One time, right after I got my super duper RR with 4 cooking programs, I programmed it to come on before I came home from work, bring rice & water to a boil on high power, cook on low power then turn off. It worked, but it was more trouble tapping in all of those steps than it was worth. It would have been easier to use my Farber 3 qt electric saucepan with the control set at BOIL and plugged into a timed outlet since rice pretty much takes the same amount of time to absorb water no matter how you cook it, except brown rice which cooks in half the time in the Kuhn Rikon and the booklet that comes with the cooker gives the directions. One main dish at which a microwave oven excells is meatloaf, especially if you "frost" it with tomato soup before baking. Before I had a microwave, I used to put leftovers in small pans or packets of foil in a pressure cooker and warm them up in just the time it took get up to 15 lbs and a quick cooldown under the faucet. Microwave cooking is great for heating leftovers without having them taste like leftovers and far quicker and more convenient than the pressure cooker.
I have cooked a lot of things in my 30 inch Amana range with a micro-thermal oven with a combination of heat and radiation, but not a whole meal. It's great for cakes; half the time then 4 or 5 minutes of medium or low power nuking and it is done. The cakes are a bit moister, but otherwise the same.
