When did microwave ovens get so complicated??

[dreamshark]

Every few years a microwave dies suddenly on our kitchen counter and we are amazed to discover that we no longer know how to get through a single day without one. So we go to Costco and buy their model du jour (there is rarely more than one). According to my notes, the last two were Magic Chef, which is actually a pretty terrible brand. The first one broke within 2 years and we forgot that we never really liked it and bought ANOTHER Magic Chef. That one cost only $65 dollars and we kind of hated it, but it managed to survive for 9 years. Well, on Wednesday it finally transitioned to the Great Beyond (i.e., the alley by the garbage dumpsters) and off we went to Costco again.

This time there were no dumpy white Magic Chefs in sight, just a sleek black Panasonic Inverter Microwave. I'm pretty sure that it is a much better appliance than the last two, but HOLY SHIT, is it complicated!!  The front panel is nicely designed and deceptively simple, but that's because every button on it has multiple uses or cycles through a long list of cryptic settings. The instruction booklet is 20 pages long!! 

I guess I didn't HAVE to RTFM. I could have just used the 30-second / START button combination that is the only thing I ever did with the old one. But I was curious about the Sensor Cook and Sensor Reheat buttons, and about what makes an Inverter Microwave different from a regular one. Well, the manual is long, but amazingly uninformative. The only thing it was really good for was explaining how to set the clock and turn off the F-ing Child Safety Locks (one of which is SET BY DEFAULT, the other of which is very easy to set accidentally). But I had to turn to the Internet to figure out what Inverter Technology actually is and why I was getting no satisfaction from Sensor Reheat. 

But now that I have the child locks disabled and figured out that Sensor Reheat will never work if you follow the suggestion in the manual and cover your food with a casserole lid, I think I'm going to like this thing. If nothing else, it is a lot easier to get the glass turntable settled in place than on the old microwave. 

What settings do you use on your microwave? Have you ever tried Sensor Reheat? 

Comments

[redbird]

We used to use sensor reheat, but while it worked pretty well when we first got the microwave, sometime in the last year it became inaccurate enough that we stopped using.

Also, the "popcorn" button runs the microwave for way too long, and produces a lot of burned popcorn.

[dreamshark]

This one has THREE LEVELS of popcorn setting, apparently based on the size of the bag. Haven't tried it yet.

[pameladean]

We also have a Panasonic microwave, not more than a year or two old, I think. We use Sensor Reheat all the time, but Panasonic microwaves have had that button for a long time and I'm pretty sure that earlier models did not tell you to use a casserole lid.

I use Sensor Cook for heating up milk for hot chocolate and for oatmeal, though in the case of the oatmeal it needs to be in a much bigger bowl than you think you need or it will just boil over and make a mess. If you cut the time short, the oats are too chewy. So I just wander around eating small amounts of oatmeal in a gigantic bowl.

I also use the Inverter/Auto Defrost, or whatever it's called, to defrost frozen tempeh and other vegetarian meat substitutes. They are all fairly perishable and so expensive that I get them mostly on sale in bulk, so I just freeze them the moment I get them and thaw them for use.

It works fine for this purpose. I keep meaning to use it for defrosting fish -- wait, I think I have done that a time or two, but not for a while. It seemed to work fine.

I've also used the Pasta setting on Sensor Cook, but mostly I use a pot on the stove because I'm accustomed to it and there isn't necessarily enough water left from the microwave method to put in the sauce should it need some.

Oh, and I use the Potato setting ALL THE TIME -- it's for baking potatoes, which was also mostly clear to me because we'd had a series of these microwaves and at some point I did read the manual for one of them.

I've also used the Frozen Vegetables setting and the Hard Vegetables setting from time to time.

Oh! And the Soup setting. I get a kind of hippie-granola ramen that Does Not Advise Microwaving This Product, but the Soup setting plus sitting for a minute or two plus, sometimes, a couple of thirty-second bursts, works fine.

P.

[dreamshark]

Thanks for the detailed reply.

So what DO you use for a cover when reheating food? According to the Internet gurus there are various products you can buy for covering your food in the microwave and NONE of them work with Sensor Reheat because they block the release of steam (which is what the sensor senses).

I'm surprised that you have gotten so much use out of Sensor Cook. After reading that section it just sounded so complicated - at the very least requiring getting out the User Manual every time to look up the setting. And of course the first thing I wanted to cook wasn't in the list of 15 things. If there was some explanation of what the settings do it would be easier to extrapolate, but apparently that's a closely guarded secret.

[pameladean]

Mostly I don't use anything to cover the food. With some chickpea dishes, the chickpeas sometimes burst when reheated, so I might use a piece of waxed paper just laid loosely over the plate. Or I just resign myself to wiping down the inside of the microwave.

I kind of enjoy looking things up in the manual, I'm afraid. It probably helps too that we had a non-working oven for some months and I had to get creative.

P.

[pameladean]

Oh! And I don't know if your oven has this, and depending on the lighting where it is it may just be annoying, but if you open our microwave, there's a metal plate on the lower edge of the oven compartment, and it has a list of Sensor Cook numbers and their functions. I've memorized the more commonly-used ones, but I always have to look up what all the vegetable settings are.

P.

[minnehaha]

I virtually never clean my microwave, because it is never splotched with exploded food. (Unless someone else uses it, I guess?) I cover everything with a paper towel, which I might even re-use if feasible. I used to use waxed paper consistently for this function, until Floyd was in town and he said, "Oh, OK. Well, we just use a paper towel," and I said, "I never thought of that. Sure."

This does result in my going through more paper towels that I like, but overall I am happy with this scheme.

K.

[minnehaha]

Ahhhhaaaha. Excellent on the 30 sec. button. See comment, next post.

K.