When reheating food on a plate, I just put protein first for 30-60s, then add carbs (rice, pasta, or potato) and heat it all together for more 30-60s or until it’s steaming. Always full power.
I wish I had an inverter microwave. That’s the one I am.
Too complicated. Put it on the never buy again list.
Lower power basically does this automatically. Do extra time on lower power and it’s way better with no additional effort required
Interesting bit of trivia. Microwaves don’t actually have “high” or “low” settings. The magnetron, the microwave’s core component, only has two states - on and off. It can’t power the magnetron at 10% power level.
Instead, the “power” settings just control how often the magnetron is activated. So maybe at full power it’s on 100% of the time. At medium it’s 10 seconds on, 10 second off. At low it’s 3 seconds on, 10 seconds off. That kind of thing. The “power” setting is just a glorified timer.
Unless you have a modern microwave with an inverter, which will power the magnetron constantly with varying levels of power.
Yep, that’s what I meant by doing it automatically.
You’re not qualified for this topic. You’re only allowed to share trivia about trees and erections
deep microwave lore here
Obligatory netshaq post about the reheat function https://youtu.be/dpf3bxQVLu8
Love it
Yep ,90 secs at 100% does it for most things in mine
I don’t use the microwave that often, but doesn’t that result in explosion all the time?
And don’t we use Watt for that instead of percent?
Mine is only 1000w so I dunno if things pop in higher powered ones. Only things that rupture at 90 secs in mine are cheap chicken franks
Rice starts popping after 5 seconds on 850W in my microwave.
Hmm. Maybe there is a frequency variation between machines. Mine is barely warm at 1 minute
I am in Germany, maybe ours work differently. :)
Yes.
See this comment by me: https://feddit.org/comment/3984361
Double time half power gang. It’s so much better. I can wait an extra 90 sec for it to be evenly heated.
The guy on the left except I don’t even know the amount of time since my microwave was built in the mid-80s and takes longer to cook food (not sure if underpowered when it was built or some sort of degradation took place, it just came with the house).
Microwave for 5 minutes at 70%, no mixing or flipping just fire and forget. Go play Slay the Spire while you wait.
40% (900W microwave) at 4m30s is my default go-to for pretty much everything.
Except reheating my frozen lasagna. That’s 20% for 22minutes
I go 9 min at 50%
There is no use for a microwave because I have good cooking tools and skill.
No-one brought up your cooking skills, though now I’m wondering why you’re instantly so defensive about them.
So reheating something takes at least 30 minutes for your oven to warm up?
You must work on your time management skills.
Guy on left, but for 5 minutes instead
I always go six minutes. Fight me.
Never over 50% power. I’m always shocked by how many people don’t know how to use a microwave. I usually worked a long time on my food, I don’t want to ruin it through lazy reheating.
That is why I do most reheating on the stove, in the oven or on the contact grill (depends on what it is).
Obviously not always an option to use an oven/stove if you are e.g. bringing a packed lunch into a typical office. It’s certainly a better option for some things (you will never get “crispy” from a microwave, period) but microwave still produces acceptable results for many things, particularly if you are willing to put some thought and care into how you use it.
Only time I use the power level selector is for poached eggs. If I’m reheating something where I actually care about how it turns out I’ll usually use the oven 😂
What do you mean, never? Do you never heat water, coffee, tea, …? Or just larger quantities where more power is no problem even for longer durations? This is not a fundamental thing, the optimum is different not just based on type, amount and distribution of food, additionally things like time constraints, container or cleaning matter.
Never for reheating leftovers, anyway, which is 99% of what I use a microwave for. I have a kettle for other stuff. Overly high heat is gonna turn your proteins into rubber and exaggerate the “flaming hot on the outside, still cold in the middle” effect. There’s also lots of other stuff like arranging things to avoid dead spots, making use of coverings to trap steam, not throwing your vegetables that will take a minute to warm up in at the beginning with the big hunk of pasta that’s gonna need several minutes to heat through, etc.
But yeah if you’re reheating your food on >50% power you are almost definitely making it turn out worse than it would be on lower power.
How does heat turn things into rubber? The meat I reheat was already cooked? Or am I always too gentle to experience that? I usually do not heat up to boiling hot since I want to eat it and not have to let it cool down first.
Again, your generalization does not make sense. 50 % of a 1000 Watts microwave is different to one with 600 Watts. Heating up a bit of leftover is different to something for multiple persons. Etc. etc.
The difference in heating is negligible, but the time saved sure isn’t. Always at 100%
Full 900w every time, because that’s what the package asks for. Except when it asks for 1000w.
The dumb “nuke it on full for 90 seconds” one. No thought put into it, I just know it will be edible by my standards.
Most microwavable food is already edible because it is a dumb idea to use a microwave for much more than reheating food, because it requires time and microwaves consume a ton of power for the heat they provide. The advantage of microwaves is that they have very little heatup time which makes it good for short blasts.
“Palatable” would have been a better choice of words. I’m generally not very picky.