alt Hacker News> 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.
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What you say is true, but good microwave ovens have fine-enough power control to avoid any such problems caused by milk and also the problems caused by exploding eggs or exploding meat (which happens when you cook raw meat, instead of just reheating already cooked meat).
The great advantage of microwave ovens is that even if the first time when you cook something that you have not cooked before, you must experiment carefully to find the optimum time and power level for a given amount of food ingredients, once you have determined good values you can use them forever with perfect reproducibility and the food will be good every time and there will be no incidents with food exploding or overflowing in the oven.
I'd never make porridge with water at home - but in winter in the office I used to cover a 1/3 bowl of oats with boiling water and then microwave for just 30 seconds.
Once the oirriois cooked (it really should be already) add a teaspoon or two of salted butter to the middle and stir, then sugar to taste.
Suprisingly delicious, quick and repeatable.
I won a few people over who couldn't believe that porridge made with water would be any good, but it was a great winter staple, especially after cycling in, in the cold.
Another easy microwave win is polenta, I sometimes make a polenta-ish porridge with masa flour because its more nutritious and the taste is nice.
My solution was to half the requested liquid for a thick oatmeal. Ok, thick is underselling it, it’ll be quite dense. Add cinnamon and chopped dates.
Every microwave I’ve ever looked at from a distance, or actually used, has the ability to set the power level, typically in 10% increments.
The typical workflow is: power button > number button 1-9
My daily driver is a bit more fancy, and has a single button to cycle through the available power settings.
For your milk oats I’d suggest a power setting around 30 to 40% and increasing the cooking time by a factor of 2.