memes

unironically making cakes in the microwave isn't terrible, heating up liquids and other wet stuff like batter is the thing microwaves are actually good at

it's not as good as baking them, but it's absolutely not on the level of microwaving meat or something

I'm all in favour of people cooking the way that works for them. If you don't like microwaves and it works for you then more power to you.

For me the turning point was realising that you can brown stuff like onions and garlic in the microwave. If you can do that then basically most dishes which you can include in the category of a soup or casserole (in the broadest sense - meaning that a lot of "wet" curry-like dishes fit here) opens up to you because the next steps are usually frying off some other bits like a mirepoix and then adding liquid/broth and simmering.

Am I saying that you can make a good bourani banjan in the microwave from start to finish? Probably not. But if you're doing a bourani banjan solely in a frying pan then, using the right technique, you could probably get about the same results in a microwave.

The three main perks of cooking in the microwave are that the risk of burning the bottom of the dish is virtually eliminated, the amount of energy it takes is comparatively low, and you can stop the cooking process and pick it back up again later.

As a person who has ADHD and struggles with poor mental health, the ability to just wander away from my cooking or to go lay down on the couch for an indeterminate period without risking burning the dish or starting a kitchen fire is nice - if I'm having a really rough time I can usually scrape together enough energy to spend maybe 4 mins of active cooking time to brown some onions (although you can even skip this step by using onion powder or dried onion), then to have a few minutes of active cooking time interspersed for the rest of the process where I will stir the dish a couple of times along the way and I throw in some veggies/beans/broth/spices/herbs somewhere too.

I feel like it's the ideal cooking method for a lot of disabilities because it's very forgiving and you have a lot more leeway to choose the pace of cooking - normally in the kitchen you're cooking per the dictates of the burner and the amount of stuff in the pan, especially liquid. You can adjust the heat somewhat and you can deglaze the pan to manage the pace but when you're cooking you're basically tied to the stove for at least 15 minutes, except in rare cases.

Between microwave cooking, "dump" cooking (dump casseroles and the like), and one-pan oven cooked dishes, you can actually do quite well for yourself even if you're working to some pretty serious limitations.

But with all that needless rhapsodising aside, I definitely think that microwaves also have a place with melting chocolate (it takes a bit of a knack but it's mostly about not getting impatient and using a heavy microwave dish so you can use the residual heat to take the chocolate from almost melted to nicely melted) and with many flour-based sauces - making a roux-based sauce can be a bit fiddly for people but as above (re: stirring, burning on the bottom) using a microwave really reduces the difficulty of cooking them.

I'm also a fan of microwaving rice. There's the pasta-pot method of cooking rice which has got to be the absolute easiest method (cook a small amount of rice in a large pot of boiling water, like you would pasta, and cook until it's a minute or two away from being done, strain and allow to steam off the excess moisture for a minute before serving) and then next to that is microwaving rice - you just bring it to a boil and then drop the power setting to its lowest for the duration of the cook time. The only reason why this is one step up in difficulty is because you have to get your water ratio right. I haven't owned a rice cooker in like a decade because I see it as unnecessary when all you need is a big bowl and a microwave, which you will probably find in almost any kitchen. (Although admittedly I do get bouts of fomo and weigh up whether I should invest in a high end pressure rice cooker but so far I've put it off since it's a luxury, not a necessity.)