Microwaved fresh meals

nino1

I cook my meals for work at home in the evenings and microwave them the next day.

Some meals are just not made to be microwaved!

Anyone got any thoughts on the meals that stand up best to being microwaved?

No processed stuff, only freshly cooked.

budgemook

Rice and curry, pasta and sauce.

Sausages too.

rubadub

budgemook wrote: »

Rice and curry, pasta and sauce.

+1, anything high in water does well.

Also cooking on full power is not usually the best way. Many people have equate microwaves with fast cooking, and always cook on high.

If you cook on lower power then the water in the food heats, and has plenty of time to heat the stuff around it by conduction. If you blast things on high then it can get ruined in localised spots, these spots have no time to transfer heat to the surrounding food and so get really overdone, while the rest is not warmed.

This is why many microwave meals say "cook for 4mins, let stand for 2mins, stir & cook for 2mins".

Many do better by separating them, like you might put rice in after the main sauce dish is half cooked.

Lovely Bloke

budgemook wrote: »

Sausages too.

Blasphemer!

Mr. CooL ICE

Anything saucy such as curries, soups and stews always microwave well. I avoid veggies that are in large chunks as the texture tends to get ruined, but when finely chopped or shredded, they're fine

I cook my food in large batches and freeze them for when i work weekends. For things like rice dishes, I cook the rice the night before rather than freeze them too as they taste much better. Just add a few drops of water to the rice before you microwave it to fluff it up again

rubadub

LordChessington wrote: »

Just add a few drops of water to the rice before you microwave it to fluff it up again

From a previous thread, regarding frozen stuff

rubadub wrote: »

Substances have different "loss factors", basically their ability to absorb microwaves. Also stuff at different temperatures has different loss factors.

Water absorbs microwaves very well, ice does not! If you put a frozen glass of water and normal glass of water in the microwave it will get hot while the ice glass is barely effected. Once a little drop of water does defrost then the microwaves start piling into it. It heats up really quick and its own heat defrosts the frozen bits around it (rather than the microwaves, it just conducts heat). This defrosted spot then absorbs microwaves again and you end up with a little heat spot, it is like putting a tiny bit of water in a kettle, all the power goes into it and it heats really fast.

So if you microwave a frozen burger you can see brown cooked bits, that can dry out they are cooked so much, while the rest is frozen. Happens with all meat but with burgers you notice the colour a lot more. The first places to go are usually where you touched the item, your fingers defrosting it slightly.

Solution?- simple! just rinse your item under a warm tap before microwaving. It is now coated in a layer of water which will absorb the microwaves and inturn defrost the rest by conduction, once defrosted it absorbs microwaves well. Just keep stirring stuff like stew so it all melts evenly enough.

hardCopy

Stirring is the key for me. Anything solid will be difficult to get right. If I microwave a slice of my own lasagne it never cooks as well as a lasagne readymeal but stews, soups, pasta will all reheat pretty well.

oscarBravo

The other factor to consider is "hot spots". As microwaves reflect around the inside of the oven there will be areas where they destructively interfere and end up having very low effective power, and other areas where there is constructive interference with high effective power. This is mitigated to an extent by the rotating turntable, but it's still a factor.

This is worth a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FhwTelc5Tg