Right off the top, I want to emphasize the egg was NOT still in the shell. Just like every other time, I cracked it into a little bowl, added a little milk, whipped it up to make sure everything was, umm, scrambled, and put it in the microwave for 20 seconds.
I heard a pop and found egg goo in the miscrowave, despite the egg still being mostly liquid. Cleaned out the microwave, stirred the cooked and uncooked parts together and put it in the microwave for another 20 seconds.
Another pop and more goo in the microwave, and yet the egg still wasn’t entirely solidified. Clean out the debris, mix again and put back in the microwave for 15 seconds. The egg popped like a string of cheap firecrackers and the now solid egg mass attempted to crawl up the side of the bowl and escape. And there was more scrambled shrapnel coating my microwave.
This is not the first time I’ve scrambled an egg in the microwave. It’s probably more like the 1,000th time I’ve done it, and I’ve never seen an innocent little chicken egg react so violently. What went wrong?
I can’t say why. But I can say I once had a scrambled egg react similarly. Unlike you I threw the mess away and switched to safer food for that meal.
But like you this was a once per lifetime event, despite making lots of microwave eggs in various formats. So I have no idea what the detailed cause is.
Have you used the microwave since? For eggs or other things?
If the stirrer (a hidden device in the oven’s guts that spreads the invisible microwaves around) has failed, the oven will run but will have hotspots from hell that no turntable can overcome. That might be the source of your problems.
It could be that the egg had a bit more iron or something which absorbed more heat than normal and caused the egg to get extra hot. Or maybe the egg had more fat than normal. Microwaving butter can sometimes have this issue where some part of the butter gets really hot and pops.
One way to mitigate these kinds of issues is to cook your food longer at a lower temperature. If you normally do the egg for 20 seconds, try doing it for 60 seconds at 1/3rd power. You may have to fiddle with the time and power to figure out what works. The benefit will be that cooking it at lower power means that there’s less chance for hotspots to develop. Also, it may end up cooking better. The lower power means there’s more time for the heat to dissipate. A microwave at full power is a bit like trying to cook something with a blowtorch. The food gets really hot where the flame is touching, but the heat can’t migrate to the center very quickly. Using lower power will allow the food will heat more evenly. And foods that tend to boil over, like oatmeal and pasta, will be less likely to do that with longer time at less power.
The power setting on your microwave works differently depending on the kind of microwave you have. A standard microwave lowers the power by turning on and off during the cooking cycle. At 100%, it’s on 100% of the time. But at 50%, it will turn on and off during the cooking cycle so that it was only on for 50% of the time. An inverter microwave is on 100% of the time, but it has the ability to lower the intensity of the microwaves. Setting an inverter microwave to 50% means that it will run 100% of the cooking cycle but the intensity of the microwaves during that time is 50% of normal. Basically, a standard microwave is like cooking on a gas range where the only setting on the dial is Off and High. An inverter microwave is like having a range with a standard dial that can be set anywhere from Off to High.
The water in the butter that’s suspended in the now liquid fat is reaching it’s boiling temperature and turning to steam. Same thing that happens when you put something damp or covered with ice crystals into a deep fryer. Ordinarily, you heat butter in a pan with a large surface and instead of popping you get sizzling. If you heated a larger amount of butter in a deep pan (like clarifying butter) over high enough heat you’d get popping too.
I think what’s happening with the egg is that the exposed egg surface is “solidifying” while there’s still water filled liquid egg trapped under that “skin”. The steam released by the liquid egg as it cooks can’t escape easily and the pressure increases to the point where it bursts through that egg “skin”.
Essentially, what happens when you make popcorn.
I like to add a tablespoon of kidney beans to many of the things I heat up in the microwave. (It’s an easy and cheap source of fiber.) But I learned I need to set the power level to 20%, and then heat it for a much longer duration, else the beans will explode.
Agree about the lower power setting. About the only time I use full power is reheating a cup of coffee. Food always gets (re)heated at 60-70%. Also, think about getting a plastic cover for your microwave turntable so that splatters are contained.
All the above. 100% is for heating / boiling pure water only.
Even reheating coffee goes better at 50%. You won’t be avoiding a boilover, but you will be mostly avoiding that rancid overcooked “microwaved coffee” flavor.
Reheating solid or semi-liquid food at 50% or better yet 30% makes a huge difference. And net of time not spent stirring and fiddling is usually a matter of only a 30 to 60 seconds more total time from start to eat.
Come to find out, someone is planting trick eggs, like the Tylenol poisoner, so now we can look forward to egg cartons wrapped in impenetrable plastic.