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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. For convenience in cooking, a microwave

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Speaker 1: oven can be tough to beat. The common kitchen appliance

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Speaker 1: introduced for residential use in the nineteen fifties can cut

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Speaker 1: down on the time and electricity necessary to cook or

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Speaker 1: reheat food. But despite its many benefits, can a microwave

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Speaker 1: oven match its other cooking counterparts in all ways? Frozen

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Speaker 1: dinners and revitalized oatmeal or one thing. A prime cut

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Speaker 1: of beef, often considered a paragon of traditional cooking methods,

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Speaker 1: is quite another on a stovetop. Sure, in an oven,

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Speaker 1: you bet on an outdoor grill heck yes? But can

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Speaker 1: a microwave oven cook a steak to a perfect medium? Rare?

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Speaker 1: A discussion on the online forum chef Talk spans six

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Speaker 1: years with little consensus aside from a shared sense of outrage, disgusted,

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Speaker 1: and perplex mint. Though other precision and science based cooking

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Speaker 1: techniques so vied and various molecular gastronomy approaches, for instance,

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Speaker 1: have captured the imagination of professional cooks, microwave cooking has not.

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Speaker 1: We spoke with E. J. Hodgkinson the executive chef of

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Speaker 1: King and Duke, a meat focused restaurant here in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Speaker 1: He said, I have never attempted to cook a steak

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Speaker 1: in a microwave. I did once witness a chef use

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Speaker 1: a microwave to cook a steak two well done after

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Speaker 1: removing it from the grill. I promptly resigned from my

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Speaker 1: position with that restaurant. If you're going to consider trying

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Speaker 1: to cook a steak to medium rare in a microwave,

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Speaker 1: it's important to know how a microwave oven works. On

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Speaker 1: the electromagnetic spectrum, microwaves sit between radio waves and infrared radiation. Water, fat,

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Speaker 1: and sugar molecules absorb waves in this frequency. Thus, microwaves

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Speaker 1: excite the substances very molecules, producing heat. The adage that

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Speaker 1: microwaves cook from the inside out isn't exactly true. Microwaves

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Speaker 1: do penetrate deeper than the surface of a food, but

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Speaker 1: they have difficulty going deeper than an inch or so.

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Speaker 1: Think of how a microwaved beverage can be piping hot

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

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Speaker 1: the center. Microwave evans also cook food unevenly and unpredictably,

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Speaker 1: a factor somewhat mitigated by microwaves with rotating plates or

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Speaker 1: by cutting food into small, even sized pieces, though that's

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Speaker 1: the kind of thing you'd want to avoid if looking

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Speaker 1: for an even consistent medium. Rare Hodgkinson said a proteins

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Speaker 1: like steak benefit from intense exterior heat, both in the

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Speaker 1: caramelization of the protein and the texture achieved in the

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Speaker 1: proper preparation. The benefits of cooking on grills and open

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Speaker 1: flames are vast, though I may be a little biased.

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Speaker 1: His restaurant, By the Way cooks its New American Fair

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Speaker 1: over an open wood burning hearth, he continued. Cooking over

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Speaker 1: wooden charcoal specifically gives a depth of flavor that is

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Speaker 1: simultaneously unique and nostalgic. Proteins and vegetables alike take on

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Speaker 1: wonderful characteristics when treated and manipulated appropriately over open flame.

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Speaker 1: That's a If a microwave is your only option, you

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Speaker 1: may not be entirely out of luck. The New Magic

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Speaker 1: of Microwave cookbook, published in the Food Nooking Heyday of

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Speaker 1: nineteen eight, suggests using a browning dish or grill pan

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Speaker 1: designed for a microwave, which can mimic some of the

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Speaker 1: exterior browning achieved through traditional cooking. The strategy involves preheating

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Speaker 1: a browning dish in the microwave for seven minutes, then

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Speaker 1: placing an eight ounce that's two thirty gram rebi steak

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

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Speaker 1: the steak, and cooking for another minute or more if needed.

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Speaker 1: The cookbook also recommends limiting the stake's thickness to know

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

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Speaker 1: and using a room temperature piece of meat. At food

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Speaker 1: Beast recipe suggests a similar method, but instead proposes using

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Speaker 1: the medium setting on the microwave oven for juic 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. Part. 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 was written by Christopher

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Speaker 1: Hassiotis and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this

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Speaker 1: and lots of other topics cooked to perfection, visit our

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Speaker 1: home planet, how stuff works dot com