Microwave Miracles

When Mark Bittman applauds the microwave, I feel  better about my cooking habits. He’s right about vegetables - the microwave is the best way to do a lot of things. With a big covered container, the microwave does great corn on the cob. Beside vegetables, I use the microwave for making small quantities of pasta. It’s not much faster, but the bowl goes into the dishwasher and not the sink. And I always keep a few microwaved potatoes in the fridge - they’re great for making hash browns or using as a thickener in soups. And I frequently microwave a chicken before throwing it on the grill - it cuts the grilling time by a lot and reduces the risk of burning the chicken.

A “smart microwave” (with humidity sensors) is even better. If you let the sensors do the work, they’ll get the timing better than you will. Fresh or frozen vegetables will be done to perfection.

But the best microwaves are hybrid microwaves and convection ovens. In convection mode, they’re great for any small batch baking or roasting. I’m still playing with the hybrid mode of using low power microwaves and convection  roasting at the same time. This makes for a great roast chicken, but there are lots of other things I want to try.

All in all, I think modern microwaves rival pressure cookers for the title of most helpful kitchen appliance.

Cooking With Video

I am constantly amazed by the information and services provided on the Web. My latest discovery is FoodTube.net, which is full of cooking videos. What’s so special about cooking videos? Some techniques are best learned by watching others, such as flipping an omelet (hint: practice with a slice of bread). I’m not sure how great the content is going to be, but I really like the concept.

Vinaigrette

Everyone likes salads, and one of the healthier salad dressings is a vinaigrette. Like most people, I mix the oil and vinegar in the right proportions and just pour it on. But in perusing cookbooks, I notice a strong preference for not pre-mixing the vinaigrette. Instead, chefs prefer to drizzle the oil first, toss the salad, drizzle the vinegar, and then toss again. Can this possibly make any difference? I decided to try.

The short answer is that the drizzle and toss method makes a much better salad. It might be because I used more salt & pepper on the salad, or it might be because the oil more thoroughly coats the salad. For whatever reason, it’s markedly better and I’ve become a drizzle and toss convert!

Modern Microwaves

You know you’re getting old when you can remember when a microwave was an exotic top-end appliance. Today, the aisles of Target and Wal-Mart are filled with low cost microwaves. Microwaves are ubiquitous.

But there are still top-end microwaves. They are quite different from their bargain basement cousins. They seem to rely on two features which, when combined with internal computers and some smart programming, make them truly amazing.
One feature is a humidity sensing chip. By sensing the humidity, the oven can be very smart about heating food if you give it a few hints about what kind of food it is heating. For example, if I tell the oven that it is reheating cooked food, it just does it without the need for programming power levels or time. Ditto for cooking frozen or fresh vegetables, baking potatoes, and lots more. The oven does an amazing job - better than you can do!

The other advanced feature is convection cooking. This is traditional baking or roasting but using a fan to circulate the air and a rotating turntable to distribute the heat. This is slightly better than using a conventional convection oven because of the rotating turntable. But the big advantages come from convection heating and microwaving simultaneously. This does a fantastic job of baking and roasting, providing the browning which a normal microwave lacks, speeding up the cooking process (though not by much), and providing terrific consistency of heating.The only drawback to these kind of ovens is that you won’t find a world of recipes to work from. Sure, the manufacturers provide some basic guidelines, but anything else relies on experimentation - playing with your food - which is a lot of the fun of cooking anyway!