idea that CDs were 'indestructible'.
But somehow modern microwaves always have a button on the front with a picture of a roast chicken. Why are microwave UIs so delusional? Just need power %age and time.
Microwaves are good for making porridge (oatmeal) though. And I've had some success with scrambled eggs, if you get the method right results are very consistent.
parpfish|8 days ago
I thought it was near universal that everybody staring at the microwave was engaged in a game of chicken where you try to open the door as close to zero as possible while preventing the beeps.
The beeps must not sound.
I have no idea why it’s important to prevent the beeps, but it feels like a deep primal compulsion. Our ancestors must have learned that the beeps attracted sabretooth tigers or something
nandomrumber|8 days ago
However, about 25 FRBs detected mainly by the Parkes Radio Telescope and a few other observatories presented signatures that were very different. Although they covered a wide frequency range just like the other FRBs, the frequency-time structures of many of these events defied any physical model, and they did not show differences in the arrival times between the higher frequencies and the lower frequencies of the burst. Also, the location of these FRBs was difficult to pinpoint; the radiation seemed to come from all directions. The Parkes astronomers, mystified, dubbed these "abnormal" FRBs "perythons" after a mythical figure invented by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The perythons’ signatures caused astronomers to doubt the extragalactic origin of FRBs [PDF] althogether. They might originate on or nearby Earth, the scientists began to believe, and some astronomers even suggested that these strange bursts might be produced by extraterrestrial civilizations.
Not long after focusing their attention on the perythons, the Parkes astronomers noticed that these FRBs seemed to take off during weekends. In 2014, they installed a radio frequency interference monitor at the observatory and decided that the culprits were probably some microwave ovens inside the observatory building. Tests with these microwave ovens yielded nothing—they emitted no radio pulses while they were running. The astronomers were flummoxed—that is, until one of the testers, during a third attempt, opened the door of a microwave oven before the magnetron was shut off by the timer.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/microwave-ovens-posing-as-astronom...
Groxx|8 days ago
japanuspus|8 days ago
I can sort of understand why beepers where a cool sales gimmick back when the microwave was the only appliance with a micro controller, but really -- it doesn't make sense: Firstly, immediate attention is not critical when the time is up: unlike a stove or an oven, energy transfer stop the moment the magnetron is de-energized. Secondly, the microwave (at least my microwave) is not exactly silent: if you are not deaf, chances are you can easily tell when it is done.
Maybe I should apply the Joe-treatment from my old lab: whenever there was a new shipment of frequency meters for the lab (we always needed more), Joe would meticulously unbox them and stick a pointed screw-driver through all the piezo buzzers to make sure the would never make a sound.
[Edit] microtron (sic) -> magnetron
soopypoos|8 days ago
TheFlyingFish|7 days ago
I was never able to trigger it again, so I have no idea whether it was a race condition or some other random one-in-a-million happenstance, but it makes a fun theory at least.
ragazzina|8 days ago
jihadjihad|8 days ago
To go easy on the door switches, which operate at high voltage and can wear down if they're being used to break the circuit on every run, it's better to press the Stop/Cancel button instead.
But believe me, it is a hard, hard habit to break.
SkyMarshal|7 days ago
SAI_Peregrinus|8 days ago
parliament32|8 days ago
Cthulhu_|8 days ago
...or not far enough, if there's anything that a smart microwave would have any benefit it would be this, lol.
paul_h|8 days ago
db48x|8 days ago
tambre|8 days ago
It's kinda hard to find them though. Most manufacturers hardly list this but Bosch seems to have inverters in most of their mid and higher-end ones. My favourite is the Bosch BFL634GB1. Bosch BFL7221B1 was a huge downgrade due to the shitty touch screen and wheel along with a multi-second boot time.
mahrain|8 days ago
elil17|8 days ago
Curious to hear more about your personal experience
ahartmetz|8 days ago
com2kid|8 days ago
I try and tell friends about it and they all think I am crazy. I've had more luck with induction cook tops, probably because there is more general buzz around them.
I really with Alex on Technology Connections would do a video on inverter microwaves to get the word out!
fulafel|7 days ago
candiddevmike|8 days ago
bombela|8 days ago
I hate every microwave I have ever had the displeasure to operate during my lifetime, except the old stuff witn the teo mechanical knobs.
With a rotary encoder we can get second precision and minute granularity at the same time.
Is that time for a Kickstarter?
Animats|8 days ago
Here's an article from the head chef from a commercial microwave oven company, on how to get more done faster.[1] Commercial microwave ovens have about 2KW-3KW of power, and some of them have true variable power, not the on/off thing most home microwave ovens use. "I’ve shown teams how to make mug cakes, molten chocolate brownies, and steamed puddings with just a microwave. The reactions are always the same: "I had no idea a microwave could do that.”"
[1] https://totalfood.com/revolutionizing-microwave-cooking-comm...
ggm|8 days ago
(gas reconnection was hard. Electricity, for reasons I never entirely understood, was easy to get reconnected to squats, at the time)
My co-occupants had a lot more experience than I of this life on the edge. I learned a lot.
mgaunard|8 days ago
kleiba|8 days ago
For years, I would get up insanely early and be the first in the office, with no-one around other than the cleaners. My breakfast every day would be microwave-cooked oats - but it wasn't quite as easy as the recipe from the book makes it out to be, mostly because of the milk.
Unlike water, when you heat up milk to a high temperature in the microwave, it behaves just like it does on the stove top: it wants to crawl out of the container and nicely spread itself everywhere.
So, I developed sort of a technique that consisted of short bursts of microwaving at full blast, then stopping and stirring, and back in with bowl. I repeated that a few times, but after I had the technique down, it didn't require much attention any more, it worked quite reliably.
The oats got cooked nicely, and thanks to the pectin of an apple that I also added in, it also thickened. (And in case you wonder, the apple's acidity does sometimes split the milk somewhat, but in most cases it doesn't.) However, there's definitely a difference in smoothness between microwaved oat meal and one that's made slowly on the stove top - the latter being much nicer in texture.
But it was a quick breakfast that I really enjoyed (with a dash of cinnamon) at my desk every morning while I was going through my email from the night before.
nandomrumber|8 days ago
The typical workflow is: power button > number button 1-9
My daily driver is a bit more fancy, and has a single button to cycle through the available power settings.
For your milk oats I’d suggest a power setting around 30 to 40% and increasing the cooking time by a factor of 2.
adrian_b|8 days ago
The great advantage of microwave ovens is that even if the first time when you cook something that you have not cooked before, you must experiment carefully to find the optimum time and power level for a given amount of food ingredients, once you have determined good values you can use them forever with perfect reproducibility and the food will be good every time and there will be no incidents with food exploding or overflowing in the oven.
ljf|8 days ago
Once the oirriois cooked (it really should be already) add a teaspoon or two of salted butter to the middle and stir, then sugar to taste.
Suprisingly delicious, quick and repeatable.
I won a few people over who couldn't believe that porridge made with water would be any good, but it was a great winter staple, especially after cycling in, in the cold.
asciimov|8 days ago
urikaduri|8 days ago
arethuza|8 days ago
messe|8 days ago
I'm worried I'm going to burn a hole in my wallet searching for a pyroceram skillet that I'll end up using for a week and then forget about it.
db48x|8 days ago
On the other hand my brother in law got himself one of those smokers that burns wood pellets. I could buy one of those and eat nothing but smoked pork shoulder for the rest of my life.
alexjplant|8 days ago
- Cooking dry goods (quinoa, freekeh, couscous)
- Single-serving coffee mug surprises (omelettes, protein brownies)
- Low-carb cheese crisps (via parchment paper)
- Not-fried rice (day-old rice, light sesame oil, soy sauce, bits of egg, leftover veggies, random seasonings)
- Frozen breaded chicken (wrap really well in paper towels to absorb moisture, overshoot on time, unwrap as soon as they're out to avoid sticking - they come out like 66% as crispy as using a convection oven)
I do draw the line at pasta because the texture never seems quite right when you boil it in the microwave.
tokenless|8 days ago
khafra|8 days ago
alnwlsn|8 days ago
Sadly, I've never been able to read the book in the correct order as I don't know what system it came from - it's something that is single-sided, 77 tracks, FM (single density) encoded with 26 sectors/track, but the text is there in a hex editor.
It makes it pretty obvious that it isn't a joke or trick; someone saw it fit to fill up a 250kB disk with this, so somebody must have thought it was a good idea.
In an unrelated endeavour, my dad told me he once tried to cook an entire turkey in one of those huge 80's microwaves. He said it didn't turn out very good.
schiffern|8 days ago
The two dial microwave was peak UX. Quick, painless, no wondering what sequence to press on a strange 'wave, zero time delay between input and cooking, and easy use of the (essential) power function.
It even lets you change time or power mid-cook. For maximum laziness it's possible to leave the door cracked with time on the dial, throw in the food, and adjust the dial while it's already on (slightly reducing the wait before eating). Using the microwave becomes forgiving instead of foreboding, because it's so easy to change your mind.
The only downside is that it's slightly less precise, but getting the exact time down to the second is probably less important than you think. It's also a mechanical part to fail, but I've had microwaves die because the push buttons failed too, whereas my dial unit is still going strong. YMMV
leoedin|8 days ago
danw1979|8 days ago
ErroneousBosh|8 days ago
I do prefer the mechanical wind-up timers though.
Stalemate1718|8 days ago
sonofhans|8 days ago
Consumer-grade microwaves are made to look cool, not to use. Commercial microwaves are made to make money. One dial, no bullshit.
And check out the scale on the dial. That’s modern, no old-skool 2-dial microwaves can do that, AFAIK.
sandos|7 days ago
nandomrumber|8 days ago
Many microwaves will let you set the power to 0% by pressing the power button then 0 or 00.
You can then put a cup of hot water from a kettle or the hot water tap in the microwave on 0% power for two minutes and it will come out colder.
Bonus points if you have a thermometer at hand.
schiffern|8 days ago
If one person in the house can't tolerate very hot foods, it could be useful for eg cooling off grandma's bowl of soup so she doesn't need to wait.
tokenless|8 days ago
dghf|8 days ago
pjc50|8 days ago
OkayPhysicist|8 days ago
Know the popcorn button? Ever wondered why every popcorn manufacturer tells you not to use it, or, if you don't make a habit of taking orders from a paper bag, why it works on some microwaves, but fails miserably on others, either burning the popcorn to a crisp or, more often, leaving half the kernels unpopped? Humidity sensor. In microwaves with a humidity sensor, the microwave runs until the humidity stops rising, (which means the kernels stopped popping) then stops (well, actually mine sets ~30 second timer, then stops). This produces perfect popcorn every time. Doesn't matter the brand of popcorn, it just works.
Unfortunately, because this feature was so great, it got imitated on every microwave, regardless of whether it has a humidity sensor or not. On those microwaves, it just sets a flat timer, which cannot adapt to variations in popcorn. Since popcorn manufacturers have no idea which camp your microwave falls into, and can't assume you have any idea either, they just tell people to neglect a fantastic feature.
zakki|7 days ago
jonstewart|8 days ago
ufo|8 days ago
If you're gonna brown some onions, microwave them for a bit before tossing them into the pan. The first step of browning onions is just boiling away the water, which microwaves are great at. You may find that it begins to brown sooner this way.
OisinMoran|8 days ago
https://www.reviewed.com/ovens/features/we-tried-an-oven-tha...
mrighele|8 days ago
The first is that it is not easy to make a mental model of how it works. The second is that since it takes little too cook the food, it is unforgiving and you have to be very careful with both timings and amounts.
This makes it hard to learn how to properly use it just by trial and error. Also since now we have inductive stoves there is even less reason to use it.
nandomrumber|8 days ago
I’m surprised almost everyone I’ve shown this to in real life hadn’t known, and goes on to never use it.
This was less of an issue when more microwaves had two knobs rather than buttons only.
xattt|8 days ago
niemandhier|8 days ago
If our lives are to efficient, say because we do not have to butcher a pig and cure it’s meat to get ham, we start to become obsessed with all kind of strange diets from cocovorism to paleo.
crtasm|8 days ago
abound|8 days ago
[1] Here's an example: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/241038/microwave-chocolate...
willlma|6 days ago
I'm partially living in this alternative timeline as an accomplished microwave chef thanks to this thing. I mostly use it to steam veggies.
Didn't think the Maillard reaction was possible in the microwave (and that's what I miss the most). The tin-oxide pans are fascinating, though pre-heating them doesn't seem terribly convenient now that we have induction stove-tops.
Also, the number of paper towels used...
fzaninotto|8 days ago
Although I will never use anything of what I learned from this article, I feel a better person since I’ve read it.
In one of the alternate universe I like to imagine, AI slop doesn’t exist and the Internet is filled with gorgeous pieces like this one.
bronlund|8 days ago
I know nothing about these things, but I still only use it to heat my cold cup of coffee - and I’m standing way back while I do :) I even own a pyroceram skillet.
gucci-on-fleek|8 days ago
Cooking in general affects the nutritional value of food—some nutrients are easier to absorb when cooked, so cooking effectively increases their amount, while other nutrients are destroyed [0] [1]. But given that you're probably cooking your food anyways, there's nothing specific to microwaves here.
Microwaves might actually be slightly better than other cooking methods here, since they produce a lower heat that's less likely to destroy nutrients, but the cooking method has such a minor effect that I wouldn't really worry about it either way.
> Or if radiation can leak and affect you body if you stand very close to it while it’s running.
Microwaves are classified as non-ionizing radiation [2], so their main effect is just heating things up. So if you're standing near a microwave and your body starts heating up, then something bad is happening; otherwise, you're probably fine.
The only health risk from microwaves (aside from a hypothetical accident involving someone being cooked inside one like a rotisserie chicken) is cataracts [3]. But this usually only affects radio technicians, who put their heads beside much bigger and much more powerful microwave emitters than a domestic microwave oven. And even cataracts are only due to the heating effect.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking#Effects_on_nutritional...
[1]: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cooking-nutrient-conten...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract#Radiation
adrian_b|8 days ago
Moreover, at microwaves it is easy to cook without adding water (whenever you are cooking meat or vegetables with high content of water, e.g. potatoes; when not adding water, using a glass vessel covered with a glass lid is normally mandatory), or only by adding a minimum amount of water, which avoids the leaching of water-soluble nutrients.
These properties ensure that food cooked at microwaves in the right way (e.g. without water whenever that is possible) is frequently tastier than when cooked by traditional means. The only exception is for people who like burned food, as this method for degrading food is more difficult to do at microwaves.
While the fact that food is less affected by microwaves than by most other methods of cooking is intuitively obvious, there have been published several research articles where it was investigated the degradation of several essential nutrients, e.g. vitamins, during cooking by various methods, and they confirmed a minimum degradation during microwave cooking, caused by shorter cooking times and lower peak temperatures.
When cooking at microwaves, you normally do not cook everything together, because meat requires different parameters than vegetables and there are 3 or 4 classes of vegetables that require different parameters. So you typically cook the ingredients separately and you mix them after cooking, when you also add ingredients like oil, which should better not be heated.
You can cook multiple classes of vegetables together, if you start with those that require the longest cooking time, and microwave them for the time difference vs. the next class of vegetables, then you add the next vegetables and microwave them for the next time difference, until you add the last kind and microwave again everything for the remaining time.
mgaunard|8 days ago
Meanwhile, throw stuff in the pan, move it around, adjust the temperature, add in some stuff as it goes, is a much more interactive type of cooking that is much more likely to take me where I want to go (tasty food).
ErroneousBosh|8 days ago
If you want to make curry from scratch you can either do the whole thing in one pan and get "homestyle" curry - which is good - or you can make an onion paste by either cooking a very mildly spicy but ultimately rather bland onion soup for an hour to make the "base gravy", or by just chopping three or four onions and sticking them in the microwave on full blast for ten minutes before mooshing them with the hand blender.
Then you just bloom your spices in a bit of oil, chuck in some garlic and ginger paste (literally about the same amount of peeled garlic cloves and peeled ginger root mooshed up with the blender in a little oil and water) and let it bubble a bit, chuck in whatever veg and meat you're adding, and then slowly start adding your onion gloop, and boom, restaurant-style curry.
If you make the garlic and ginger paste in advance, and precook the meat a little (beef kind of wants to be stewed until it's tender, and then you can fire in the stock it's stewing in) then you can knock out an incredibly tasty curry in the same amount of time it takes to cook the rice.
And that's how restaurants do it, because you're not going to wait two hours for a homestyle curry to cook off properly.
MarkusWandel|8 days ago
VladVladikoff|8 days ago
>Unfortunately, this product is discontinued
:(
tokenless|8 days ago
iberator|8 days ago
codeulike|8 days ago
But somehow modern microwaves always have a button on the front with a picture of a roast chicken. Why are microwave UIs so delusional? Just need power %age and time.
Microwaves are good for making porridge (oatmeal) though. And I've had some success with scrambled eggs, if you get the method right results are very consistent.