If your food is unevenly heated it's probably because you need to adjust the cook time and power settings. Heating it longer at a lower power setting will let the heat spread more evenly.
Alternatively, check your microwave's wattage. I always have to adjust microwave instructions to be about 10% longer because my apartment's microwave is weaker than companies assume the standard microwave is.
✨ May better heated microwave food await you ✨
Yeah, once I started playing with power level settings, it was like night and day with cooking in the microwave.
tl;dr: skill issue
Except the food has localized concentrations of oil, fat or water or differences on overall density.
That's why you lower the power. Leave enough time for entropy to distribute the heat before dumping more energy into the food. The more heterogenous the food is, the more you need to lower the power (down to maybe even 200-400 W for mixed leftovers). And make sure all your foodstuffs are touching each other to allow heat to homogenize.
"How about I just heat the plate instead dipshit?"
But why's it gotta be hotter than the runaway nuclear reaction at Chernobyl?
My plates always stay cold lol
In the kitchen it hums with delight,
A mischievous microwave, quite a sight.
With a twist of its dial, a dance begins,
Uneven warmth, where chaos wins.
With a flicker and a sarcastic hum,
Microwave, oh marvel, where chaos is spun.
A promise of warmth, a comedic jest,
In your reheating quest, you give us the rest.
Wavelengths oh do cancel when a crest and a trough
Do meet one another and, energy, not enough
Yet center the plate, or a bowl, it’s your choice
So the food spins round the high points and molecules, excited, rejoice
magical energy, technological wonder,
Could my reheating choice perhaps be a blunder?
My mind races, my feelings are mixed;
Lasagna like magma with ice patches betwixt.
Among the other suggestions people have made in this thread, I'd like to add that just covering something and allowing the food to steam-heat makes a big difference. For instance I will usually poke a well in the middle of leftovers, put a tiny bit of water in (especially with rice, which dries out) and cover it with a plate. The water boils and heats it much better.
PROTIP: Whenever possible, shape/place the food you're heating like a donut. ( O )
Microwaves need to penetrate the food; if it's a big lump, it's hard to reach the stuff in the middle. By using a "donut" shape, you are creating more surface area, and spreading out the "middle" so it's easier for microwaves to reach all the parts of the food equally
Microwave ovens were a tech ahead of their time. It's crazy how incredibly little these have evolved though decade after decade.
Yeah but how exactly would you improve upon them. They do tell you how to do it properly, people just never bother and press the +30s button until it hits a few minutes, then complain their food is badly heated and the plate is piping hot instead.
Almost as if, and hear me out here, that's not how you reheat food with a microwave!
It's like if you want to bake something with an oven, and all you do is set it to 250°C, Fan, and leave the door open, then complain it doesn't work. And those don't even offer automated programs you could be using instead!
(now don't get me wrong, on the cheaper end there's also a whole lot of shit microwaves, but I'm assuming we're talking at least a somewhat respectable model here)
Yeah but how exactly would you improve upon them.
Put the power level in a dial, permanently there, that the user can leave at 30%. Also, write on the dial that that 100% is only for liquids.
I don’t normally stop for “cute” but this one got me. It’s super cute.
Some have sensors that will really help heat food evenly and will adjust times and power levels depending on what you're doing. Most are just default cook times, but if you haven't tried it out, it's worth it.
I watched a video the other day discussing the sensors in some Microwaves for popping popcorn. Most lower end units don't have these sensors but the ones that do, can actually make pretty good popcorn.
Don't inverter microwaves solve this problem?
I thought it was the metal fan in front of the magnetron that scattered and randomized the microwaves so there aren't any hotspots.
Inverter microwaves allow you to change the power level without duty cycling
Not directly, but they improve the low-power modes substantially, and using the low-power modes for longer times is the solution. Inverters aren't strictly needed, but they do make it better.
@[email protected], care to comment on your creative process?
Hah! Just like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.
People who have inverter microwaves, do they actually heat food more evenly or is it just marketing buzz?
dunno what an inverting thing is but I suspect uneven heating is due to different food's physics properties so uhm...
We have a Panasonic inverting one that has a flat bed (no turn table) and it doesn't heat evenly...
Thawing the pizza? of course that one edge has to be half done while we're at it!
You can't blame the microwave for the way physics works haha
Watch me
Spinny plate and letting it sit afterwards
It's an effect of how they work which is inherently uneven saved depends largely on what it is cooking or rather it's water content.
Yes a wave has peaks and valleys
Rotating reduces this short coming
And waiting allows the heat to spread
lmao!