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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hi brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and this is another classic episode.

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Speaker 1: The modern kitchen contains some amazing technology, from refrigerators to

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Speaker 1: air fryers, but when it comes to cooking, the microwave

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Speaker 1: is often looked down upon. But with enough care you

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Speaker 1: can use it for lots of things. You can even

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Speaker 1: cook a steak to a perfect medium rare. Here's how

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Speaker 1: it works, Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb. Here. For

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Speaker 1: convenience in cooking, a microwave oven can be tough to beat.

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Speaker 1: The common kitchen appliance introduced for residential use in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, can cut down on the time and electricity

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Speaker 1: necessary to cook or reheat food. But despite its many benefits,

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Speaker 1: can a microwave oven match its other cooking counterparts in

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Speaker 1: all ways? Frozen dinners and revitalized oatmeal or one thing.

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Speaker 1: A prime cut of beef, often considered a paragon of

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Speaker 1: traditional cooking methods, is quite an other. On a stovetop, sure,

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Speaker 1: in an oven, you bet on an outdoor grill, heck yes,

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Speaker 1: But can a microwave oven cook a steak to a

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Speaker 1: perfect medium rare? A discussion on the online forum chef

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Speaker 1: Talk spans six years with little consensus aside from a

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Speaker 1: shared sense of outrage, disgust, and perplex miunt. Though other

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Speaker 1: precision and science based cooking techniques suvied and various molecular

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Speaker 1: astronomy approaches, for instance, have captured the imagination of professional cooks,

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Speaker 1: microwave cooking has not. We spoke with E. J. Hodgkinson,

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Speaker 1: the executive chef of King and Duke, a meat focused

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Speaker 1: restaurant here in Atlanta, Georgia. He said, I have never

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Speaker 1: attempted to cook a steak in a microwave. I did

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Speaker 1: once witness a chef use a microwave to cook a

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Speaker 1: steak two well done after removing it from the grill.

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Speaker 1: I promptly resigned from my position with that restaurant. If

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Speaker 1: you're going to consider trying to cook a steak two

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Speaker 1: medium rare in a microwave, it's important to know how

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Speaker 1: a microwave oven works. On the electromagnetic spectrum, microwaves sit

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Speaker 1: between radio waves and infrared radiation. Water, fat, and sugar

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Speaker 1: molecules absorb waves in this frequency. Thus, microwaves excite the

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Speaker 1: substances very molecules, producing heat, The adage that microwaves cook

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Speaker 1: from the inside out isn't exactly true. Microwaves do penetrate

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Speaker 1: deeper than the surface of a food, but they have

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Speaker 1: difficulty going deeper than an inch or so. Think of

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Speaker 1: how a microwaved beverage can be piping hot on the

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Speaker 1: exterior but still just sort of warm in the center.

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Speaker 1: Microwave ovens also cook food unevenly and unpredictably, a factor

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Speaker 1: somewhat mitigated by microwaves with rotating plates or by cutting

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Speaker 1: food into small, even sized pieces, though that's the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing you'd want to avoid if looking for an

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Speaker 1: even consistent medium. Rare Hodgkinson said proteins like steak benefit

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Speaker 1: from intense exterior heat, both in the caramelization of the

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Speaker 1: protein and the texture achieved in the proper preparation. The

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Speaker 1: benefits of cooking on grill and open flames are vast,

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Speaker 1: though I may be a little biased. His restaurant, By

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Speaker 1: the Way, cooks its New American Fair over an open

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Speaker 1: wood burning hearth, he continued. Cooking over wooden charcoal specifically

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Speaker 1: gives a depth of flavor that is simultaneously unique and nostalgic.

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Speaker 1: Proteins and vegetables alike take on wonderful characteristics when treated

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Speaker 1: and manipulated appropriately over open flame. That said, if a

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Speaker 1: microwave is your only option, you may not be entirely

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Speaker 1: out of luck. The New Magic of Microwave cookbook, published

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Speaker 1: in the Food Looking Heyday of nineteen seventy eight, suggests

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Speaker 1: using a browning dish or grill pan designed for a microwave,

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Speaker 1: which can mimic some of the exterior browning achieved through

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Speaker 1: traditional cooking. The strategy involves preheating a browning dish in

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Speaker 1: the microwave for seven minutes, then placing an eight ounce

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Speaker 1: that's two and thirty gram rebi steak on the plate,

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Speaker 1: cooking on high for one minute, flipping the steak, and

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Speaker 1: cooking for another minute or more if needed. The cookbook

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Speaker 1: also recommends limiting the stake's thickness to no more than

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Speaker 1: three quarters of an inch that's about two centimeters, and

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Speaker 1: using a room temperature piece of meat. Food Beast recipe

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Speaker 1: suggests a similar method, but instead proposes using the medium

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Speaker 1: setting on the microwave oven for juicy nous purposes. However,

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Speaker 1: because all microwave ovens vary, you may want to do

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Speaker 1: an experimental run before trying this method out for your

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Speaker 1: next dinner party. Oh and by the way, the cooking

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Speaker 1: possibilities of microwaves were discovered by accident. Percy Spencer, a

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Speaker 1: radar researcher, noticed a candy bar that he had in

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Speaker 1: his pocket melted after he stood in front of a magnetron,

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Speaker 1: an electric vacuum that creates high frequency radio waves. Spencer

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Speaker 1: subsequently tested his observation with popcorn and an egg, and

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Speaker 1: microwave cooking was born. Today's episode is based on the

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Speaker 1: article and you microwave a stake to a perfect medium

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Speaker 1: rare on house to works dot com, written by Christopher Hassiotis.

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Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with

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Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.

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