• hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works
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    12 hours ago

    I got a new fancy inverter microwave, and it’s an absolute game changer, for reheating.

    Running a traditional microwave, lower power modes are literally just lower duty cycles. Very coarse, too.

    30% power is something like “turn on high power for 3 seconds, turn off power for 7 seconds, repeat”

    Which means your good gets blasted at 1200w for 3 seconds, and then is given time to rest for 7 seconds, before starting over again.

    This is bad for things like fats and oils in food, which tends to heat up REALLY fast, and start splattering/burning the parts of the food they’re in.

    It works but could be better, smoother.

    Enter the inverter microwave. It can adjust the actual power output of the magnetron itself. So when you tell it 30% power, it will run the whole 10 seconds without cycling on and off, but it’s literally only putting out 30% of the normal full power.

    This is much more gentle on delicate foods.

    Caveat, at powers below 30% it starts to duty cycle again, I imagine because the magnetron can only operate so low before it can’t run normally.

    But still, pulsing a 30% powered magnetron on and off is a lot more gentle than a 100% powered one.

    This has made reheating leftovers much better.

    Instead of blasting it at full power, then stirring/mixing the food, and blasting it again.

    I just set it at 10 or 20%, take a quick shower, and come out to perfectly evenly reheated food. Takes 10 or 20 minutes instead of 5, but, way less work, and much better results. Win win.