[AriseAndPass]

I'm also very curious to hear how a meal can be cooked in just a microwave. I have severe food allergies and this would be great especially when I travel and stay in places that don't have a full kitchen. Can you point me to a recipe book you'd recommend, if you don't want to post the recipes here?

[adrian_b]

After my parents died so the quantities of food to be cooked became smaller I have also transitioned to cooking only with microwaves.

However, I had abandoned other techniques like frying many years ago, so the fact that using microwaves is restricted to steaming and boiling poses no problem for me.

I boil food that requires added water, e.g. rice, corn flour, semolina or other dry cereals and dry legumes, such as dry beans, lentils and so on.

I cook by steaming (in glass vessels with lids) meat, fish, invertebrates, fresh and frozen vegetables (e.g. broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, onion, cabbage and many others), certain fruits (e.g. quinces), potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, green peas or beans and so on.

Most vegetables can be steamed or boiled at full power, depending on kind and quantity at times between 5 min and 15 min, while animal food usually requires steaming at reduced power (e.g. 440 W) for 15 min to 20 min (after a short time at high power to preheat).

I drink a lot of herbal teas and I make those using a glass teapot in which I put 1 liter of water, I preheat for 4 min, I add 2 tea bags, then I heat again for 2 min. It is much more tasty than made on a kitchen stove.

Using microwaves has 2 advantages: much shorter time and perfect reproducibility.

Because I eat only food that I cook myself from raw ingredients, before converting to microwaves I wasted a large part of one of the weekend days with cooking food for all the next week.

Now I cook each day mostly what I am eating that day, wasting just 15 to 20 min at most, on average, except when some ingredients can not be partitioned in small enough portions, e.g. a packet of meat that must all be cooked immediately, when that ingredient after cooking will be kept refrigerated and parts of it added each day to whatever else I am cooking.

Every time I am buying something that I have not cooked before at microwaves, that may require a little experimentation to determine the right cooking time. However, once the time is known, it will be used forever in the future, because the results will be the same.

Once you have steamed or boiled the food ingredients that require thermal processing, they can be mixed as you wish according to any traditional recipes.

[AriseAndPass]

Wow. Super comprehensive guide, thank you so much. I'm going to try this out by cooking my rice in the microwave next time, and try and take it from there. I already did vegetables and sweet potatoes in there, but didn't think about doing rice/cereals and even meat in there.

[drran]

My native language is not English, so I cannot recommend cooking book in English.

Cooking in microwave is really simple, when you understand how to regulate cooking temperature with water, and how much time and power you need to cook meal.

Example recipe: put into a dish cup of water, half cup of rice, slice of chicken at top. Cook for about 20 minutes at 600W, or (easier) cook at 900W for 5m, to boil water, then continue to cook at about 40% for about 18m. If it undercooked: warm it again and keep warm for some time. If it overcooked or boiled out: next time add more water or/and reduce cooking time and/or power. At the end, add butter, vegetables, salt, etc. To keep the meal warm at low power and to avoid excessive drying at high power, cover the dish with another dish.

Similar recipe here: https://steamykitchen.com/22048-how-to-cook-rice-microwave.h...

[cinntaile]

Cooking entire meals by using a microwave was a trend sometime during the 70s or 80s so check out the cooking book shelves in a second hand store or eBay.