What is a microwave oven? What you can do with it ? Microwave Life saving hacks

MICROWAVE OVEN

  Microwave oven is an electric oven used for all sort of general cooking purposes and people call them as microwave hacks since they are really life saving. Initially microwave ovens are used for reheating the cooked food and later on they've started cooking several recipes which are really time saving and easy to make. 

HOW IT WORKS 

         

You might be wondering how a microwave oven works?

In the microwave oven heat which is required for cooking your food is generated through radio waves. Water molecules in your food gets vibrated and that generates the required amount of heat to cook your food. Because of it's working principle, microwave oven is considered to be more efficient in certain cases than a convection oven. It heats up quickly and it takes very less time to cook your food.

      For example, if you are baking a cake in a convection oven, it'll take  around 30 - 40 minutes of your time whereas in a microwave oven you can be able to do it within 10 minutes. But if you expect your cake to be like the one which is baked in a convection oven, you'll be disappointed since they both have different working principles. Microwave cake won't have burnt dark edges since they don't caramelize your food like the convection ovens.

MICROWAVE SAFE UTENSILS

    Undoubtedly you have to use microwave safe utensils to cook your food in microwave mode. There are loads of microwave safe dishes available in market with difference in brands and materials like glass, ceramic and plastic. Before using any one of them check whether it's microwave safe or not. If you want to know more about microwave safe dishes and how to find whether your dish is microwave safe or not, check out my another post where I have written everything about it in detail. 

WHAT IS MICROWAVE POWER LEVEL?

      In all brands of microwave oven, you can find the microwave power level option in your control panel and that's basically used for the adjusting power level of your microwave oven as per your recipe. For example, if you want to cook your food in high power press the microwave power level option once and you'll see higher value or H1 on screen (if you are using an IFB microwave). H1 means high power and then you can set the timer and start the cooking process.

     The highest power level differs from different brands of the microwave oven and that basically affects the cooking time of your food. They have different power levels and you have to adjust the cooking time accordingly. But from my opinion it's not a very big issue, you'll get to know your microwave once you start using it.

MICROWAVE LIFE SAVING HACKS

What are called life saving hacks? Things that makes one's life much more easier. 

   Microwave oven is definitely a life saver since it saves most of your time in kitchen. Microwave oven has the flexibility of using a serving dish as a cooking dish to cook your food and it saves lots of time and energy.

COOKING RICE & DAL

    In Microwave mode you can cook your rice perfectly as you cook it in pressure cookers or rice cookers and trust me guys, it won't take much time to do it. Not only the plain rice, you can make variety of rice recipes like pulao, biryani etc. 

Same as rice you can cook your dal in microwave mode. It'll  definitely help you if you have to cook a small amount of rice and dal and you don't want to use pressure cookers for that. Take the required amount of rice and water in a microwave safe bowl, cover it with a cling film, prick some holes on the cling film with a fork and cook it in microwave mode. You can also use a microwave rice cooker which is available for cooking rice in microwave mode.

MAKING ROTIS OR PHULKAS

   You might be thinking, Making roti in microwave oven? Are you serious!

Looks hilarious right? But seriously you can make your rotis in microwave oven, in the same way as you cook papads. For both papads and rotis, try to brush some oil on both the sides and if you do it, you don't find any difference between the stove top cooked ones and the microwave cooked ones.

MAKING CHAI & COFFEE

   It's so easy to grab a microwave safe mug and make your own drink by yourself without messing around. Either a tea or a coffee, you can make it within few minutes. You can even make your jeera water, if you have a habit of dinking it every morning in an empty stomach.

CHIPS, PAPADS AND POPCORN

   For making chips, place thinly sliced potatoes on a microwave safe dish with a drizzle of olive oil and cook it until it becomes crisp and for papads you can place it directly on your turn table and cook it.

It will be cooked within seconds with zero oil consumption and you'll find no difference in it's taste. Can you believe that?

  To make popcorn, you can either use a brown paper bag or a microwave safe dish with lid closed. It's so simple to make a big bowl of popcorn by yourself and enjoy your movie time.

BOILING POTATOES & TOMATOES

   You can quickly boil your potatoes for making aloo sabzi or any potato dishes. Prick some holes all over the potatoes with a knife or a fork and place them in a microwave safe closed dish. Cook them for 3 - 5 minutes on high power. This is how I cook my potatoes in my 20L IFB Microwave oven.

  And for making rich gravies like paneer butter masala, matar paneer and butter chicken, some people want to boil and remove the peel of the tomatoes to make the gravy much more smoother and tastier. Microwave oven in very much useful for that. 

Off Couse you can boil your potatoes and tomatoes in pressure cookers. But if you have to do it in smaller quantities and that's about one or two tomatoes we don't prefer using pressure cookers right?

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BOILING CORN

This is again a life saver! Place your corn  on the turn table of your microwave and cook it for 3 - 4 minutes on high power. Don't remove the husk of the corn, remove it after cooking since it traps moisture inside to boil your corn evenly all around.

MICROWAVE MUG MEALS

    You might have heard of  this term MICROWAVE MUG MEALS. It's becoming tread now. You can make your quick meal in a mug for breakfast, dinner or whenever you feel like eating something good.

What can you cook in a mug? You'll be amazed with the answer for this question. You can make recipes like scrambled eggs, mac & cheese, French toast, different varieties of microwave mug cake recipes, noodles, oatmeal, pancakes, risotto (rice cooked in broth or stock with veggies, meat or seafood), fried rice, lasagna and the list goes on.

For more microwave mug meal recipes, visit www.biggerbolderbaking.com by Chef Gemma Stafford. She's a chef/ baker from Ireland and she makes a wide variety of microwave mug meal recipes.

MICROWAVE CAKE

    As I mentioned earlier, you can make cake in microwave oven. It'll take very less time compared to the cake which is baked in convection oven and the microwave cake is absolutely delicious. But the point is, the cake baked in convection oven has brown edges, since the cooking principle is entirely different. In the convection oven your cake is baked whereas in microwave it's getting cooked in it's own principle. That means, you'll find some sort of differences in both the cakes. 

Abarna
Gopinath