[Dear Cecil:]
Why (according to the included directions) are most foods microwaved on “High”? I have been reading microwave directions for some time now. And I have to say, rarely, if indeed ever, do they say you should microwave on, say, Medium, for 2 minutes.
Well?
[Jim B.]
Now, that is for Cecil, if he chooses to answer my question. As for the rest of you, the discussion can continue as usual on these boards:)
Basic assumption: people are idiots.
From there, it is easy to deduce why heating instructions are made as easy as possible.
The actual derivation is left as an exercise for the reader.
Microwaved food is already inferior to conventionally cooked food. When you use the microwave, you’re trading quality for speed. If using a lower setting makes the food only marginally better but takes twice as long, why bother? If you prioritized quality over speed, you wouldn’t be using the microwave in the first place (with a few exceptions).
If I wanted to wait 2 whole minutes to heat up my food on medium, I’d use a regular oven!
Seriously, if a food will work being heated on high, why would you want to have someone heat it on medium? The only times you need a lower power, like for melting chocolate or defrosting food, then you use a lower power. The rest of the time, it’s faster and easier to use high.
if the food is high mass and high moisture it can absorb the heat and not burn on the surface. so why not nuke it on high for the speed.
if the food doesn’t absorb the heat as well you can use medium or in older single level ovens let it rest between a minute or three of power, to not have it burn on the surface.
Because mostly folks use microwaves to heat up already cooked food. Manufacturers know that less than one percent of all users will read even a one line instruction. So, they design their product to heat with an even number of minutes on the average high power setting.
On the other hand, if you actually spend a few minutes learning about your microwave, and your foods, you can do much better.
Tris
I have some actual anecdotal evidence to share on this one. Several weeks ago, we bought some Zatarain’s rice to make with dinner, but it was not the “microwave in a pouch” kind. My wife looked at the microwave instructions, and it said to microwave it at 50% power for 15 minutes. She didn’t know how to set the power level, and so set it for 7.5 minutes on HIGH.
When we run the microwave, it still smells like burned rice. There was so much smoke it was enough to drive us from the kitchen…indeed from the house altogether. We ate dinner outside that evening.
(I have tried everything, from Clorox Clean-up, to heating vinegar, lemon juice, and a cinnamon solution in the microwave. The smell diminshes with time, and that’s the only thing that has worked so far.)
Here is what puzzles me. Different microwave ovens have different maximum power ratings, so one, on high, might be 1100w and another might be 850w, but the instructions on food rarely seem to take any account of this. What is more, the power settings are usually given (on both oven controls and any instructions) as percentages of full power. You may or may not know teh actual full power wattage, and it is rarely prominently marked on the oven.
That does kind of make it seem like the instructions don’t matter, and it is best to treat it all as a trial and error process. If people do not read the instructions, it may not be because they are idiots, but because they have, quite intelligently, figured out that the instructions generally given make no fucking sense!
Why the hell can’t the oven settings and any relevant instructions about settings be given in watts rather than percentages? Then they would actually be usable.
Incidentally, most microwave ovens do not actually have variable power. When the oven is set to, say, “60%,” the magnetron cycles on and off every few seconds, being “on” 60% of the time.
Aren’t microwaves always working at 100%? I always understood the “power” rating to be how often the microwave switches on and off, i.e. if you cook something for 10 minutes at 50% power, the microwave is on for 30 sec, off for 30 sec, etc, so you end up only cooking for 5 minutes with cool down periods in between.
Am I mistaken?
ETA: Or what Nametag said…
OK, but so what? There is still no need for them to make you go ferreting around for the box or instruction book to find out the power rating, and then leave you to do the math to figure out what percentage of 1100 is equivalent to to 850.