7 Microwave Hacks Every Home Cook Should Know

Epicurious

In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef Shilpa Uskokovic shares 7 microwave hacks every home cook should know. From poaching an egg to cooking perfectly crispy bacon, discover ways to use your microwave that you may never have known about.  You can follow Shilpa's mug cake recipe here: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/chocolate-mug-cake?srsltid=AfmBOooJc15z1yDj99wsiE3SYJo7CXSdK6_zqUi6w-AYZXSG3CyrK98G

Transcript

00:00I'm a professional chef and I love my microwave. Most of us think of it just as a box to reheat

00:05food, maybe make popcorn, but it can do a lot more than that.

00:09There are so many reasons why all professional kitchens have a microwave, so let's talk about them.

00:20My favorite button and perhaps the most powerful button on the microwave is the power button.

00:25The power button is similar to adjusting the heat on your stovetop. By adjusting the power level,

00:31it doesn't reduce the output of the power. It simply controls how many times the microwave

00:39comes on and off. If I set the microwave at 50% power for one minute, then the microwave will be

00:44on for 30 seconds and off for 30 seconds at various intervals. Lowering the power can help you cook

00:50more gently and much more evenly. And I'm going to demo that using my favorite mug cake recipe.

00:56It's basically dumping all of your ingredients in the cup. I'm stirring it together. Water and oil

01:04to keep everything nice and moist. And the fact that I can make this cake in the microwave in less

01:09than five minutes blows my mind every single time. The batter is ready and now I'm going to put it in

01:13the microwave. Three, zero, zero. And then power level, I go 50% power. It's usually 10%, 20%, 30%.

01:26That's how it works. And then start. While that's happening, let's talk about the science real quick.

01:32There is a thing in the microwave called a magnetron. A magnetron converts electricity into

01:37electromagnetic waves or microwaves. They excite all of the molecules in your food. And because it's

01:44vibrating at such high frequency, it creates a lot of friction, which generates heat, which then cooks

01:50your food. Oh, it is done. And it smells very good. Just like how you would rest a steak when you grill it

01:57and you give it time to carry over cook. The same rule applies to microwaves. It's beautiful. So my mug cake

02:03is ready. And there's whipped cream. It looks cute. This is such a good decision. Oh my god. Look,

02:09the crumb of the cake is like spongy. It's dark. There's a little bit of whipped cream that's melting

02:15on there. Cooking it at 50% power really helped me get a nice even cook. You could see when I dug in,

02:24like it's evenly cooked from edge to center. So for ultra precise cooking, use the power button. It is the

02:30most underrated button on your microwave. Another great use for the microwave is when you want a

02:38crispy garnish. For instance, you want crispy shallots on top. Maybe it's like golden garlic

02:42chips on top, but you don't want a lot of it. That's when the microwave comes into its own

02:46by acting as a mini fryer. So you can do really small quantities of things. You start by submerging

02:52your ingredient of choice, in this case shallots, in the oil. As the oil heats up, it transfers the

02:58heat to the shallots. The steam from the shallots will escape and it will continue to become golden

03:03brown and crispy in the hot oil. I put the shallots and oil in three minutes at full power. For the

03:09shallots to fry, the oil has to be at a certain temperature and it's usually between 325 and 350.

03:14So the microwave helps get to that precise temperature. You can see the change in the

03:19shallots just from three minutes of being in the microwave. They're really reduced in size. A lot of

03:25moisture has evaporated. You can see a little bit of color. They're about to start cooking and

03:32becoming golden brown and crisp. At this stage, I want to have some control over the cook. I'm going

03:37to go in in shorter time intervals, so I'm going to probably put it for like a minute. What a dramatic

03:43difference in that one minute. So many more of the shallots are brown. This is very close to color that

03:48we're looking for. The sugars in the shallots are caramelizing essentially. Most of the shallots here

03:54are perfectly brown, but I see some bits that are a bit pale. So I'll pop this back in for like 30

04:00seconds. So in under five minutes, I have lovely golden brown shallots. I'm going to hit it lightly

04:07with a bit of salt just to season them. And you can really see the golden brown and crunchy and crispy

04:13because all the moisture was driven out as they were cooked in the microwave. And then you end up with

04:18these delicate little wisps of shallots. So in under five minutes, proof right here that your microwave

04:25can be a mini fryer.

04:29Another fun use for the microwave is being able to toast small quantities of nuts. And today I have

04:35almonds to demo how cool it is. The thing about an almond is it contains a lot of natural oil. And the

04:42good thing about oils or fats is they perform really well in the microwave. And as they get heated up,

04:48the heat transfers very effectively, toasting the almond from the inside out. This works really well

04:53for any other nuts such as cashews, walnuts, macadamia nuts. I have my almonds on a relatively flat plate

05:00in a single layer so that the heat conducts evenly. And I'm going to put this in the microwave for maybe

05:06four minutes at full power and we'll break one open and see what happens. A very common way for most

05:12people to toast nuts would be on the stove top. That works, but it isn't as effective as using an

05:18oven or a microwave, for instance. On the stove top, the nuts usually only toast on the outside and the

05:25inside often remains raw. Whereas when you're using an oven or microwave, the heat penetrates from the

05:32inside out and the nuts are evenly cooked. So the almonds have been in there for four minutes and

05:36they smell really toasty. To test if they're done, I'm going to break one open. And here's one that's

05:42still pretty creamy and pale inside, so I think it needs a little bit more time. I'm going to give it a

05:47stir just to redistribute and make sure everything is evenly cooked. The food that's often on the outer

05:54edges of the plate will get cooked more than the ones on the inside. I added another 30 seconds to the

06:00cook time and these almonds are now perfectly toasted. This is the almond that was toasted for just four

06:06minutes and this was an additional 30 seconds after being stirred. Oh, in under five minutes in the

06:15microwave, perfectly toasted nuts. It may sound a bit counter-intuitive, but the microwave is also good

06:24for rehydrating. Brown sugar is very susceptible to getting hard and the microwave can bring it right back

06:30to life. Right here I have some brown sugar and you can see that it doesn't really yield to pressure.

06:36I have my bowl and I'm just going to do a little bit of the brown sugar and I have a square of wet

06:44paper towel. So it's not sopping wet, but it is quite damp. This part is important. Place a piece of

06:50plastic wrap on top so that the steam generated from the paper towel is trapped inside the bowl and that's

06:56what helps rehydrate the brown sugar. So I'm going to put this in the microwave for 30 seconds at full

07:02power. As it heats up in the microwave, all the water molecules in that wet paper towel are being

07:08agitated and it's being converted into steam, which is then being trapped by the plastic wrap. So you can

07:14see actually the steam that was created and trapped under the plastic wrap, which is a great sign. Under

07:20plastic wrap with steam always unwrap away from you. The sugar has been rehydrated thanks to that wet

07:27paper towel, but you could do the same with a slice of apple or a slice of bread as well. Without the

07:33microwave this would have taken probably a few hours, if not overnight, if I put like a slice of apple or

07:40bread or paper towel. But in the microwave it was simply a matter of 30 seconds.

07:44Another great use for the microwave is to make sauces, particularly custards, in a very easy,

07:53hands-off way. A custard, like the one we're making today, is a kind of emulsion. An emulsion

07:57is essentially taking two ingredients that may not want to always be together, like fat and water,

08:03and forcing them to stay together. Today I'm making a creme anglaise. A creme anglaise is a sort of thin,

08:09pouring custard, which is usually used as a finishing sauce in desserts. To start, I'm going

08:14to pour my milk. Then I have sugar and cornstarch, a little bit of salt. I'll whisk this to make sure

08:21that all the cornstarch is dissolved. I'm going to put it in the microwave. With this step you're

08:26essentially kind of dissolving the sugar and activating the cornstarch. This is a large volume

08:31of milk, so I'm going to do four minutes. Regular power, full power. The milk is getting hot and the

08:38sugar is going to dissolve and the cornstarch is going to get activated. You can use this technique to make

08:43similar custards, such as a hollandaise, for instance, or even a chocolate or vanilla pudding.

08:49If I was doing this on the stovetop, I would be adjusting the heat a little bit. I would be

08:55whisking constantly to make sure nothing is burning or catching. But with the microwave, I'm just standing

09:01here and talking to you. So after four minutes in the microwave, it's steaming. There's like a thin skin

09:07on top, and this is an important step when you are making a custard in the microwave, is to go in and

09:13whisk periodically. Nowhere as much as you would need to on a stovetop. I can see that the sugar is

09:18completely dissolved, but it hasn't quite thickened yet and the cornstarch hasn't been activated. So I'm

09:23going to put it back for two minutes at full power. Now that the sauce is thick into the texture I want,

09:29I'm going to add my egg yolks. I'm whisking the egg yolks in just to combine and making sure it's

09:36well incorporated. Custards rely on gentle heat to cook and prevent the eggs from overcooking or

09:43curdling. So by reducing the power level in the microwave, I'm going to ensure that the custard is

09:49silky. Power button is really your best friend. I'm really looking to just sort of pasteurize and very

09:56lightly cook the egg yolks, so I might just do 45 seconds at 50% power. That's the first 45 seconds.

10:04I'm going to give this a light whisk. It's very close to being done and you can see it looks very

10:09smooth. So I'll put it back in for about 30 additional seconds. This looks very good. It has thickened

10:19to the right texture. For how little I had to whisk, this is incredibly smooth. And at this

10:26stage is when I add my vanilla. That's it. That's the custard.

10:32That's a very impressive custard coming out of a microwave. Custards are often thought of as being

10:36finicky and very temperature sensitive, which they are, but doing it in the microwave makes this

10:41extremely easy and very hands-off. You're doing a great job.

10:48I know a lot of us cook bacon in the microwave, so it's not particularly

10:52new or a secret, but I think the reason so many of us do use the microwave to cook bacon

10:57is it makes a lot less mess than cooking the bacon on the stove top. And it recreates the same texture

11:04as oven cooked bacon in that it is crispy and evenly cooked, but in far less time. The way that I do it

11:12is line the plate with paper towel, lay the bacon across the surface, leaving a little bit of space between,

11:19and then I'm going to cover it with another paper towel and then microwave it for about four minutes.

11:24The paper towel on the bottom is going to absorb grease and the paper towel on top is going to

11:28prevent the splatters from going everywhere. I'm going to cook this at full power.

11:33Pretty soon you can start to hear a little bit of crackle pop in there because fat conducts heat so

11:39well that it starts cooking very rapidly. Something to note about cooking in the microwave, whether it's

11:45baking or cooking protein, is things may not always brown as they would in an oven because the oven

11:52is dry heat and the microwave, the steam is trapped within the cavity, but the food will still be cooked

11:59and the proteins, as in the case of the bacon, will still denature just as they would on the stove top

12:04or in the oven. And by denature, I just mean that the protein molecules in the food are broken down and

12:12realigned because of heat that's applied to them. Four minutes in and that's the finished bacon.

12:19And when you pick up a rasher, it's very crispy. You can see that it's perfectly cooked. All of the fat

12:25is perfectly rendered. On a stove top, the rashers cook not as evenly, so you get different textures.

12:32So I would say that the microwave is great if you like crispy bacon.

12:35It's very crunchy. While a lot of us know that we can make bacon, you can also poach eggs in the

12:43microwave. I think the microwave is a great tool for poaching eggs, especially if you're cooking just

12:47one or two eggs. So to poach my egg, I'm actually going to heat about a quarter cup of water in the

12:52microwave first. The water is steaming hot. You can see the steam coming out. So what I'm going to do is

12:57crack my egg into that hot water. This is an important step when you're poaching eggs. Eggs have a thin

13:03membrane. So you have to pierce them just so it doesn't burst in the microwave. You're piercing

13:10just the white, not the yolk really. After you pierce it a couple times, I'm going to cover it with

13:15plastic wrap. Similar to the brown sugar, you want to trap the steam in there. I like to use lower power

13:22just so that the eggs cook more evenly because poached eggs, you want them to be a little bit runny in the

13:28center. So cooking it at medium power at about 50% really helps ensure a good result. The eggs are

13:34cooking in much the same way as the bacon is in that the proteins are reacting to heat and denaturing,

13:41but here the eggs are steaming. They're cooked because of the steam trapped by the plastic wrap.

13:46Slightly less than a minute at 50% power and I can see the whites look opaque and there's a lot of steam

13:53built up on the surface. The eggs have to sit for like another 45 seconds just to continue cooking.

13:59The residual steam will finish the process. Now I'm going to remove the plastic wrap away from me.

14:06Just gently fish your egg out and then I'm going to transfer it onto a paper towel. I'm going to season

14:14the eggs with a little bit of salt and pepper as well. So that's breakfast. Two different proteins,

14:20bacon and poached eggs all made in the microwave. So I encourage all of you to look at the microwave

14:25as more than just a tool to reheat food and think of it as a valuable addition to your cooking equipment.

14:34Nice work, microwave. We did good together today.

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