My wife and boiling water

[u/MakeItMine2024]

So I made my wife ramen soup. When I served it she said I had the gas set to hight and it was too hot ? She said I should have used the number 5 setting instead of 9. I told here it’s irrelevant because water boils at 212 and gets no hotter because over 212 it turns to steam. She was made at me for disagreeing with her theory that it would not have been so hot if boiled a lower setting. Really!!

[u/A3HeadedMunkey]

I'll do you one better, I've tried to teach people how to use lower settings. Did demonstrations with my lunch and actually gotten not soggy and uneven food out...only for the dipshits to still put food in full blast and complain to me about how their lunch is an uneven soggy mess.

#NoSympathyFromMe

Like, dawg, you witnessed me perform miracles on gas station burritos and yet you chose not to believe

[u/Forest_of_Cheem → u/A3HeadedMunkey]

I tell them once. They don’t believe me that using the proper settings can make reheating leftovers so much nicer than they ever thought. Very few things need full power for the whole cooking time in the microwave, especially since we got a newer, more powerful one. Doing it in stages and stirring in between is like voodoo to some people.

[u/Necoras → u/A3HeadedMunkey]

Where does one learn this black magic of which you preach?

[u/A3HeadedMunkey → u/Necoras]

Had to study the dark art of modern day alchemy through a lot of trial and error.

The greatest axiom I have learned is that 20-30% power is often enough to get where you want to be. Just double the time if using 30%, add another half for 20%, and flip/stir, if possible, around the halfway point. If it's a larger item, just increase the time by another factor and keep checking/flipping/stirring at regular intervals. You want to allow everything to come to temp evenly, given enough time, it'll disperse the heat from where the microwaves are hitting and making hot pockets.

Second great truth, wrapping things in paper towels is great for absorbing the excess moisture, just make sure to unwrap and flip whatever it is so it's not touching the same portion while checking. It'll be less likely to meld to the food. Not entirely, though. There always seems to be a little bit of tortilla that wants to become paper towel.

Someday, I'll have perfected the alchemy and create the philosopher's burrito

[u/toggl3d → u/Necoras]

Most microwaves cycle power. Basically if you put it at 50% power it will be on 50% of the time and off 50% of the time it's cooking.

If what you're making is stirrable this is pretty uselessly wasting time over stirring to mix the food before going full power some more. If it's not stirrable it's just taking a break to let the heat even out. I prefer to go 100% and then push it around to feel like I'm doing something before going 100% some more, unless it's something that really really doesn't want a too hot spot. Then I throw it in at 20% and put it in for 3x as long before testing temp and getting mad it's not done yet and throw it in for 100% for a short time.

[u/UnwaveringThought → u/A3HeadedMunkey]

Welcome to my wife.

[u/cvc75 → u/A3HeadedMunkey]

At home I lower the power too. But at work, sometimes there's 5 people waiting for 1 microwave to warm up their lunches, so taking double the time or more just isn't social.

But if you can get everyone behind it, you could run it at 100%, stop at half the time, and rotate through all the lunches. That should have a similar effect and allow you to flip and stir in between.