Many of us just use our microwaves to heat up last nights dinner or some 2-minute noodles, but there is so much more you can use your microwave for! Now each microwave is different so the first step of microwave cooking is to get to know your individual appliance; have a quick look through your manual (which you can also find online) or test the different settings to see what your microwave can do.
From there you can start making all kinds of foods and recipes, some great uses for your microwave are:
- Cooking bacon- wrap your bacon in paper towels and put on a microwave-safe plate and cook for a few minutes to get delicious and crispy bacon strips
- Steaming veggies- you can steam any and all types of veggies in your microwave just make sure to put them in a bowl with some water so they don’t dry out
- Bake potatoes- One of these easiest ways to get a baked potato is to rub a little olive oil on it and cook it in the microwave uncovered and on high for 12-14 minutes
- Cook rice- In a microwave-safe baking dish or bowl add 1 cup of white rice, 2 cups of water and ½ a teaspoon of salt and cook uncovered until the liquid is ab
sorbed (about 15-18 minutes) - Cooking pasta- Put ⅓ cup of uncooked pasta in a microwave safe dish with ½ cup + ⅛ cup of water, for regular noodles cook for 6 minutes (stopping and stirring every 2 minutes), for gluten-free noodles microwave for 5 minutes (stopping and stirring every 2 minutes)
You may have wondered if cooking so much in your microwave may affect your health, but don’t worry it’s completely safe. Contrary to popular myth microwave radiation is not related to nuclear radiation whatsoever. Microwaves use electromagnetic radiation which doesn’t make your food radioactive.
Another common misconception is that a microwave oven destroys all the nutrients in food, and again this is proven to be completely false. In fact it’s the opposite- microwaving often preserves more nutrients than other cooking methods because the longer and hotter you cook something the more nutrients you lose; with microwaves, it’s quick and easy!
One of the biggest uses of microwaves is to defrost meat and other foods, and understanding you’re defrost system is the best way to prevent partially frozen and cooked meat coming out after you nuke it. The reason why you should always use you’re defrost and not try to use your normal cooking functions; is that when put in defrost mode the microwave constantly turns the magnetron on and off to even out the cooking so you get an evenly defrosted item.
We hope this blog inspires you to become a microwave chef and to properly use your microwave to create delicious foods in the future. If you want more tips and tricks for your home appliances have a look at some of our other blogs!