A microwave oven is an invaluable tool for the home cook. It allows us to reheat and thaw food in a matter of minutes, but in order to get the best from them, it’s vital that a few basic safety measures are observed. Let’s examine some of them.
Food Safety When Cooking with Microwaves
Just because you’re going to be cooking in a microwave doesn’t mean the usual rules of cooking safely don’t apply. Harmful microbes are invisible and intangible but if they’re not accounted for during cooking, they can easily spread to contaminate food.
When you’re preparing food, you’ll need to be sure that all of the surfaces you use are properly cleaned, including the interior of your microwave.
It’s also essential that food is cooked through. For larger cuts of meat you might want to lower the power and increase the time – to ensure the heat is spread as uniformly as possible.
When you’re cooking a microwavable meal, you might notice that added to the end of the cooking time is a ‘standing’ time. This helps to ensure that the product is thoroughly cooked – so don’t be tempted to skip it!
Microwave safety dos and don’ts
- Do use materials designated as microwave safe. Even a small amount of aluminium foil can cause a dangerous spark and some plates might heat to the point they crack.
- Don’t use the wrong types of foam plates. Can foam go in a microwave? Yes and no. While some Styrofoam crockery will produce an unpleasant smell of molten plastic when they’re microwaved, others will cope perfectly well. That said, it’s probably best in the long run to use ceramic plates and just do the washing up afterwards.
- Don’t use cold storage containers like margarine tubs and yoghurt cartons. Like some foam plates, these will melt slightly and produce an awful smell.
- Don’t put newspaper in the microwave – while fish and chips traditionally come wrapped in newspaper, placing this packaging in a microwave will expose it to temperatures that will cause the ink to run.
- Don’t use china plates with a metallic trim. In order to create those attractive patterns, some china plates are made using metal parts which can cause sparks in your microwave.
- Don’t eat any food from a container that looks warped after heating. If the container can’t hold its shape, then it’s melting – which probably means that pieces of plastic may have broken away from the sides of the container and are in your food. Don’t take the risk – throw both the container and the food in the bin as you won’t be able to see the broken clear plastic pieces.
How to cook in a microwave
Cooking evenly
The first step towards better microwave cooking is to work out which areas of your microwave are the most powerful. The interior of your microwave won’t spread heat evenly – there will be some areas where microwaves will re-enforce one another, and others where they’ll be almost entirely absent.
Microwave manufacturers have come up with a few ways of counteracting this, most obviously by having the food mounted onto a revolving platter. Many ready meals will also suggest that you stir your food in the middle of a microwave cycle, but if you’ve got a cold spot right in the centre, you might still run into problems.
To find the hot spots in your microwave, Lifehacker recommend cooking a trayful of marshmallows. Where there are hot-spots, the marshmallows will puff up; where there are cold spots, they’ll remain pretty much unchanged. Once you’ve worked out exactly how you microwave cooks, you might want to move your food slightly away from the centre.
Controlling moisture
For crispier microwaved food, try wrapping it in kitchen paper. This will help absorb the airborne moisture, so there’s less of it to make your food go soggy.
On the other hand, there may be some instances where you’d actually prefer your food to have more moisture. You might try steaming broccoli in a microwave. Doing so will produce comparable results to a steamer, and you won’t need to wash any pots or pans afterwards.
Foods you should never cook in a microwave!
Microwave ovens work by blasting the interior chamber with microwave radiation, which bounces around the appliance’s reflective walls. When a microwave meets a certain sort of molecule, it’ll cause it to vibrate, and it’s this vibration that produces heat.
The rate at which this occurs will depend on the ‘dielectric constant’ of the food being heated. Water is extremely mobile, and will begin to move at the drop of a hat. Oils and other larger molecules require more energy to start moving, but their movement will be much more difficult to stop once they have gotten going – and thus they’ll reach a higher heat. Sometimes, this heat can be sufficient for the oil to ignite, which is why it’s highly inadvisable to attempt to ‘deep fry’ things in a microwave by immersing them in cooking oil.
And there are other substances, too, which should never be heated up in a microwave. The consequences of doing so range from the inconvenient to the amusing to the potentially lethal. Let’s take a brief look at some of these troublesome materials.
Eggs
An egg is packed with water, trapped within a hard shell. If you’re going to try and hard-boil an egg inside the microwave – i.e. by placing it inside, shell and all, you’ll quickly run into problems. It will cause steam to build up within the egg far too quickly for it to escape, which will cause it to explode. Poke a hole in the egg before you try this, unless you want the interior of your microwave to be coated in partly-cooked egg.
Meats
Defrosting meats in a microwave might seem like a sensible way to go – but, as we’ve discovered, your microwave won’t heat its contents perfectly evenly all the way through. This means you may end up with some parts of your food nicely defrosted, others partially cooked, and some others completely frozen. If you forget to take the meat out of the freezer in the morning to defrost for dinner later in the day, your best bet is usually to put it down to experience, and eat something else.
Chilli Peppers
To get the best from some chilli peppers, many recipes demand that they be pre-toasted. Do this in the microwave, however, and you’ll cause the capsaicin in the chili to vaporise – causing severe irritation to your eyes when you open the microwave door.
High Quality Microwaves You Can Buy Online
At Ship It Appliances, we supply a huge range of microwaves that you can buy online with free UK delivery. We stock appliances from leading brands like CDA and our own brand SIA for affordable prices.
If you’re looking to get more from your microwave, we also have ranges of both combination microwaves and microwaves with grills.
Need more microwave knowledge, here's our buying guides:
