I don’t think this isn’t really a GQ, I’m just curious whether this notion or similar attitudes were commonly expressed, in print, or on telly etc. when microwaves first started to become popular. Although it seems microwaves came out in the '60s they seemed all new and exciting to me here in Ireland in the '80s and I recall us getting our first one, typically after everyone else had one*. Did the manufacturers ever consider it a technology that would supercede the conventional oven or was it always marketed as a supplimentary appliance? Did any of the early advertising reflect such a notion? I wasn’t around back then so I’m trusting more vintage dopers to inform me.
Bonus points for, when did toaster ovens become popular in the US and how come they’re not widely seen elsewhere in the English-speaking world? (Well maybe in Canada)
*Same went for VCR, large tellies, multiple tellies etc. To this day my family home may be the last one in Ireland that doesn’t have a second or more telly.
I recall microwave ovens becoming popular in the late 70s, and especially the early 80s. Although I don’t remember any ads touting them as making conventional ovens obsolete, I do remember the idea that microwaves were “the next big thing” in your kitchen, so they were definitely meant as a supplement, if not replacement.
There was a TV show and cookbook called “Microwaves Are For Cooking,” http://www.amazon.com/Microwaves-are-cooking-Donovan-Fandre/dp/0960316825 that I think was intended to show the versatility of the microwave oven. The kicker is that book was published in 1983, and by then, most people used the microwave for popcorn and reheating food, so they figured out the limitations already.
As for toaster ovens, I had one when I moved out of my parents house in about 1981, and used it as an indoor grill. So we had that in the mid-late 70s as well. I don’t remember having a toaster oven in the 60s, but then I was living in southwestern Virginia at the time, hardly the cutting edge of nouveau cuisine.
I don’t ever remember microwaves being marketed as replacements for plain old conventional ovens. We had an ancient rotary dial timer version back in the early 80s that we used exclusively for warming leftovers. There weren’t a lot of pre-packaged microwavable items back then. All frozen dinners, and the like, came in foil trays so you could pop them in the conventional oven.
I think toaster ovens became popular when people realized that microwaves didn’t do a good job with browning, or melting cheese, or other similar small stuff that benefited from actual radiant heat.
Here is a 1973 commercial for the Amana Radarange, the first microwave oven to catch on in the USA. Incidentally, it was introduced in '67 at a cost of $495 – pretty pricey for the day!
There were a lot of short classes offered teaching people to cook in a microwave. My mom took one that met for a few evenings. She tried the recipes on us.
It wasn’t long before she was back cooking on the stove. Microwaves just aren’t practical for cooking meat. They reheat really well and that’s it.
Cooking and kitchen gadgets come and go. There’s always another device around the corner. The microwave is and was intended to be a keeper. And for me the MW has supplanted the stove almost completely for over 30 years. I can cook a turkey or bake bread in one. Everything can be done in one if it’s the right design. I usually have two and sometimes have had as many as four. Certainly the MW has replaced the stove/oven for many small tasks for most people in my opinion.
They had , and I suspect still have, convection microwaves (and I had one) that would cook with heat and microwave or either one. If anything I would expect that type of combination to be the one to take over over pure microwave.
Were there also browning microwaves, something like a toaster element to help with certain foods?
Either way the convection microwave alone should point to a serious known shortcoming of the conventional microwave.
As for cooking with a convection microwave. It did work very well and easy as it had a temp probe - so no need to re-learn how to cook. It would alternate between maintaining the oven temp and microwaving the food at reduced power loads (cycling on and off). Made some good roasts in that thing, normally very juicy, never dry. IIRC a full sized turkey took about a hour.
Microwaves were available much earlier. My uncle ran a bar in the 1960s, and had a rare microwave back then for heating food served in the bar. It was fast and innovative and hard to come by, and IIRC, it was expensive, which is one reason they weren’t being pushed very hard. I suspect it took time fot economies of scale to bring the price down.
Microwaves as convenient fast ways to cook food appeared in science fiction in the 1950s, and were proposed as common items back then.
This page gives a history, and corroborates my recollections – $200$300 for an oven the size of a refrigerator would have been outrageous in the v1940s. The Tappan household unit at $1250 in the 1950s would still be outrageous.
In the early days of microwaves I remember recipes, from the microwave companies, for cooking food that would usually be done in a conventional oven. However the shortcomings were so obvious this never caught on.
As for toaster ovens, my parents had one as long as I can remember, and I used one extensively when I cooked for myself in my dorm, starting in 1971. Lots of people on my floor had them.
My childhood household was usually the last to get things too but we did get a microwave during what I recall to be the craze in the late 70’s/early 80’s. It’s my recollection that there was a popular belief that the microwave really would take over the conventional oven.
There were tons of mw cookbooks and also accessories that were reputed to enable you to do things like browning. For the most part, the accessories didn’t work very well and things like scrambled eggs in the microwave were awful.
I remember seeing cooking demonstration at Macy’s back in the 60’s where the salesperson did say that they expected them to completely replace conventional ovens. This was before they found out that they don’t work too well for cooking meat and other things that need even, complete cooking.
Much the same comments were made during demonstrations of convection ovens when they first came out.
My mother’s 60s or 70s vintage copies of The Joy of Cooking note on the back cover that the reader is a modern woman and already filling her family’s cooking needs “-- maybe even with a microwave!” The next time I’m over there, I’m going to check the date of publication for that edition.
I think late 70’s early 80’s, people had MW fever. People went crazy and tried to cook everything under the sun in them. I remember they even use to sell special “browning” plates for meat products. I also remember my mother tried to cook a turkey in one!
Thankfully, it didn’t take us long to realize that MW’d turkey tastes like ass.
A bread recipe that I’ve been using lately is one my aunt wrote up 30 years ago and includes microwave instructions. You’re supposed to use a different amount of liquid and bake it in the microwave for 6 1/2 minutes instead of 25 in the oven. Since you still have to let it rise for almost an hour and the instructions say right there “surface of loaf will be flat and pale in color” I’ve never bothered to try that version. It doesn’t cut enough time and it sounds unappealing.
I remember as a kid we tried some special microwave cake kit, just mix it together, pour it in the paper “pan” and nuke it. As I recall, part of it was still gooey and part of it was a brick. I’m pretty sure that was our defining lesson in “microwaves can’t bake things for shit.”
i think the browning microwave ovens (to give a crisp surface) were marketed as a replacement. though added complexity and volume limits didn’t work out well.
They still sell double oven units. What I really need sometimes is to use two microwave ovens at the same time (especially if you have teenagers or someone with special dietary needs).