Life Changing Microwave discovery

[bajaespuma]

How many of you already knew this??? I just learned from a fellow chef in the school where I teach that you can put stainless steel in the microwave oven as long as it is true stainless and as long as it doesn't touch any of the walls of the oven!

LIFE CHANGER!!!!

Now I can melt and temper small amounts (less than 2 lbs.)of chocolate in the microwave oven which is safer than doing it over hot water. HUGE!!!

 

[combo52]

Cooking In Metal In A MWO

Hi Ken, Thanks for this information it is helpful to talk about this because as with many things there is little understanding about how MWOs work.

 

YES you can use metal in MWOs, ANY type of metal in fact, it does not matter Copper, Steel, Aluminum, real SS Etc. [ I do it all the time when I want to soften butter, melt chocolate etc ]

 

The basic rule is to have the food you are trying to heat exposed to the MW energy, so you need a sufficient quantity of food and a pan or bowl with lower sides is better with a large opening and the metal container should not touch the sides or door.

 

Now all that said, food will cook faster and more evenly in containers that are invisible to MWE, so Corning-ware and other glass etc are still better overall.

 

John

 

[kate1]

I have an old Revereware Microfryer that’s aluminum and was designed to be used in the microwave. It looks basically like a normal frying pan, with two small handles on each side instead of a long one on one side and it has a heavy glass lid. I’ve never personally used mine in the microwave, I actually very rarely even use my microwave, but I love it for stovetop cooking. It’s pretty old too, it was something out of my mother’s hope chest that she never used so it has to have been purchased in the 70s or very early 80s.

 

[foraloysius]

I guess it depends on your microwave. My Panasonic microwave oven combo has a flat bottom with the antenna under it. That makes it impossible to use metal pans and bowls in it.

 

[combo52]

Reply #3

Hi Louis, your MWO should work just fine with a metal bowl or pan as long as you don't cover approximately more than 50% of the ceramic floor of the oven.

John

 

[foraloysius]

Well, perhaps, but the antenna is only in the centre of the bottom. And you put the bowl direct on top of the glass bottom, there is no rack when you use the microwave function so there is hardly any space between the antenna and the bowl. I'm taking no risks.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Points to Kate For Knowing What the Pan Is

I remember those Revere Microwave pans that let you use the pan on the range top to brown food then  cover it with the glass cover to finish it in the microwave since the way the waves bounce off the cavity meant that they would get to the food in the metal pan. There were two styles:  the stainless steel pan with the copper clad base and the plain one with the aluminum disc base. They occasionally show up on eBay, usually minus the glass lid and sometimes with a stainless steel cover to really seal out those pesky microwaves, but most people microwaving are using the plastic disposable container the frozen stuff came in. They are not the ones doing real cooking and few people know what these are for anymore. One thing that I do wonder about is that Bakelite is opaque to microwaves and will get hot in a microwave oven, so how was it used safely in the pan handles but maybe with so much metal in the pan, it did not get hit enough to get hot?

 

[earthling177]

I've been using metal in the microwave since the mid-80's.

There are a few things to be careful with -- a lot of people forget that carafes with the metal band to hold the handle is not a closed circuit, and it might melt the handle for example.

But I've been using aluminum foil (particularly for shielding) for a long time.

I would suggest reading the user's guide -- there are a lot of microwave ovens out there where if you don't have a pretty good "load" to absorb the microwaves they'll reflect back into the waveguide/magnetron and cause damage. I had never seen anything like that until we rented an apartment in the late 90's and we put a glass with about 1/4 cup of water in the microwave to bloom saffron (something we've done with nukers a lot before then) and within 10 seconds of operation a giant arc and plasma formed inside the cavity and we had to press cancel pretty fast. Never seen anything like that with other microwave ovens either, but it's good to be aware of it if you're using a very large shield, which the metal pan for the chocolate might be.

Another thing to take into consideration is why the need for the stainless steel vessel?

People have been melting chocolate in nukers for a long time -- we usually just use a thermal-shock resistant container, like John mentioned Corningware above. It's faster and safer anyway.

Either way, when in doubt, add a glass with about 250 ml / 1 cup of water along with the other food to help absorb some of the energy, and take it into consideration that the added load will slow down the melting of the chocolate.

Have fun!

 

[DADoES]

 
Not the same thing as a vessel but my GE OTR (non-convection) has two chrome racks to handle two or three levels of dishes.  I usually don't have either in-place.  They do get a smidgen warm.

Using pieces of aluminum foil to shield some types of dishes or food from overheating/overcooking, such as the corners of a rectangular or square dish, has long been a thing.

I heated aluminum-tray TV dinners (with the foil cover removed of course) in our 1979 WP many times to no disaster.  Plastic trays apparently debuted circa 1986.

 

[foraloysius]

Here's the inside of mine. The antenna is under the circle on the bottom. Bowls are placed on the bottom, there is no rack.

 

[combo52]

Cooking In Metal In A MWO

Hi Louis, Your MWO is perfect for metal as long as you observe the cautions I laid out above,

 

Many, many MWO are built like yours where all the MW energy comes entirely from the bottom, it really makes little or no difference where the MWE enters the cooking cavity.

 

John

 

[DADoES]

 
This discussion led me to an experiment this morn.  I left a stainless flatware spoon in the coffee mug for two microwaved scrambled eggs.  No sparking, no (apparent) damage, and the eggs cooked ~20 seconds quicker than usual.  Coincidence, or did the spoon act as an antenna to pull more energy directly into the mug?