OT: uneven cooking in microwaves

Not true at all. The exterior 1 is next to air that's 70^F or so, but inside of that 2 it's next to the exterior which was frozen until a few minutes ago, maybe below 32F, as low as 20F in some freezers, and is now just a few degrees warmer than it was. So 2 won't warm as fast as 1 does.

Inside of 2, 3 is even more hidden from the outside warmth, plus it's hidden from the warming 1 layer.

Layers 4, 5, and 6 are like 3 but even progressively more so.

Also the very small ones, found in job snack rooms, usually dont' have carousels. For one thing, heating coffee and soup doesn't require rotation. Liquids stir themselves. And they buy small cheap ones.

Even after mine had a carousel, I would still find some foods heated in a checkerboard pattern, 3-dimensonal checkers. I can't remember details and I'm not sure it's still happening, because I MW different foods now, most often soup.

A checkerboard so it wasn't the kind of substance that made the difference, it was the presence of nodes and antinodes cause by the intersection of waves from different directions. MW's also already had something in the top to scatter the waves around, but it wasn't enough.

I can't imagine why the carousel didnt' eliminate the checkerboard and I wish I knew for sure if the current one does do that, or not.

It is particularly noticeable with large

Standing time after heating will allow heat to even out, but I think the inst4ructions call for it mostly so people won't burn themselves and sue them. I never wait a minute. It takes 10 seconds to take the food from the oven to the table, 5 seconds to take off the top, 5 seconds to get a fork,and by 30 seconds I'm eating. I like the food to be warm or hot. I'm careful not to burn myself and if I do I won't sue them.

Good point. A lot of instructions say to do that, and if it were only that different substnaces heated up differently, stirring would not help. They are trying to eliminate the checkerboard. BTW, I'm too lazy to get up and stir, so I don't, and it comes out pretty well.

Even with a minute standing time it's still a lot faster than a normal oven. But I don't wait.

one of my colleagues called it "Radio Gastronomy"

I learned that was better with 12" tvs, because they would fit on smaller tables, and when you were sitting on the floor, the screen was an inch or two higher so the table wasn't in the way.

WRT MW, since, you're right come to think of it, maybe it's because something about the wave generator works better from the side???? Like the diifference between playing skee-ball from where you're supposed to stand versus from above the target??

It does not matter what you want it is the laws of physics and thermodynamics.

If you don't want to wait, fine with me, but you get a more evenly heated product if you wait for the molecules to settle down and move heat evenly. Soup? No waiting, just give it a stir. Big lump of frozen mashed potatoes? You really can't rush and do it right.

micky presented the following explanation :

Many believe you cannot leave a spoon or fork in the food being microwaved - you can proving there is only one item and it cannot contact the oven's metal cavity as it rotates.

Actually there is something specail. It is heavily absorbed by water which makes it practically usless for anything out doors and perfect for cooking food

You'd find the same putting something frozen into a conventional oven. It just takes time for temperatures to even out.

SteveW

I just reheated a bowl of salad from frozen. 5 minutes on full power, some was boiling some was still frozen. Pathetic. 1 minute standing would not have sorted that, I had to bloody stir it!

I don't. Absolutely everything is microwaved. I do not want to eat later, I want to eat when I'm hungry. It's bloody annoying to stay hungry! Which is why I would never eat in a restaurant and wait for half a bloody hour with no food.

Why should it be £3K? 10 times the minimum price of £30 is £300. That should make a decent one. Imagine the cheapest car at £6K. A £60K car is damn good.

I got this diagram from someone on Quora, I wonder if these microwaves work better? 2 magnetrons, 2 waveguides, 2 stirrers:

What I want is something that just cooks. You put the food in, press go, then eat it 5 minutes later. What century are we in again?

That £300 would be good or that people would pay that much? They pay almost that for a washing machine which doesn't last as long or get used as often....

Which reminds me that it's decades since I honoured Nicholas Kurti with a reverse baked Alaska. I am ashamed.

Tesco sell a microwave for £30, it has a carousel.

How did you see this checkerboard? Do you mean a food which would change colour when cooked more?

Indeed, you'd think the pattern would consist of concentric circles.

A minute ain't long enough for a lot of things. It can be 5 minutes cooking and 5 minutes standing. I could do it in a pan in 10 minutes, so I've achieved nothing.

dramatic evidence of this, put a frozen block of food about twice the size of your fist into the microwave. Heat on full power for 5 minutes. You'll find some parts of the food too hot to touch, and some still frozen. So some bits are being heated many times moreso than others. Presumably one part rotating through a circle is still unheated due to that entire circle being at a node of the standing waves. There must be a way round this. If the microwaves were the thing rotating instead of the food, which I think newer ones do, there could be a non-circular rotation to make things more random perhaps? Or lots of reflectors to make the waves go all over the food.

My guess is that it takes less heat to melt the outside, because it is not surrounded by ice, and then because salty water is a much better conductor than ice the outside absorbs the microwaves faster. Positiive feedback to increase the unevenness. The only solution is to use low power (a defrost setting??) to allow more time for conduction and if the food is not monolithic then rearrange it on the plate every few minutes. I think this is an insurmountable physical problem.

So what we actually need is a microwave which can make a time warp inside it.

Well you can repeal the laws of thermodynamics. Microwave penetrate the food about a half inch. The inside cooking is strictly conduction.

As you point out, lower power settings allow the heat to move to the center, as does waiting time.

Composition of the food makes a difference too. Pockets of fat or sugar will heat faster than dry areas. Cutting a large piece to a few smaller pieces helps. Some people just put something in, push the button and expect it to be perfectly heated in seconds. With a little care and know how you can do amazing things in a MW.