Slow microwave ovens

[FMurtz]

Pest, making me use google.

[Bill Wright]

I don't find much use for the 1,200W setting. The only real use is for heating water quickly when the kettle's broken. Even jacket spuds are cooked unevenly. Thick soup needs to be stirred during cooking. Meat is hopeless.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Rewire to use 2kW? Do you live in a tent?

Bill

[Bill Wright]

I have two. They do. They don't cycle.

Bill

[mike]

They adjust the AVERAGE power at a rate much faster than the thermal time constant of the food.

I don't think you can change the operating voltage far enough to get a large enough range of power. And how would you do that anyway? You'd have to use an inverter to do it efficiently. Might as well just switch the power on and off directly. Everything works at optimum efficiency or is off.

Break an egg into a bowl. Stick it in the microwave on high. Be ready with the cleaning supplies to get the egg off the inside of your oven. The yoke usually explodes first. If you break the yoke, the whites will explode anyway. You really have to whip it up to prevent explosion.

You can get a similar effect with soup.

Might have been a design tradeoff to let the magnetron run too hot and need 15 seconds for it to cool down sufficiently.

I don't remember any explosion issues with my old 600W Amana. My Panasonic Inverter on High will explode an egg faster than you can say, "oh crap, I forgot to cover the dish."

[Brian Gaff]

I had a Phillips like that, it made no difference but the problem is one of standing waves inside the cooking cavity, and hot and cold spots due to those. Brian

[Andy Bennet]

LOL. I have a 14.4kW electric boiler. That's what I call spin.

[Andy Bennet]

That's why microwave ovens operate at 2.4GHz - the resonant frequency/maximum absorption of energy in water molecules.

[Max Demian]

I don't know what the low settings are for. All the instructions I've seen - e.g. on ready meals - say "full power". There is the defrost setting, but microwaves aren't very good at defrosting as they don't heat frozen water very well.

[Harry Bloomfield]

I have not seen a rotating waveguide in a domestic micro for years. The rotating plate in the base seems the better solution and less complex.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bill Wright has brought this to us :

I never cook meat in the micro, it is horrible. I do sometimes reheat it. With all things apart from liquid, or with a high liquid content, I stop and stir often. Spuds I rotate, to try to even out the cooking.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Max Demian has brought this to us :

Mine defrosts just fine. You select the weight of the food, then press go. Ice doesn't melt so easily, but once the outer begins to defrost, penetration and absorbsion works just fine.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

[William Gothberg]

That's not really much more is it? Not even twice as fast.

[William Gothberg]

Domestic ones already have power level control. Simply use that if you cook weird stuff.

[William Gothberg]

Stop giving bad advice.

[William Gothberg]

Funny how the food ends up at eating temperature whereas it was -20C. Therefore it's defrosted. Apply heat to a frozen thing, thing gets warmer, simple physics.

[William Gothberg]

[insert very rude comment about Lynn]

[trader_4]

And it's been answered, by many posters, many times now. All agree, but you won't accept it. Much of what you post is just stupid, like not understanding, or pretending not to understand, that with too much power you will COOK parts of something that you just want to DEFROST, because the heating is not even. Anyone who has used a microwave to defrost things understands that. As do the microwave oven manufacturers, that have defrost settings, that use low power and even give that off time after about a minute and a half, so that the food won't overheat and cook in areas. If you have a frozen pork chop that you want to DEFROST, so you can brine it, marinate it, grill it, etc., you want it DEFROSTED, not half cooked. And the same principle applies to things you want to cook. Because the heating is not perfectly even, if you give it too much power, parts will be overcooked, while other parts are not done. Even with today's ovens I use 70% or less power many times just to reheat leftovers. Higher power, parts start to spatter, overheat, cheese starts to separate into oil, etc., while other parts are still cold.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

My wife of 28 years died in April.