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Last Updated: Feb 18th, 2008 - 14:39:01 |
Microwave Cooking Tips
Are you famished and think you’d faint if you did not grab a bite in minutes? Help is at hand with microwave that guarantees a highly nutritious and tasty meal within minutes!
You just can’t think of a kitchen without a microwave oven. Microwave is one of the greatest kitchen tools that adorn almost all modern-day households across the globe. You can cook all kinds of recipes ranging from simple, everyday recipes to specialized gourmet recipes within a very short time in your microwave.
The biggest plus point of microwave cooking is that you use extremely little or no oil/fat and do not have to add much water while cooking. The microwave basically steams your vegetables, fruits, fish or meat by utilizing the trapped natural water molecules in the food as well as pulls off excess fat from the meat items too. So you are serving tastier, healthier, highly nutritious and low-fat meals cooked in the microwave.
To make your microwave cooking experiences more satisfactory and exciting here are a few useful tips that you can keep in mind while cooking your favorite dishes in the microwave.
• When you use aluminum foil to shield various parts of your food from getting overcooked while cooking in the microwave make sure that the amount of food is always greater than the amount of foil used to cover the food to avoid arching of the foil. The percentage ratio of food amount to foil amount must be generally 80%: 20%.
• Make use of round dishes while cooking in the microwave to facilitate uniform heating and thus better cooking of food.
• Always add salt to the microwave cooked food after the cooking is complete. Salt tends to draw out the trapped water from food if added before the completion of cooking and hinders the microwaves from cooking your veggies or fruits or meat optimally.
• If your microwave does not have a carousel feature to automatically rotate your foods while cooking then you must stir, rotate and rearrange larger amounts of food such as turkey, beef steaks, whole vegetables, fish, etc. occasionally while cooking in the microwave to prevent “cold spots” in your microwaved food and facilitate even cooking.
• Food items must be arranged in an appropriate manner for even cooking in the microwave. When you are cooking several pieces of food together arrange all the pieces in a single circular layer leaving a gap of 1 inch between each piece. Avoid cooking food in a pile. Also try to keep the food pieces more or less equal in size and shape so that they cook more uniformly.
• While cooking in the microwave make sure that the dish is covered properly with a lid or plastic wrap. Always make provisions for the steam to escape from the covered dish. So you can make holes on the plastic wrap or loosen the lid while cooking.
• A thumb rule in microwave cooking that you must follow is the’6 minutes per pound rule’. According to this rule 6 minutes per pound will cook most foods including meat, poultry, fruits and vegetables. Fish and other seafood take lesser time to cook in the microwave. So set the cooking time of the microwave according to the type of food you are cooking.
Do not overlook the importance of standing time in microwave cooking. You can expect your foods to continue cooking even after the food is taken out of the microwave for say about another 5-20 minutes or so. This should be taken into consideration especially while cooking large and thick or dense foods
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