Understand Your Microwave Oven

Using a microwave oven beyond just reheating of foods and drinks can be quite difficult. Most of us have some kind of training in using a conventional oven properly and there are a huge number of cookery programs on TV to give helpful tips and advice on cooking times and temperatures. Microwaves however are completely different with very little help available and cookbooks being few and not widely promoted. Here is a guide to the general use of your microwave oven.

When using your microwave oven do not always blast everything at full power, as to so extent microwaves will cook foods in similar ways to your conventional oven and you do not cook everything at full power with your conventional oven as you end up with the food burnt on the outside and not cooked in the middle. The same effect can occur with dense items of food in a microwave oven if the food is cooked on too high power. The thing to remember with microwaves is that they penetrate the food only to a certain depth and by reducing the power this allows the heat to disperse through the food and cook it evenly and thoroughly.

To observe how your microwave cooks put in a stew and try it on full power you will notice after a couple of minutes the liquid near the outer edge of the container is bubbling and very hot and that in the middle will probably be still be cold. If you reduce the power and cook for a longer period of time you will notice that the heat has dispersed further into the liquid. Remember though that you will still have to stir the liquid and leave all microwave food to stand for at least two minutes before serving it.

Using your microwave oven to cook is much more economical than when using a conventional oven and because it does not generate heat will keep your kitchen cooler and is generally cleaner than using a conventional microwave oven.

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