This thread got me thinking about microwaves. I’m young enough to have had one most of my life - I think my parents bought their first one back in '78, when I was 8. I really don’t use mine a ton, but when I do need it, I reaaaallly need it.
I use mine, in order of most common to least common, for:
heating up milk for my coffee every morning. Why dirty a pan to heat up a couple tablespoons of milk? I just pour it in my mug and zap it for 30 seconds or so.
zapping butter to make it spreadable or liquid. 30% power will take refrigerated butter to room temp in about a minute. I also need melted butter for recipes and popcorn.
Popcorn. Ever since some kind doper told me about the microwave popcorn popper, I use the microwave exclusively for popcorn.
Reheating frozen stuff. Reheat frozen pizza to room temp, then put it in a fry pan and it tastes like you just got it delivered. I also freeze leftovers in single serving sizes, and you gotta have a nuker to reheat them.
Defrosting meat. My nuker has a defrost setting, and it works pretty well for thawing meat. I’m never organized enough to take meat out of the freezer in the morning for dinner use, so this is invaluable.
Reheating, thawing, softening, melting - just about everything but actually cooking. Does anybody actually cook things in a microwave (popcorn doesn’t count)?
If you set it for 0% power, it becomes a $200 timer. So that’s another thing I use it for - to time stuff that’s cooking on the regular stove.
I use mine to cook stuff.
Only problem is, it’s like an E or something - way more powerful than the instructions on food packages are planned for. So everything gets burned.
It also works quite well as a large television-shaped clock. as I believe has been noted. Like Harry Hill before me, I also use my computer mainly as a light.
I’ve cooked entire meals in mine. I’ve got a model that has a delayed start timer so I’ve been known to put stuff in set to be ready upon my return. It’s almost as good as having a cook. At one point, we had 2 - my big one plus an over-the-stove model that came with the house - made big dinner parties so much easier.
Generally, tho, I use it to cook veggies, defrost, rewarm stuff, make popcorn…
Ah, a subject close to my heart. We lived very close to Amana, IA and got into the first consumer test of the RadarRange, so we had one of the first 25 microwave ovens in the world. We discovered all sorts of things, like that gold-edged china would explode in the microwave. We tried all sorts of irrational things, like microwaving a huge thanksgiving turkey. Turned out pretty good too, although it was a pain in the butt because you have to put foil over certain parts to slow down cooking.
But nowadays, I mostly use it to boil water for coffee, reheat leftovers, and cook frozen dinners. I particularly recommend Healthy Choice single-serve frozen pizza which comes in a box with Micro-Crisp, it’s the only frozen pizza that cooks well in a microwave.
You can put foil in the microwave? Isn’t this dangerous? I assume you are talking about aluminum foil. Perhaps you are talking about something else? If not, I guess I’ve been wrong all this time–which is a definite possibility.
I use my microwave for:
Thawing meat.
Cooking frozen veggies (usually either spinach or broccoli).
Disclaimer: Foil and microwaves are bad! Don’t do it!
I know Cecil did a column, ahh, here it is. That having been said, you can sorta use foil in microwaves. Some things, like Mrs. Budd’s chicken pies come in foil pans, but you nuke them inside the box. Also, microwave popcorn has uses something similar to concentrate the heat and pop the corn. Again, it can be really dangerous, leave it to the professionals.
Yes, it is safe to put foil in a microwave PROVIDED that you do it correctly. You can’t wrap something in foil so it is entirely enclosed, you just cover something on one side so it receives less energy. In the case of the turkey, you have to cover the drumsticks and put a couple of strips of foil over the breast, so these areas don’t cook before the rest of the bird.
