I don’t use the microwave. Also I didn’t know there were different heat settings.
The power setting makes the microwave cycle between ON and OFF at the given ratio. So at 50% power the microwave will only be heating for half of the cook time.
Best my microwave can do is 650 W, 800 W, 1000 W?
Nope, pretty much all have a duty cycle. Like 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, and they keep repeating that or similar for however long the cook time is. If you listen closely you can hear the magnetron kick on and off.
I believe Panasonic was the only company that sold an inverter microwave that lowered the power output.
Okay, but I can’t set any percentage. I can set watts and a time.
Oh that’s cool. I’ve never seen one where you can set the wattage. Mine does duty time as well for power level which is also how my electric range heating elements work.
Every microwave I’ve ever seen was like this.
Is this some EU vs US thing?
I’m in Australia, generally, we have cooking instructions and microwaves that talk about wattage and time. Never duty cycle.
Eg a sauce packet says 600w 30sec. Press power button until 600w and put it in 30 seconds.
I know there’s duty cycles, you can hear them. I don’t know if that’s how it’s converted as a fraction of the 1500 watt maximum (40% duty cycle = 600w) but you hear it turn on and off most on the defrosting preconfigured buttons.
Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all just the same underneath with regional translations.
This is more interesting than I would’ve thought. I’m also sick right now so I may not be of entirely sound mind.
This is what I recognise as a standard Mikrowelle control panel like I’ve been using all my life:
You punch in a wattage, turn the knob to set the time, and then you press start. Older models would have a knob for setting watts too. Note the lack of a “popcorn” button.
And this seems to be the standard when I ask Duckduckgo for “microwave”:
Wot?
It might be, where I live in the US all microwaves with a power setting ask you to set the power from 1-10 (implied to be percentages/10) with no hint as to the wattage except the label so you have to hunt for it.
LG makes inverter microwaves.
Modern LG microwaves have a variable power inverter so it’s not PWM. I would imagine they’re not the only ones.
Same
Cooking in the microwave is wild to me. I’m Mexican and we treat it as a reheating machine with a clock and a bunch of buttons that do nothing.
Double time half power gang. It’s so much better. I can wait an extra 90 sec for it to be evenly heated.
deep microwave lore here
Never over 50% power. I’m always shocked by how many people don’t know how to use a microwave. I usually worked a long time on my food, I don’t want to ruin it through lazy reheating.
What do you mean, never? Do you never heat water, coffee, tea, …? Or just larger quantities where more power is no problem even for longer durations? This is not a fundamental thing, the optimum is different not just based on type, amount and distribution of food, additionally things like time constraints, container or cleaning matter.
Never for reheating leftovers, anyway, which is 99% of what I use a microwave for. I have a kettle for other stuff. Overly high heat is gonna turn your proteins into rubber and exaggerate the “flaming hot on the outside, still cold in the middle” effect. There’s also lots of other stuff like arranging things to avoid dead spots, making use of coverings to trap steam, not throwing your vegetables that will take a minute to warm up in at the beginning with the big hunk of pasta that’s gonna need several minutes to heat through, etc.
But yeah if you’re reheating your food on >50% power you are almost definitely making it turn out worse than it would be on lower power.
How does heat turn things into rubber? The meat I reheat was already cooked? Or am I always too gentle to experience that? I usually do not heat up to boiling hot since I want to eat it and not have to let it cool down first.
Again, your generalization does not make sense. 50 % of a 1000 Watts microwave is different to one with 600 Watts. Heating up a bit of leftover is different to something for multiple persons. Etc. etc.
Full 900w every time, because that’s what the package asks for. Except when it asks for 1000w.
The difference in heating is negligible, but the time saved sure isn’t. Always at 100%
That is why I do most reheating on the stove, in the oven or on the contact grill (depends on what it is).
Obviously not always an option to use an oven/stove if you are e.g. bringing a packed lunch into a typical office. It’s certainly a better option for some things (you will never get “crispy” from a microwave, period) but microwave still produces acceptable results for many things, particularly if you are willing to put some thought and care into how you use it.
Only time I use the power level selector is for poached eggs. If I’m reheating something where I actually care about how it turns out I’ll usually use the oven 😂
The dumb “nuke it on full for 90 seconds” one. No thought put into it, I just know it will be edible by my standards.
Most microwavable food is already edible because it is a dumb idea to use a microwave for much more than reheating food, because it requires time and microwaves consume a ton of power for the heat they provide. The advantage of microwaves is that they have very little heatup time which makes it good for short blasts.
“Palatable” would have been a better choice of words. I’m generally not very picky.
Learn to use the functions. Life changing. “Just nuke it” is for children and Neanderthals ✌🏻😌
Microwave for 5 minutes at 70%, no mixing or flipping just fire and forget. Go play Slay the Spire while you wait.
40% (900W microwave) at 4m30s is my default go-to for pretty much everything.
Except reheating my frozen lasagna. That’s 20% for 22minutes
I go 9 min at 50%
Lower power basically does this automatically. Do extra time on lower power and it’s way better with no additional effort required
Interesting bit of trivia. Microwaves don’t actually have “high” or “low” settings. The magnetron, the microwave’s core component, only has two states - on and off. It can’t power the magnetron at 10% power level.
Instead, the “power” settings just control how often the magnetron is activated. So maybe at full power it’s on 100% of the time. At medium it’s 10 seconds on, 10 second off. At low it’s 3 seconds on, 10 seconds off. That kind of thing. The “power” setting is just a glorified timer.
You’re not qualified for this topic. You’re only allowed to share trivia about trees and erections
Unless you have a modern microwave with an inverter, which will power the magnetron constantly with varying levels of power.
Yep, that’s what I meant by doing it automatically.
Neither. I’m 2m30s or 80% for reheating a meal.
Same. Calm, long heating for the most even results. When you know what makes microwaves work, it just makes sense. But it all depends on what type of results you’re looking to get, and what type of thing you’re heating. 🤷♂️
When reheating food on a plate, I just put protein first for 30-60s, then add carbs (rice, pasta, or potato) and heat it all together for more 30-60s or until it’s steaming. Always full power.
Too complicated. Put it on the never buy again list.
I always go six minutes. Fight me.
Yep ,90 secs at 100% does it for most things in mine
I don’t use the microwave that often, but doesn’t that result in explosion all the time?
And don’t we use Watt for that instead of percent?
Mine is only 1000w so I dunno if things pop in higher powered ones. Only things that rupture at 90 secs in mine are cheap chicken franks
Rice starts popping after 5 seconds on 850W in my microwave.
Hmm. Maybe there is a frequency variation between machines. Mine is barely warm at 1 minute
I am in Germany, maybe ours work differently. :)
Yes.
See this comment by me: https://feddit.org/comment/3984361
The guy on the left except I don’t even know the amount of time since my microwave was built in the mid-80s and takes longer to cook food (not sure if underpowered when it was built or some sort of degradation took place, it just came with the house).
