Microwave everything

[maxysu]

Since I don't have a pressure cooker but I have a microwave both at work and at home, I became really dependent on it. I basically use it to cook red lentils, frozen vegetables and meat (chicken or salmon).

I started recently experimenting with the following during my lunch break at work:

1. I take a soup plate or cup, put in the lentils with water and heat for about 4-6 minutes (900 watt)
2. While the lentis are cooking in the microwave, I cut the meat in small pieces and put them on a plate. Small pieces seem to be heated significantly faster.
3. When lentils are ready, I put the meat in and heat for 1 min.
4. In the morning I usually put frozen vegetables in the fridge, so that they are not frozen anymore when I am about to microwave them at lunch. I heat them for 5 min or so.
5. While the vegetables are heating up, I mix lentils, meat, spices, vineagar and oil.
6. I remove the vegetables from the microwave and mix everything on a new plate so that the food is cooled faster (the plates coming from the microwave are usually burning hot). I eat the first half right away and store the second half in the fridge.

This takes about 24 minutes. I use many plates to cut the meat, heat in the microwave and swap to new plates to cool the food quickly. I stuff everything in the dishwasher after I ate, which is no problem as I am in the office which has professional cleaning that takes care of the dishwasher daily.

Are there any advice or "microwave recipes" you guys want to share?

The problems I see are that sometimes the heat is not evenly distributed and as a result it can happen that the food is either not heated enough or overheated; hence gets dry.

On the upside, you can put in anything apart from steel-based plates to reheat food fairly quickly.

[Scott 2]

Step 1 - get a slow cooker...

[Dragline]

To avoid dryness in a microwave, you would need to put the food in a mostly sealed contain (BUT DO NOT CLOSE LEST YOU HAVE AN EXPLOSION) and put a little water in with it.

But its difficult to really cook things in a microwave -- usually just good for reheating stuff that's already cooked. I eat a lot of leftovers and the microwave is great for those.

You are probably already doing close to the the best you can do. A microwave is actually a very crude cooking device, since its goal is simply to heat things as quickly as possible.

I agree with Scott on the slow cooker idea. Those things make great and tasty food. And if you have pre-cooked food, you can heat it up at work in just a few minutes.

[JamesR]

I recently read this: http://what-if.xkcd.com/131/

Could try putting everything together at once, and then use a low power level (or auto-defrost) and cook it 3-4x times longer. Less fiddling around with plates, so could go away and come back half an hour later and find it ready to eat.

I heard that the combination of flash frozen vegetables & microwaving results in the highest retention of nutrition in vegetables. So perhaps low power level for evenly heating it all is the way to go.

[jennypenny]

Scrambled eggs are easy in the microwave. If you place vegetables in a circle on the plate, you can put the eggs in the middle and cook it that way. Instant omelette. There are lots of egg dishes you can do in the microwave with a corningware dish* like frittatas or bread frittatas. I've also done bread pudding.

Baked potatoes are another easy microwave meal and the toppings can be cooked at the same time. You can do red-skinned potatoes and then make a warm potato salad by adding mayo or sour cream, dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and paprika. If I'm doing mayo, I add a little cider vinegar and the paprika. If I'm doing sour cream, I skip the vinegar and paprika and add dill instead and maybe chives. There's no right way to do it. I even like to cut up an apple to add to it.


*These are the dishes I mean. Easy to find used/cheap/free. Great for the microwave.

[George the original one]

Absolutely microwave the veggies, but I shudder at the thought of the rubbery texture you get when microwaving meat!

[BlueNote]

Oatmeal is awesome when microwaved. I see a lot of people just use really hot water, but microwaving causes the oats to kind of explode into a nice sticky carb pile. Add cinnamon and brown sugar to taste (before cooking), my fave!

[jacob]

Before we got the propane stove fixed, we cooked everything in the microwave. After we got the propane stove fixed, our electricity bill dropped a lot [more than the propane bill went up].

[Stahlmann]

I'll join in (thanks google)...

What kind of containers do you use when microwave?
How about refreshing the taste of food prepared during the weekend? I post it here, because I'll use microwave at work. However, the same issue is connected with crockpots.
At the moment I plan to top everything with ketchup

Edit: I see Scott 2 post.

[wood]

What kind of containers do you use when microwave?

1-2 litre plastic ice cream boxes are perfect. Put the lid loosely on top.

How about refreshing the taste of food prepared during the weekend?

Some suggestions:
Chili sauce
Garlic sauce
Soy sauce
Mustard
Lemon juice
All kinds of spices
Salsa
Guacamole
Salt

[Astra]

When I did not have a water kettle, I heated my tea and coffee water in the microwave. That's highest level of cooking I trust myself to do in the microwave.

Oatmeal is awesome when microwaved. I see a lot of people just use really hot water, but microwaving causes the oats to kind of explode into a nice sticky carb pile.

Exploded sticky carb pile, sounds like exactly what I need in the morning. Will try!

There are these microwave plastic bags in the supermarket, they are a bit permeable and made to cook stuff inside them. You can use them to preportion and freeze lunches, then pop directly into the microwave, as was done my the gentleman in this article: https://www.primermagazine.com/2012/ear ... fice-lunch