THE
MICRO
m \y
LAN!
BLOOMER
When you leam to cook in a
microwave, you don’t have to learn
to cook all over again! But there
are differences between cooking on
a range and cooking with
microwave power. Understanding
these differences can mean good,
juicy, tender food instead of
unevenly cooked, dried out and
burned food.
Let’s start at the beginning. How
does food get cooked in a
microwave when there’s no heat
in the oven? When microwaves
enter food, they cause the food
molecules (tiny particles) to
vibrate. As the molecules vibrate
millions of times each second,
friction causes heat to build up
quickly, cooking the food. Rub
your hands together and you can
feel the heat friction produces. In a
greatly oversimplified sense, your
food rubs itself cooked in a
microwave oven!
Microwaves heat food from the
outside in to the center. Since they
heat the edges of food very quickly,
the outside of large food items may
be cooked when the center is still
almost cold! This is especially true
when you cook on high power.
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microwave cooking is this: To get
the middle of food cooked without
burning the edges. The microwave
cooking techniques that differ
from range cooking are based on
solving this problem.
Here are seven important
microwave cooking techniques.
These are discussed in greater
detail in microwave cookbooks and
I will be giving you more in
formation on each in future
columns.
1. When you are cooking food on
high power that you can’t stir,
arrange it in a doughnut shape
whenever possible. If there’s no
food in the middle, it can’t be cold
when the edges are cooked! Put a
meatloaf on a ring mold instead of
a loaf pan. If you don’t have a ring
mold, use a casserole dish with a
custard cup or glass set in the
middle.
When freezing ground meat like
hamburger, make a doughnut
shaped patty with a hole in the
middle so it defrosts evenly. (Do
this for any quantity of meat, such
as a half pound or two pounds, but
not if you are freezing the meat in
individual patties.) How many
times have you defrosted ham-
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burger and ended up with a lump of
frozen meat in the middle
surrounded by patcßfes of cooked
brown meat? A doughnut shape
stops this! Arrange separate foods
like potatoes or cookies in a ring
for baking.
2. To get even cooking in your
oven without using a doughnut
shape, stir your food during the
cooking time. This distributes the
heat from the edges in to the center
of the food. Stirring once or twice
during the cooking or reheating
time works well for puddings,
casseroles, sauces, and gravy. But
don’t stir too much!
3. Larger food pieces like
chicken parts can’t be stirred, so
these are rearranged during the
cooking time. Rearranging means
taking the pieces from the corners
or edges and putting them in the
center; then moving the center or
least done pieces to the comers
and the edges. If you have
unevenly shaped food pieces, put
the biggest ones around the edges
of a container m the beginning.
This may eliminate rearranging
them.
If you don’t want a hole in your
food from the doughnut shape,
what do you do with food you can’t
rearrange or stir, like cakes,
roasts, or lasagna? There are two
techniques to prevent burning the
edges of these foods.
4. The first (and best) is to turn
the power down on your oven.
Instead of cooking these foods on
high, turn your oven down to
medium (50% power, which is
listed as 50 or 5 on most oven
brands). Turning the power down
slows the rate at which the
microwaves heat the edges of your
food. This gives heat time to be
conducted into the center evenly,
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but it takes longer to cook the food.
Cooking on medium (50, 5 or %
power) takes twice as long as
cooking in high.
5. If you can’t turn the power
down, shield the edges of food with
foil to keep them from burning on
high power. Put small pieces or
strips of aluminum foil on the
edges of roasts, over turkey
drumsticks, on the ends of a loaf
pan for meatloaf, and on the four
comers of a cake or lasagna pan.
This keeps some of the microwave
energy from penetrating the food
-in these small areas since
microwaves can’t penetrate foil.
Foil, even though it is metal, can
be used in most ovens if you follow
these rules:
—Keep foil one inch or more
away from the walls and oven door.
Do not let foil touch other
metal, such as an oven rack or a
TV dinner tray.
When using foil for shielding,
look inside the oven for arcing
'"Hon vou turn the power
Copyright 1984 Lani Bloomer
on. If you see any arcing, stop the
oven and remove the source so the
oven is not damaged.
6. Thick foods like roasts and
turkeys should be turned over
during the cooking time. Turning
them over ensures even cooking of
both the top and the bottom.
7. One last technique that is
different from range cooking is
allowing standing time for the
foods to finish cooking. All foods,
especially those cooked on high
power, will continue to cook a little
after they are removed from the
microwave. Allowing for this extra
cooking during standing time is the
biggest difference between
microwave and range cooking. It
causes many beginners to over
cook their food.
Food that is properly cooked in a
microwave is juicy, moist and
tender. Hard or dry food is over
cooked. Join me next week for a
more thorough discussion of
standing time and how to use it to
your advantage!
Shield small parts of ilood or the corners
of pans with aluminum foil to prevent
overcooking. See text for directions and
cautions.
Photo by George F. Elder
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