How to cook in a microwave? Guidelines

How to cook and re-heat curries, the food placement in the oven cavity, and microwave-ware

1. What types of foods can be cooked in microwave?

The water, fat and sugar molecules in the food get agitated by microwaves resulting in heat and cooking the food. If the food is void of all these three types of molecules, it will not cook. One has to be careful, when the food is primarily oil or sugar, it can result in very high heat and cause fire.

2. Can I make Curries in the microwave?

When you put your in hand in the microwave oven before cooking or after cooking, it is at room temperature except for the heat given out by the food being cooked. In other words, the food is not cooked from outside to inside, making outside brown or crunchy like stove top or oven cooking.

Here comes the rub for making curries. You can buy a combination oven, but most of Indian dishes don't use conventional oven, so the texture is different. You can buy browning cookware, still it does not render the same texture. My recommendation is to combine microwave cooking with conventional stove top cooking to get the best results. Use microwave cooking to reduce cooking time, and use stove top cooking for texture.

3. Where should I put food inside the Microwave oven?

Microwaves disperse to corners and walls, and then towards the center microwave oven cavity. Therefore, foods placed towards the walls will absorb more microwaves and cook faster then the foods placed in the center. For example, if you want to bake one potato, don't place it in the center, but off towards a wall or the edge of the turn table. If you are baking several potatoes arrange them in a circle of potatoes leaving the center blank.

4. Why should you know the wattage of your microwave oven?

Higher wattage microwave ovens cook faster than lower wattage microwave ovens. The relationship is almost linear. If it takes 60 seconds to cook in a 600 watt microwave oven, it will only take 30 seconds in a 1,200 watt microwave oven, you doubled the wattage and reduced the cooking time in half.

5. Does smaller size of food cook faster than the other?

In stove top cooking, the size matter, smaller pieces cook faster than larger pieces. In microwave cooking, it is the total weight and not the size of individual pieces. Whether you cook one whole potato, or cut it into several pieces, it will take same amount of time to cook in the microwave oven.

6. Can I use any type of dish to cook in microwave oven.

You can use glass safely. You can use certain plastic, others may melt. Certain ceramic dishes are also safe. You should always use microwave-safe dishes to cook in microwave oven. These dishes are readily available in most of the stores.

7. How to defrost foods in microwave oven?

You can defrost frozen foods by cooking for 7 minutes per pound of food at 30% power factor. You have to be careful when defrosting large pieces, the exterior may start to cook before it is defrosted. To avoid this, defrost only halfway through.

8. How to reheat curries?

Re-heat foods halfway through, stir and then reheat. This will reduce total re-heating time.

9. Should I cover foods while cooking in microwave oven?

Covering foods while cooking helps the foods from drying out, and the hot steam helps the foods to cook faster. Covering foods also helps food from being splattered all over the oven and keeps your microwave clean. Cover foods with specially designed lids with a vent or with plastic film wrap. When covering with plastic film wrap, poke a few holes with a toothpick to let the steam escape.

10. How should I arrange foods in the dish?

Put food that take longer to cook on top of the foods that take less time. For example if you were cooking Spinach and potatoes together, put the potatoes on top of spinach. Potatoes take longer to cook than the spinach.

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