"FMurtz" wrote in message
...
Rod Speed wrote:


"FMurtz" wrote in message
...
87213 wrote:


"William Gothberg" wrote in message
news On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 21:23:55 -0000, mike wrote:

On 12/29/2018 10:16 AM, William Gothberg wrote:
On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:38:04 -0000, Clare Snyder

wrote:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 08:07:42 -0800, Bob F
wrote:

On 12/29/2018 6:37 AM, trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 9:23:42 AM UTC-5, Bill Gill
wrote:
On 12/29/2018 7:43 AM, William Gothberg wrote:
Shouldn't we have faster microwaves by now giving out a few kW?
They
were invented decades ago.
Higher powered microwaves would require higher powered electric
outlets, probably 220VAC (in the USA).

Also it is questionable whether higher powered ovens would be
practical for use. Getting warming times down to a couple of
seconds might not be a good idea. More speed is not always
better.

Bill

+1

That about covers it. Not sure how useful more power would be.
For
example,
last night I was thawing out a tomato sauce in a quart plastic
container.
The Panasonic has a defrost mode that uses about 30% power and
cycles that.


It gets the 30% power by cycling the 100% power on 30% of the
time.

(By the way, adjusting the level does not actually change the
wattage.
It simply means the microwave will pulse on and off at its fixed
wattage
until the desired level is reached.)

https://lifehacker.com/5974788/famil...-cooking-a-joy

That was true of the first generation of Microwaves, but the
current
"inverter" driver units actually CAN throttle the power. Inverter
microwaves are much better for defrosting AND cooking.

We've had ours for about 2 years now - replacing our original that
we
bought in about 1985.

BIG difference (but the old one would likely still be working by
the
time this one dies)

Why is it called an invertor? I thought an invertor was a device to
increase the voltage - like running 240V devices off a 12V car
battery.

And why on earth would you not want to cook on full power? I've
never
had a reason to lower the power from the maximum of 800W. I want
the
meal as soon as possible!

There's been a lot of nitpicking in this thread.

All microwaves reduce power by cycling between 0 and 100% power.
The relative power level is the duty factor of that on/off cycle.

Older microwaves switch the INPUT to the power transformer.
That also runs the filament. The time to heat up the filament
is the limiting factor in how short you can make the on-time.
You get a minimum of about 10 seconds on-time.
That minimum time is plenty to make food explode.

Better microwaves are called "Inverter" microwaves.
I believe they're all licensed from Panasonic.
When I bought mine, it seemed that all the licensees had
dried up leaving Panasonic as the only locally available units.

It's my understanding that they heat the filament independently
and can have very short on-times. Duty factor is the same as
the older microwaves, but the on-time can be much shorter.

Foods don't explode on low power like they used to.

Food is not uniform. The effectiveness of microwaves decreases
as the food thickness increases. There's a thermal time constant.
So, if you cook at lower average power for longer time,
you can warm the inside without seriously overcooking the outside
or having local boiling that makes food explode.

The minimum on-time really helps with that. I haven't had food
explode since I got an Inverter microwave. The defrost cycle
really does work well.

They're slightly more expensive, but it's worth it.

I've never exploded food on a non-invertor microwave.

Try microwaving an egg in its shell sometime.


Do it all the time, for ten seconds for one or two eggs to bring to room
temp from the fridge.

That's not cooking it.

Just noticed that Laucke also have a Super
Soft bread mix. Have you tried that one ?

I think we have totally different expectations of bread,

Yes, I have never liked very soft tasteless Chorleywood ****.

It is not entirely flavour (probably texture in my case)

Is that because you don't have any viable teeth left ?

and the only way to explain or resolve would be for you to buy(taking one
brand, tiptop the ONE) (preservative loaded)loaf for instance and for you
to replicate it in your machine.

Trying a slice of the commercial, bearing in mind that it is up to a day
since it came out of the oven then another slice a day later and then
another a day later still, up to three days and see if you can replicate
it with a machine.

Wouldn't want to, don't like that sort of bread.

My experience is that even as little as a few hours the machine loaf is
like pumpernickle compared with the three day old slice of the commercial
and even 30 minutes after baking it,it is not similar. The taste may or
may not be better in the homemade but not the way I like my sandwiches

But given that you do prefer super soft bread, that breadmix
may be worth trying given that it is presumably made for
those who like very soft white bread.

The other odd effect I have seen since the original is that
I started to keep the bread in the fridge. I don't normally
do that but did notice that on the last day in the 4 day
cycle, the last slice was a bit mouldy when the loaf was
not left in the fridge, in summer. So I started to keep the
loaf in the fridge and that stopped it going mouldy but
does make the loaf much more solid, even just overnight.
I've never seen that mouldy effect in the 10 years or so
I have been using the bread machine and have no just
finished that 10KG sack so will have to see if the
mouldy effect is still there with the new 5KG sack.

Maybe I don't cook thick enough stuff.

Yep, you vegys don't.

Or maybe they should work more on making the microwaves more even so
you don't get so many hotspots.

That's not the problem. The problem is that with something
large like a leg of lamb, the microwaves get absorbed on
the outside so that if you blast it with full power of say 2KW
you will burn the outside and leave the inside uncooked.