My experience with microwave "ovens" is not the same as yours.
My mom used to make a pork roast in the microwave that was quite moist and delicious. My aunt told my mom to her face "well, if you don't want to give me the recipe, don't give me the recipe, but don't lie to me it was nuked", and was not satisfied until my mom bought another chunk of pork and nuked it in front of her.
To be fair, I don't remember how to make it, and her microwave was only 750W or so (this was in the early 80's), so I haven't chanced it. Yet.
I make a meatloaf in the nuker too, and if I don't tell people it was microwaved, they say it's moist and delicious and grab seconds and sometimes thirds.
I usually make it in a loaf pan format, which browns it even more, and leaves the inside pink warm, which hides the fact it was nuked even more, particularly because the outside gets very brown and crunchy.
A few weeks ago, I heard that making it in a ring form (like a bundt cake or angel food cake pan) not only it roasts faster, but one doesn't have to turn the meatloaf so many times.
So, today I tried it -- it's true, it roasts way faster and you only have to turn it once, it starts upside down for 5 minutes at 100% (1,200W), you flip it right side up, 100% for another 3 minutes, then 3 minutes at 50%, rest 3 minutes.
You do need to brush the entire thing with olive oil before nuking, and the recipe needs way less liquid than regular recipes, because there is not enough time to evaporate that much moisture. I used 2.25 pounds of ground beef, one envelope of Lipton Recipe Secrets Onion Soup mix, one egg, 2 ounces (0.25 cup) of water, 3 tablespoons of lemon juice and only one cup of bread crumbs.
To be fair, I have not served it during fancy dinner parties -- then again, I would not be serving meatloaf then. But when it's just friends that were visiting and end up staying for dinner and I throw something together, no one has complained, quite the contrary.
Tonight's experiment was not as successful as I'd like, because I wasn't careful and as I was removing the food from the pan (so I could brush it and roast it), it fell apart, so it looks more discombobulated than it should be. Next time, I'll support it on the way to the "bacon rack" and it will look much better.
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
PS: I also use the nuker to make bread dough rise faster, I use bursts of a couple of minutes at 10% power interleaved with 1 minute rest, and it keeps the dough at around 85-100F, which makes the dough rise enough to bake in the regular oven in 15 minutes or less. One can also melt chocolate or make caramel way faster and more easily. Microwaves are not the end all and be all, it's true, but people seem perfectly happy to wait for hours for a very pale sous vide dish and *then* brown it with a blow torch, broiler or frying pan, so just because "it doesn't brown" (read, they don't know how to make it brown properly) it shouldn't be an impediment to getting food cooked fast. If I use a toaster, the bread gets toasted, if I use a potato masher, the food gets mashed, each tool has its ideal uses and the non-ideal uses, as well as the total disasters. I wouldn't fault the microwave because it can't do everything well, I use it for what it does well, and use the rest of the equipment for what they do well. For example, I hear that many people whose ovens are broken or they don't have an oven try to use a dutch oven on the stovetop, and complain the cakes are not as good. Well, true, but then again, if they aren't using a thermostatically controlled oven, I am not surprised, just be grateful you got a cake at all instead of a burned mess on the dutch oven.
