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Me: Ionizing?

Expert: When the frequency of a given radiation reaches millions of cycles per second, that means it’s packing considerable energy—enough to pass through you and onto a photographic plate. With enough exposure, such waves can ionize or change cell structure—even your genetic structure, which explains why too much tanning can lead to skin cancer. Of course, the sun’s rays lose a lot of oomph while traveling millions of miles to the earth.

Me: What if the thing making the waves was close?

Expert: How close?

Me: Hiroshima close.

Expert: Let me put it this way, there’s a big difference between being hit in the head by a beach ball thrown by a three-year-old child and a fastball thrown by a major-league pitcher.

Me: Okay, so what do you say to the charge that microwaves don’t cook food?

Expert: That’s right. Microwaves don’t cook food, because food exposed to microwaves cooks itself.

Me (as I scratch my head): Perhaps you could elaborate.

Expert: Microwaves are a little odd because although they can pass straight through substances like glass and most plastics, they are actually absorbed by chemicals in food that have asymmetrical molecules.

Me: Like?

Expert: Like most fats, sugar, and especially water—that’s the big one. (Pausing I recall the Mickey Mouse-hat concept.) When these molecules absorb the waves, they begin to vibrate. This vibration causes friction with nearby molecules, and that friction creates heat—the heat that does the actual cooking.

Me: So you can cook anything in a microwave oven that contains enough of those compounds.

Expert: Yep.

Me: Okay, I got it. What about the old sales tagline about microwaves cooking food from the inside out?

Expert: Microwaves still have to penetrate food, but some foods are easier to penetrate than others. For instance, microwaves can’t penetrate a beef roast by more than a couple of inches.

Me: So you can’t cook a roast in a microwave oven?

Expert: Yes, you can. It’s just that the waves only penetrate so far. The core of the roast would cook by conduction—the old-fashioned way.

Me: Okay. Got it.

Expert: I’m not sure that you do, but I have to go.

Me: Okay. Bye, Dad.

Expert: Please don’t call me at work again.

Superheating

So, from this enlightening conversation we come to understand that anything containing water and/or fat and sugar can be cooked via microwave energy. That would seem to include just about every food on earth. The problem is a lot of the flavors we expect from food come to us via the Maillard reaction, which as we all know only results from contact with very dry high heat. Since the microwave oven itself doesn’t get hot, the Maillard reaction cannot be evoked. The water that’s on the surface of and inside the food can’t rise above 212° F (at sea level), and that’s just not good enough. In fact, the only way to brown something in the microwave oven is to—carefully—get metals involved. For instance, there are certain prepared foods that one puts inside a foil-lined sleeve before letting the waves do their stuff. That foil contraption is designed to get super hot and brown the burrito . . . or whatever. But designing such a device yourself can lead to fire and/or permanent damage to the inside of the oven, so don’t try it.

Fire can result from the super-heating of flammables such as popcorn bags. When appliance manufacturers test microwave ovens for fire containment they often use microwave popcorn as the fuel—and just to make sure there’s a fire, they insert a 10-penny nail in the bag. Since it’s dense and significantly longer than the microwave’s wavelength, the nail gets really, really hot. This is one reason microwave oven manufacturers usually discourage the use of metal containers or cooking utensils in microwave ovens.

There’s another reason. Even if the metal device doesn’t get hot enough to start a fire, it can become so electrically charged that if it comes close enough to the wall or floor of the oven it can arc. The resulting “lightning” can badly mar the oven.

The Great Popcorn Controversy