11 Crucial Microwave Shortcuts Every Home Cook Should Know

While I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend cooking entire meals by microwave (though there’s a veritable treasure trove of cookbooks promising delightful mug meals, mug cakes, and other zappable feasts), you might just be amazed by what you can, nay should, nuke in the kitchen.

Unlike conventional stovetop and oven-based cooking methods, microwaves operate by firing electromagnetic radiation at your food. These waves effectively target the food’s internal water molecules, agitating them at a rate that produces enough friction to generate heat. It would be a stretch to say microwaves heat food from the inside out, but it’s more accurate than perceiving them as enclosed boxes of hot air—they have, to quote Kenji, “the unique ability to penetrate through the exterior of food when heating it.” For this reason, they excel at cooking ingredients evenly, rapidly, and efficiently—you can get the full why and how from Kenji’s excellent post on the science of heat and temperature.

So, while microwaves aren’t our preferred tool for cooking, say, centerpiece-worthy steak, and while they have a tendency to dry foods out if preventative steps aren’t taken (hence the film of plastic that comes over your tray of frozen lasagna), there are plenty of tasks just as well, if not better, suited to microwaves than other traditional heating elements. From dehydrating herbs to par-cooking potatoes to toasting nuts, these 11 uses will put even the most adamant skeptics in their place.

January 2021