Microwave Turntable
Most of us have one or more microwave cookbooks laying around the house. It is really amazing how many full meals you can prepare using the microwave only. It’s a great way to prepare a meal quickly and efficiently. Not only that but by doing more work with your microwave that you might have done in your oven, you cut down on the amount of heat you generate from the oven, which raises the temperature of the kitchen. So whether you are cooking meatloaf, soup or a casserole, there is probably a recipe out there for you.
If you are buying a new microwave, it is worth it to look for one that comes with a built in turntable in the base of the unit. The value of this kind of accessory is that most microwave recipes call for you to take the dish out and rotate it a few times during cooking. The turntable keeps your dish constantly rotating which helps the power of microwave cook your food for evenly. Moreover, you can skip all that removal and rotation of hot dishes in and out of the microwave. This makes a turntable in the microwave a nice labor saving device.
What is also good about these turntables is that they usually reverse directions between uses. That means if you are cooking a dish that must be microwaved for eight minutes, you can cook it in four stages of two minutes each and stop and stir the dish. When you start the microwave again, the turntable goes the other direction. This also helps your food cook more evenly than if it only went one direction.
One problem with microwave cooking is this thing called "hot spots" and the corresponding cold spots. What happens is if you heat up a dish for a minute or two and take it out and stir it, part of food will be piping hot and other parts still as chilled as when you put it in the microwave. So you often have to stir the dish and then microwave it again to get all of the food cooked or heated up. A turntable positions the food in different ways relative to the microwaves being uses, which cuts down on the hot and cold spot problem.
Take some time to take care of your turntable because it works hard for you. Usually there is a round platter that holds up the food and it sits on top of a small turntable that rotates the platter using gears. You can take most of that unit out and clean it and put it back in good as new. By taking good care of that turntable, it will give you years of reliable, service helping you make great meals using your microwave oven.