What are the important things to know about operating a microwave?
This one has a fancy knob and no numeric buttons. Wow! We really are living in the future.
How far do you think I’ll make it before I get bored and do something else? Page 1? Page 8? All the way to when the text flips upside and turns into spanish?
Does anyone else read their owner’s manuals for fun?
Edit: I will be updating this thread with amusing or interesting bits I get from the manual, so check back regularly for riveting updates.
Please – I’d rather not rot my mind. Besides, I have cat boxes to clean.
I’m sometimes amazed at how thick a manual is until I see that 7/8 of it is in a language I can’t read, and some of the rest doesn’t apply to this model.
Not even on page 1 yet and I have come across something interesting. All safety messages will follow the safety alert symbol and either the word “DANGER”, “WARNING” or “CAUTION”.
The manual goes on to define what DANGER, WARNING and CAUTION mean, and basically it is that a DANGER means I need to follow instructions immediately, or I will be killed or seriously injured, whereas WARNING simply means I need to follow instructions or I will be killed or seriously injured. CAUTION however could only result in “minor or moderate” injury.
Quick question, but does DANGER, WARNING and CAUTION adhere to these definitions on all the various warning signs we see, as if meeting some international standard?
And also… how exactly do I follow these instructions immediately when I see the DANGER warning when I’m just sitting here reading a manual!
And how long do I have after reading the WARNING alert before I have to act, since it evidently doesn’t need to be immediately, as if it were it would have been a DANGER.
Edit: After alerting me that all warning symbols will be followed with either DANGER, WARNING or CAUTION, I get to a warning symbol which explains precautions to avoid possible exposure to excessive microwave energy… and guess what? It didn’t classify whether it is a DANGER, WARNING or CAUTION. How worried should I be?
“DO NOT allow children to use this appliance, unless closely supervised by an adult. DO NOT assume that because a child has mastered one cooking skill he/she can cook everything.” - Good advice! Cooking with a microwave is probably the most elite and dangerous of all cooking skills.
“DO NOT cook directly on the turntable.” Dang there goes my idea for fresh off the turntable microwave pizza.
“If food or utensil on the Glass Tray touches oven walls, causing the tray to stop moving, the tray will automatically rotate in the opposite direction.” That’s pretty damn awesome. Did this microwave come from the year 2042?
Aluminum foil is safe for microwaving, but can also damage the microwave. Interesting…
Personal tastes were not taken into account when programming the “Auto Cook” feature of my microwave oven. Damn
Well duh. It’s like a fuse or a shear pin. Obviously you want the microwave to fail completely,so as to make sure you don’t damage any of that valuable foil.
One thing I’d like to add here. Why can’t microwaves have the Wattage silk screened in a conspicuous location so I know what the fucking power is?
Sure, you might know what your home microwave is rated at (I don’t BTW) but there are microwaves at work, and in stores, and all kinds of places. So my instructions say, microwave for 4:00 minutes at 1,200 Watts.
How the fuck do I know what the microwave in the lunch room is rated at?
Look at the boilerplate, it will say there. On microwave ovens I remember seeing (including mine), this is located somewhere on or near the door frame, just inside the door (kind of like that sticker on your car that tells when your last oil change was). Or it might be on the back of the oven, like on most other electronic device.
How, exactly, ARE you supposed to cook anything on the turntable? And what disaster will befall you, your oven, and Western Civilization if you cook something directly on your turntable? Is this a DANGER, or a WARNING, or a CAUTION?
Interesting about the turntable reversing directions. I wonder if mine will do that. Gotta devise a way to test that somehow. In my oven, each time I start it, the turntable will begin to rotate, randomly choosing clockwise or counterclockwise! So it’s clearly possible for it to go either way.
Recipe books routinely tell you to cover parts of food with aluminum foil while cooking. But once, I got a near-microscopic shred of some kind of foil stuck to one of the utensils, and it caused sparking that looked like a full-scale lightening storm inside the oven :eek: So I’ve never wanted to try aluminum in there.
I’ve learned that cooking things for longer on lower power really does make a difference, and can make the difference between something coming out reasonably well vs. inedible. It was right here on SDMB, in Cafe Society, that another Doper, Fourtyfold, advised me that baked potatoes come out much better when cooked on lower power!
Knobs strike me as rather retro, rather than futuristic, but in a good way. All electrical things used to be controlled with knobs, and mostly became much more difficult to work when they were all replaced by buttons. Buttons are good for some functions, but knobs are much better for others.
Well, sure, at the back of the microwave. Like I’m going to pull out every microwave and check the sicker before using. I’ve never understood why they don’t put the wattage information right on the front panel.
It would be like having a dial on your stove with no temperature markings.
This thread gives me a chance to share a neat little fact I once read about an owners manual:
The owner’s manual for the original Model T Ford began the instructions on how to start the car:
“Step 1: Open the door, and sit in the driver’s seat.”
Well obviously you can ignore all the CAUTION items. The WARNING items you can ignore frequently, just not every day. DANGER items should only be attempted when you have buddies around to witness it.
Still, I suppose we should be glad it even had an owner’s manual.
The way I learned it, it works like this: [ul][]DANGER items hurt you;[]WARNING items hurt the equipment;[*]CAUTION items are either embarrassing or expensive.[/ul].
Are you sure? Before you dismantle your whole kitchen, check the front of your oven, just inside the door. At least some microwave ovens (to-wit: mine) have it there.
ETA: But yeah, if they would ALL have it emblazoned in 36-point text right on the front control panel, as you originally suggested, it WOULD be nice. Especially given that so many microwave recipes and instructions refer to the wattage.
