That’s why you shouldn’t put your food in the center of the turntable, but rather somewhat towards the edge. Food in the center doesn’t get moved through the waves. I learned this when I wrote my chapter on microwaves for our book.
Stirring halfway through, when possible, works even better.
As for the question in the OP, I mostly do full power. There is one Costco breakfast burrito which calls for 70%, and there is melting butter for asparagus at lower power. I seldom defrost, except for some breakfast sandwiches which call for 90 seconds of defrost before cooking. Putting those in the sink wouldn’t work very well.
I only use full power to boil water and I only use it for that so I won’t get a pot dirty as the induction range boils faster.
I don’t use the microwave for many other tasks, but I do use it to soften/melt butter, liquefy coconut oil for precise volume measurement, and sort of steam (wet them and nuke them between paper towels) flour tortillas if I don’t feel like getting a pan dirty. I do power levels 1 or 2 for the first two and 5 for the tortillas. There is a fine line on the fats between the perfect consistency and a cauldron of hell-fire, and the tortillas go from soft, puffy, and warm to a giant cracker pretty quickly, so I like the finer control that lower power gives me.
I have well water which I still don’t fully trust (it’s both filtered and softened, but odd bubbles stick around a bit longer than I’d like when poured). Without at least a rinse and wipe down, I’d feel like I’m putting a dirty pot away.
I don’t really understand. You rinse it with this same water that you don’t trust? When I boil water in a pot, I feel that the pot is cleaner than before I started, but you do what you feel is best for you of course.
No, that’s a fair point. I’m sure it’s psychological, but when one boils impure water, you’re left with impurities (in my head at least), while rinsing and drying doesn’t have that effect. I’ll give the pot method a shot and see if I can change my mindset, although it will require a pot and a measuring cup, while I just put the glass measuring cup in my microwave currently. I think for anything over a cup of water, it’s probably worth it, as it definitely boils drastically faster.
There are impurities in water. Nothing new about that. (I once fell asleep when boiling water and then the impurities cooked once the water was gone…very unpleasant smells.)
But, it is the water you use to clean and in the case of boiled water even better. Biological things should probably be gone. Minerals and sediment are still there but not sure you have a way around it except filters (which you said you have).
Tl;Dr: Boiling water in a pot is as clean as boiling water in a microwave. Just towel dry it and done. I’d think the thing to be concerned about is which is the most efficient/least expensive way to do it. Each cup boiled is probably cheap but adds up over time. In my case natural gas is “free” (I pay for it in my assessments but not by usage) so, I am far better boiling water on the stove than in a microwave since I pay for the electricity. YMMV (of course)
Just remember microwaves are not the kind of radiation that kills things (ionizing radiation kills living things…microwaves are not ionizing radiation). There is no difference between hot water from a microwave and hot water off a stove. The water will be the same. The only difference is the time it takes to boil the water and (maybe) cost to do so.
End product is the same from each though (assuming the same source of water).
Yeah, I get that. You know how when you boil salt water for pasta you get a salty line at the water mark? In my head, that’s what I imagine, but with an imaginary well impurity mark instead. Again, I know it’s in my head, so I’ll work on changing habits.
Fer sure. As I mentioned above I fell asleep once when boiling water. All the water boiled away and only the impurities were left and they started cooking. Gawd awful smell.
That’s in pretty much all water unless you make an effort to filter it but, that junk is harmless usually (some minerals). We drink that stuff everyday and we are fine. Boiling will not be rid of that stuff, no matter the method. Only filters will help and that can get expensive.
There is a government agency which will test samples of your water if you want. (I think) I will look it up for you if you want. Tell you what is all in there.
ETA: I live in Chicago and we have a water testing thing. I do not know this is available to you where you live. You’d have to check.
We had water samples analyzed and everything is considered acceptable. It’s my first house with a well and smelled faintly of sulfur when we moved in and all of the faucets had issues due to mineral deposit build-up. We now have a water softener as well as a filtration system. When I pour a cup of water, a few tiny bubbles stick around a bit longer than I’m used to. I just have to get over it.
And I now think I’ve taken us way off target and apologize for that. I typically have a pretty scientific approach to things, but I’ve definitely just gone with “feeling” on this one issue.
Back to the OP, I have an inverter microwave now, which is supposed to reheat more evenly and reduce food explosions. I hardly ever used the high setting in the past due to those issues, but I’ll probably do an experiment on full power in the near future to see how effective the inverter technology is.
I go beyond using low power levels to also use the cook program to use multiple power levels in the same session. For example, my morning breakfast burrito is:
rice, beans, cheese: 1 minute full power & 2 minutes 50% power
rice, beans, cheese + raw egg: 1:30 full power & 2:30 50% power
I do this with almost everything I reheat. In pharmacological terms, it’s a full power loading dose for a short time, and then a low power therapeutic dose for a longer time.
My first college microwave from the early 90s was like that, and I really like the simplicity. The dial and timer were completely mechanical, too. Being mechanical, it wasn’t logarithmic, so short cooks were difficult. Easier to just turn the dial to 4 minutes, and then stop it after 30 seconds.
So the simplicity was great, but now that I have complicated microwaves I like to use all the features. I think my burrito takes 12 button presses (I could go down to 11 if I used 90 instead of 130).
True, but that doesn’t mean that rapid cooling can’t be achieved, it’s just that there’s no cooling equivalent (AFAIK) to microwaving. But most conventional forms of heating work by creating high temperatures and relying on the flow of heat from the hotter material to the colder, and cooling can work exactly the same way, and in both cases the rate of temperature change in the target is proportional to the temperature differential. This is the basis of flash freezing and similar techniques, where the target substance is cooled extremely quickly, often using cryogenic materials like liquid nitrogen. The advantage over conventional freezing is that there isn’t time for large ice nucleation sites to form, so there are virtually no large ice crystals and minimal cellular damage, hence minimal effect on texture and flavour.
When I reheat things, I do it on half or 1/3rd power for the amount of time I expect will get it warm enough. Then I test it and if I’ve guessed short, give it 30 seconds or a minute on full blast to finish it off to full eating temp. So the opposite sequence of you.
My theory is the lower power helps with even heating, especially if anything is frozen where we get the water vs. ice differential heating thing going on. But once everything is lukewarm to almost hot enough, full blast briefly is plenty safe for those last 10-20 degrees as to evenness and is quick.
Am I merely justifying my increasing impatience to eat with thermodynamic techobabble? Or have I got solid science here? Who knows? But it works. For me.
