I use “high” almost all the time, except for the defrost setting when I’m actually defrosting something (which is rare, as I dislike defrosting stuff in the microwave). I’ll use some other power setting (usually “50%”) only when some frozen product calls for it.
When I’m reheating a bean dish (and I remember) I use a lower setting. Otherwise the beans sometimes explode open, which looks nasty though I don’t think it affects the taste.
Nobody mentions turntables. I don’t microwave very much, but when I do it’s generally on high, but the old hot spot/cold spot problem doesn’t seem to happen with the turntable.
Same here. High is for straight liquids, mostly hot beverages and water for ramen and I use an electric kettle for those when I can. But half power is my usual. I reheat lunches at work most days and 2-4 minutes@half power is a great start for a lot of my meals like say a grilled bratwurst, veggies & pasta or rice. A pint of chilled soup takes more, 4 min@half, stir, 2Min@half. I reheated some refried beans with chorizo earlier today and knew those take longer so did 3 min/30%, stir, 2 min/half = great and not overcooked around the edges or too hot to hold after a reasonable stand time.
I’ll also add that I’m strict about covering. And using heavier glass or ceramic dishes.
No power levels. No buttons. No door latch. No turntable. No nonsense.
After a lifetime of flaky microwave ovens that had terrible user interfaces and way too many features I never needed and were hard to clean, I decided to buy a commercial grade microwave, the kind that is meant for workplace break rooms and cafeterias, and I never looked back.
There is a big dial on the front, you open the door, put your food in, shut the door, then turn the dial to your desired time. That’s it. To stop it, dial it to zero or open the door.
A cool feature: the scale on the dial is logarithmic, in the sense that the portion of the dial for 0-60 seconds is about the same as the portion of the dial between 3 minutes and 6 minutes. This seems weird, but feels intuitive when you use it.
No need for a turntable according to the manufacturer, and I can attest to it working fine without uneven heating.
The inside floor is glass, so super easy to clean.
I discovered that you shouldn’t use the “high” setting when heating up kidney beans. A power setting of 2 or 3 is needed.
How old is it?
This, exactly. Happens maybe five times a year.
I think I bought it during the Pandemic. Still does its one single job perfectly and is spotless. This thing was intended to be used all day long to heat up tea and hot pockets at the office, so my wife and I just aren’t stressing it much.
I was going to say that we had one like that at work when I started in 1997. It died a few years ago. I’m surprised that they still make that style.
Actually, I have to modify my earlier comment that I use “high” almost always unless the frozen food instruction calls for “50%”. Some foods instruct you to microwave on high for “x” seconds, then stir and somehow magically re-cover (which is impossible to do) and microwave on high for another “y” seconds. To hell with that, I say. I just set the power to 50% and the timer to 2(x+y). Turns out just fine.
If there is no turntable, then it’s the microwave emitter that rotates. For some reason turntables are much more common, at least in household microwaves, which is odd because they’re a bit more finicky since they have to be positioned just right on the central hub.
Incidentally, it occurs to me from time to time that my microwave is probably around 25 years old. It’s amazing that it still works perfectly (brand is Panasonic) and I dread the day that it fails because disposing of it and replacing it will be a damned major nuisance.
One thing that is probably different: the dial on the old-school ones was more like a kitchen timer dial, with clockwork.
This one has a dial that is just a nice big rotary encoder, and it uses orange LEDs for each number on the bezel, lighting them up as you rotate the knob. It has a very satisfying feel, like a tuner dial on an old hi-fi.
The mode selector on my clothes dryer is like that. I quite like it!
I don’t know why microwaves got the reputation of being the tool to use for defrosting. They’re just about the worst cooking appliance for that job. The problem is that liquid water absorbs microwaves much better than ice does, so whatever thaws first will just keep on getting hotter, while the ice right next to it stays cold.
If you absolutely must use a microwave to defrost, yes, do it on low so the heat has a chance to migrate from the hot spots to the cold spots, but you’d be better off using almost anything else. Even a sink full of warm water will do a better job.
I agree that microwaves are a poor tool for defrosting, but the “defrost” setting is, by definition, a very low setting. More precisely, it’s a pattern of cycles that starts off hitting the item with fairly long bursts of microwaves to start the defrosting, and then gradually shorter bursts and longer wait times to let the heat distribute. A decent microwave’s defrost cycle will do its best to properly defrost an item, but it’s a very poor way to do it compared to just leaving an item in the fridge for a day or two. I consider microwave defrosting more of an emergency procedure than anything I would recommend.
If I have to defrost meat rapidly, I start by running water over the package until the water doesn’t immediately refreeze, then in the microwave. That gives the microwaves liquid water to work on. I also try to get the meat out of the styrofoam trays they’re usually packaged in as soon as possible so the bottom side can start thawing. If I can get hamburger or chicken pieces thawed enough to break apart, that’s next. I would say though that among the very hardest things to thaw properly in a microwave oven is a frozen packet of bacon: can’t be pulled apart while half-frozen and the corners cook ridiculously rapidly while the center is still frozen.
I use full power when heating/reheating most liquids, but for most other uses I adjust the power level depending on what I’m trying to do. The microwave has a smart defrost feature that I almost always use for frozen meats. When I have pastries/buns/muffins that have been stored in the fridge I give them about 25 seconds at 60% to warm and soften before eating. Before barbecuing sausages, I precook them for about 6 minutes at 70% power, turning once. Butter out of the fridge gets about a minute at 30% to soften for spreading on bread for sandwiches.
Hey, I have a microwave because I’m impatient. I’m not going to push the “Okay, I’ll wait longer” button.
In fact, I’d like a Reverse Microwave… freeze a drink in thirty seconds.
Unfortunately you can’t because cold isn’t a thing; it’s the absence or diminished level of heat. You can’t add “cold” to something, you have to draw heat out of it. Air conditioners and refrigerators work by squeezing the heat out of a working fluid and making the external coils hot. MAYBE there’s some incredibly clever trick that could be done with magnetic fields cooling something by increasing the disorder of the magnetic field, but sooner or later the heat has to go somewhere. (Wasn’t that an episode of The Flash? A freeze ray was building up nuclear levels of heat extracted from everything that got frozen?)
The turntable certainly helps with the hot/cold spot thing but it is still not perfect at it.
There are hot spots in all microwaves and while the turntable helps move the food in and out of those spots there are still places the food will not get heated (which is why you stir part way through and cook on lower setting to allow the heat to move through the food).
You can find YouTube videos on how to find your oven’s hot spots. Get thermal paper (like from a cash register printer…available at any office supply store), cover a piece of cardboard cut to fit the microwave (without the turntable in it) with the thermal paper, spray with some water and put it in the microwave and run it for a few seconds. The hotspots will become very apparent. If you have kids, fun little experiment (and cheap).
It’s kinda surprising to see that only a few bits of the oven gets microwaved and it differs from one microwave to the next.