Stop Using the Nuclear Settings on Your Microwave

There’s a good reason for all those numbers on the keypad

Image Generated by Google Gemini Nano Banana under Human Direction

Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay famously hates microwave ovens. He’s right about how they’re almost universally abused, but wrong to heap the blame on an innocent kitchen appliance.

It’s actually our fault.

TURN IT UP TO ELEVEN

Let’s do a quick thought experiment with a regular electric oven and then with a microwave.

First, the standard oven.

1. Put an egg or a cube of tofu in an oven-safe dish
2. Crank up the oven to 200C / 500F
3. Put the dish in the oven
4. Set a timer for five minutes
5. Marvel at how badly this goes from the start and how this was a very dumb idea

Now let’s try the microwave version.

1. Put an egg or a cube of tofu in a microwave-safe dish
2. Put the dish in the microwave
3. Set the timer for only one minute
4. Do NOT set the power level but leave it on the default (10 — the highest possible)
5. Marvel at how badly this goes almost from the start, and how this was a very dumb idea

That’s basically doing the same thing in two different ovens.

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It doesn’t need to be this way. Nobody in their right mind would try the first experiment, but almost everybody does the microwave version every single time.

DIAL IT BACK

You can heat up pastry without it collapsing into a hot, soggy mess. You can defrost frozen bread that’s SHOCKER edible. You can make fluffy scrambled eggs. You can cook tofu without explosions.

Your secret weapons? The lower numbers in the Power Level section

Sure, it takes longer. But I’d rather wait 10 minutes for something delicious than get inedible rubber on the plate in under 10 seconds.

To each their own. I get it. Just give it a try.

Having to wait a few minutes more for much better isn’t such a bad thing. It gave me enough time to write this while the extra piece of grilled salmon from last night warmed up ever so slowly slowly at Power Level 4 for 20 seconds at a time.

Delish.

-30-

This was a fun break from neck deep in AI research and weeks of testing several dozen new / upgraded consumer bots.

I’ve committed to help writers — which is pretty much anyone and everyone today given the proliferation of keyboards — figure out how to use these Gen AI tools safely and productively.

These remarkable, massively educated, semi-reliable assistants can do a ton of grunt work at lightning speed, but have no morals, know how to blow things up, and frequently exhibit digital brain rot.

When they’re good, they’re very, very good. When they’re bad, they’re awful.