My journey to the microwave alternate timeline

> It’s about staring blankly at the buzzing white box, waiting for the four dreadful beeps that give you permission to eat.

I thought it was near universal that everybody staring at the microwave was engaged in a game of chicken where you try to open the door as close to zero as possible while preventing the beeps.

The beeps must not sound.

I have no idea why it’s important to prevent the beeps, but it feels like a deep primal compulsion. Our ancestors must have learned that the beeps attracted sabretooth tigers or something

I'm surprised no one has mentioned inverter microwaves. Unlike plain old regular microwaves where power settings just adjust the time that the magnetron is running at full blast the inverter ones can actually change the power of the magnetron. Makes it tons easier to cook food evenly and calmly. Never am I buying again one without.

It's kinda hard to find them though. Most manufacturers hardly list this but Bosch seems to have inverters in most of their mid and higher-end ones. My favourite is the Bosch BFL634GB1. Bosch BFL7221B1 was a huge downgrade due to the shitty touch screen and wheel along with a multi-second boot time.

Restaurants are doing more of this than most people think.

Here's an article from the head chef from a commercial microwave oven company, on how to get more done faster.[1] Commercial microwave ovens have about 2KW-3KW of power, and some of them have true variable power, not the on/off thing most home microwave ovens use. "I’ve shown teams how to make mug cakes, molten chocolate brownies, and steamed puddings with just a microwave. The reactions are always the same: "I had no idea a microwave could do that.”"

[1] https://totalfood.com/revolutionizing-microwave-cooking-comm...

In 1986 I briefly lived in a squat in North London, and the gas had been disconnected. We cooked everything in the Microwave, and we ate nutritious and completely unexpected (to me) normal meals, like Lasagne made with dried pasta, which uses cottage cheese to boost the moisture content so the sheets of Pasta soften. I appreciate at this point some people are saying "normal??" but truly, compared to the alternatives, using a more liquid cheese to make a meal which conforms in all other respects to your expectations, was huge.

(gas reconnection was hard. Electricity, for reasons I never entirely understood, was easy to get reconnected to squats, at the time)

My co-occupants had a lot more experience than I of this life on the edge. I learned a lot.

> The actual recipe section starts with the recipe for a bowl of cereal, which I am 70% sure is a joke

For years, I would get up insanely early and be the first in the office, with no-one around other than the cleaners. My breakfast every day would be microwave-cooked oats - but it wasn't quite as easy as the recipe from the book makes it out to be, mostly because of the milk.

Unlike water, when you heat up milk to a high temperature in the microwave, it behaves just like it does on the stove top: it wants to crawl out of the container and nicely spread itself everywhere.

So, I developed sort of a technique that consisted of short bursts of microwaving at full blast, then stopping and stirring, and back in with bowl. I repeated that a few times, but after I had the technique down, it didn't require much attention any more, it worked quite reliably.

The oats got cooked nicely, and thanks to the pectin of an apple that I also added in, it also thickened. (And in case you wonder, the apple's acidity does sometimes split the milk somewhat, but in most cases it doesn't.) However, there's definitely a difference in smoothness between microwaved oat meal and one that's made slowly on the stove top - the latter being much nicer in texture.

But it was a quick breakfast that I really enjoyed (with a dash of cinnamon) at my desk every morning while I was going through my email from the night before.

A microwave lifehack I recently learned:

If you're gonna brown some onions, microwave them for a bit before tossing them into the pan. The first step of browning onions is just boiling away the water, which microwaves are great at. You may find that it begins to brown sooner this way.

The number one feature of modern microwaves that I appreciate is the humidity sensor. Figure out if your microwave has one, and it opens up a whole world of better solutions.

Know the popcorn button? Ever wondered why every popcorn manufacturer tells you not to use it, or, if you don't make a habit of taking orders from a paper bag, why it works on some microwaves, but fails miserably on others, either burning the popcorn to a crisp or, more often, leaving half the kernels unpopped? Humidity sensor. In microwaves with a humidity sensor, the microwave runs until the humidity stops rising, (which means the kernels stopped popping) then stops (well, actually mine sets ~30 second timer, then stops). This produces perfect popcorn every time. Doesn't matter the brand of popcorn, it just works.

Unfortunately, because this feature was so great, it got imitated on every microwave, regardless of whether it has a humidity sensor or not. On those microwaves, it just sets a flat timer, which cannot adapt to variations in popcorn. Since popcorn manufacturers have no idea which camp your microwave falls into, and can't assume you have any idea either, they just tell people to neglect a fantastic feature.

Excellent article. "Tradwife futurism" is a brilliant term.

I'm worried I'm going to burn a hole in my wallet searching for a pyroceram skillet that I'll end up using for a week and then forget about it.

For whatever reason, I have an 8" floppy disk with one of these microwave cookbooks on it. Mine seems to be (part of?) one called "The Guaranteed Goof-Proof Microwave Cookbook" by Margie "Microwhiz" Kreschollek.

Sadly, I've never been able to read the book in the correct order as I don't know what system it came from - it's something that is single-sided, 77 tracks, FM (single density) encoded with 26 sectors/track, but the text is there in a hex editor.

It makes it pretty obvious that it isn't a joke or trick; someone saw it fit to fill up a 250kB disk with this, so somebody must have thought it was a good idea.

In an unrelated endeavour, my dad told me he once tried to cook an entire turkey in one of those huge 80's microwaves. He said it didn't turn out very good.

I feel like 80% of the microwave's downfall was adopting VCR-like push button interfaces.

The two dial microwave was peak UX. Quick, painless, no wondering what sequence to press on a strange 'wave, zero time delay between input and cooking, and easy use of the (essential) power function.

It even lets you change time or power mid-cook. For maximum laziness it's possible to leave the door cracked with time on the dial, throw in the food, and adjust the dial while it's already on (slightly reducing the wait before eating). Using the microwave becomes forgiving instead of foreboding, because it's so easy to change your mind.

The only downside is that it's slightly less precise, but getting the exact time down to the second is probably less important than you think. It's also a mechanical part to fail, but I've had microwaves die because the push buttons failed too, whereas my dial unit is still going strong. YMMV

More recent alternate universe is where everyone cooks everything in an Instant Pot, and even more recent is where everyone cooks everything in an air fryer. Every new cooking appliance is a revolution, until it isn't, and only a handful of real use cases for it remain.

No mention of the Miele Dialog which gets as close as I've seen (though not quite there) to my dream of crispy fried eggs with runny yolk in the microwave. Their big example is being able to cook a fish while it remains in a block of ice. Pretty damn cool!

https://www.reviewed.com/ovens/features/we-tried-an-oven-tha...

I discovered a (lame) party trick some microwave ovens are capable of.

Many microwaves will let you set the power to 0% by pressing the power button then 0 or 00.

You can then put a cup of hot water from a kettle or the hot water tap in the microwave on 0% power for two minutes and it will come out colder.

Bonus points if you have a thermometer at hand.

The microwave has two big related issues (both mentioned in the article).

The first is that it is not easy to make a mental model of how it works. The second is that since it takes little too cook the food, it is unforgiving and you have to be very careful with both timings and amounts.

This makes it hard to learn how to properly use it just by trial and error. Also since now we have inductive stoves there is even less reason to use it.

https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/corningware-stovetop-pyro...

>Unfortunately, this product is discontinued

:(

My pet theory is that, humans have an inherent desire to spent a certain amount of time dealing with food.

If our lives are to efficient, say because we do not have to butcher a pig and cure it’s meat to get ham, we start to become obsessed with all kind of strange diets from cocovorism to paleo.

In the 1990s, the first microwave our family owned came with a small cookbook and I made an edible cake.

Thanks Hacker News for surfacing such jewels, and kudos to the author for such a great piece.

Although I will never use anything of what I learned from this article, I feel a better person since I’ve read it.

In one of the alternate universe I like to imagine, AI slop doesn’t exist and the Internet is filled with gorgeous pieces like this one.

I do not have a microwave, but I remember having one, and never managed to intuitively use it to iterate on my cooking.

Meanwhile, throw stuff in the pan, move it around, adjust the temperature, add in some stuff as it goes, is a much more interactive type of cooking that is much more likely to take me where I want to go (tasty food).

Does anyone knows if using microwaves might possibly affect the nutritional value of the food? Or if radiation can leak and act upon your body if you stand very close to it. Heated plastic doesn’t sound too healthy either. And why do we never see commercials about microwaves?

I know nothing about these things, but I still only use it to heat my cold cup of coffee - and I’m standing way back while I do :) I even own a pyroceram skillet.

This is fascinating because I remember this era when Microwave ovens were a new thing and my parents got one, along with a glossy cookbook with a roast chicken on the front. All of that 'roasting things in the microwave' gor quietly forgotten about in the late 80s, along with the idea that CDs were 'indestructible'.

But somehow modern microwaves always have a button on the front with a picture of a roast chicken. Why are microwave UIs so delusional? Just need power %age and time.

Microwaves are good for making porridge (oatmeal) though. And I've had some success with scrambled eggs, if you get the method right results are very consistent.

If you get a built in microwave get one that is also an oven. Great at Christmas time, you are ready with 2 real ovens!

Microwaves were invented to reanimate hamsters from hibernation. No joke.

Using an ISI Whip and a microwave to make cake is a well-known molecular gastronomy technique. Here’s one that doesn’t require the ISI Whip: https://www.seriouseats.com/microwave-rocky-road-sponge-cake...