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Comment by HeyLaughingBoy | Hacker News Reader

This falls into the category of "the tiny bit of extra safety I may gain is not worth the huge amount of inconvenience that it causes."

Even if I were to stop putting stuff in the microwave, that won't account for all the other foods I eat outside the home that may have had microwaving as part of their preparation process. I mean, I'll take a frozen package of ribs out of the freezer and microwave it for a minute so the surface softens enough for me to cut the plastic and peel it off before thawing or brining the meat.

No, I think I'll just take my chances and not have yet one more thing to stress out about.

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I feel like there is a bit of a cultural divide here. Microwaving is here (central europe) not part of food preperation and if it is used stuff is filled into glass containers instead of plastic packaging?

Food prep? No. Reheating leftovers? Yes. Mainly because glass containers for storing leftover food are more expensive.

We switched to glass recently and it's great. They're more durable. They don't stain. They're easier to clean. And, this is subjective, but they just feel more substantial; it's nice in a way that's hard to describe.

These glass containers will likely last forever.

They are more expensive than the cheapest plastics, but it's buy-once, so not a significant long-term factor.

Glass is heavy, doesn't stack efficiently, sticks/grinds together when stacked, and easily chips and breaks. A full glass container is too heavy to lift safely with one hand and too heavy to carry in a backpack. Glass is slippery, and because it's heavy it is also more likely to be dropped. Drop it on a counter and it cracks or chips, leaving bits of glass in your food and sharp edges that will cut you. The purpose of a container is to _transport_ things; anything breakable like glass is a poor material for something that gets moved around a lot. A plastic container will survive long after a glass container has been chipped.

Glass is fragile, dangerous, heavy, slippery, expensive, loud, and space-wasting.

Plastic containers are light, resilient, durable, portable, compact, and efficient.

The containers may last forever but the lids don't.

I don't know about most manufacturers, but IKEA sells the lids separately in part for this reason.

I also have little doubt that IKEA will be around in 10 years compared to some random Amazon brand.

We just bought a bunch of new lids for our glass containers. They are very inexpensive.

At IKEA the lids cost 50% of a container + lid; inexpensive compared to the cost of a new plastic container. I bought steel containers 20 years ago and they are still going strong expensive and better value.

Yeah but do you microwave those steel containers?

Really? We tried that about five years ago and they were very expensive (about 70% the price of getting new glassware)

Where did you buy them? Were they name brand?

Where? Are they from the manufacturer?

The lids on my pyrex bowls I bought in 1987 are still fine, although I did lose some.

The lids on my knock-off brand glass food containers have lasted several years now...

And the lids are expensive

They also get hot after microwaving, which for inpatient people like me is a deal breaker.

E: obviously I can spend extra effort to handle a hot glass container, but I'd rather deal with container without that property. Even with plastic containers there are some that gets suspiciously soft / weak after a few minutes in microwave, and then there's ones that stay sturdy and cool enough to handle. Half the point of microwave is convenience.

I just lift them at the sides, close to the top, to avoid being burned. If you're home you could also use oven gloves or paper towel or something.

Just put it on a plate?

that's what oven mits or pot holders are for...

And trivets, to prevent your kitchen worksurfaces from succumbing to the fate of a myriad ring-shaped marks. This is obviously moot if you are lucky enough to have a granite worktop :)

You can’t just put the leftovers you want to microwave on a bowl or plate…?

For most Americans, they don't have glass plates/bowls at their work. That's where enough microwaving happens that if you can't "fix" the problem there then there's no point in changing habits at home.

> For most Americans, they don't have glass plates/bowls at their work

Honest question - is there something wrong with microwaving ceramic bowls? Literally every bowl intended for eating (rather than for mixing cooking ingredients) that I have ever owned or encountered has been ceramic.

Some ceramic items shouldn't go into the microwave because they have metal embellishments or trim. Some ceramics have lead glaze, which means they're not food safe once cracked or chipped, but I can't say whether microwaving them would make them more dangerous or less food safe.

> > For most Americans, they don't have glass plates/bowls at their work

As a note, most people I've seen microwaving their leftovers at work were microwaving plastic because that's how they packaged the leftovers from home. If there aren't dishes at work, let alone a full kitchen, then leftovers are transported, heated, and eaten from the same container.

> If there aren't dishes at work, let alone a full kitchen, then leftovers are transported, heated, and eaten from the same container.

Fair! I've been lucky enough to always work in places where the kitchen has a decent amount of crockery and cutlery into which leftovers could be transferred for heating, but I can see how this could be an issue. Thanks for pointing that out!

Some ceramic bowls turn into lava in the microwave. Often when I reheat soup in a bowl, the bowl becomes hotter than the soup. The bowl is too hot to touch, yet the soup is only somewhat warm.

Some bowls are more prone to this than others, but it's not obvious and requires experimentation to determine. It's a pain.

The answer is almost certainly "it depends".

And it depends on stuff you won't be able to discover.

What do you mean by "ceramic"? Anyway, its the enamel that worries me.

True, I've seen many not even have glasses made of glass. You go to some (not expensive) restaurant, or even a house, and they bring you water in a plastic "glass".

Then you have the whole family waiting for their turn to use the microwave. Easier to just heat up all the leftovers in one go.

You can move the leftover food from its plastic storage container into a clean glass container or bowl before heating it in the microwave. You just have slightly more things to wash afterwards...

IKEA has cheap glass containers with plastic covers that can go into the microwave. I think you can also get covers made of bamboo or something that looks like wood.

I usually cover them with a plastic designed for this purpose which doesn't come in contact with food.

Microwaves are extremely useful for food prep, although for specific purposes. A lot of veggies actually do pretty well parcooking (or fully cooking) in the microwave for instance.

I use it all the time for potatoes unless I’m baking them. It shaves a lot off the cooking time with no I’ll effect

I have a set of pyrex bowls I bought in 1987 and still use. The cost difference is negligible when amortized over your lifetime. I store all my left overs in pyrex when possible.

I've never owned a microwave, instead I air-fry everything. Pretty sure this is the same trick restaurants use, especially fast-food ones. Microwaves make soggy leftovers.

Not all leftovers need to be crispy.

Microwaves work pretty well for saucy Chinese food, for example. (The alternate method is usually steaming, which is even soggier.)

How do you air fry soup, stew, chili, etc.?

You use a pot on a stove. It’s faster than microwaving.

No way is it faster. I can heat a bowl of soup up in 1 minute in the microwave. The pot is barely heated up after 1 minute in the stove, much less the contents.

Maybe it depends on the equipment. My stove can heat soup much faster than my microwave. Not to mention in the microwave you have to constantly stir to make sure it’s not still cold in the middle, because a microwave doesn’t heat evenly.

My guess is that it is a difference in volume. While a microwave is very efficient at exciting water in food, the range top is putting out a _lot_ of heat based on a 220V (in US) electric source or natural gas source.

And it makes another pot to clean.

But the warmth in the food heated on a burner is nicer than the warmth generated by the microwave (more even, cools slowly).

Maybe we slow down and expect our lunch to take 10 minutes to heat and 5 minutes to clean up?

Why?

Even for restaurants?

It appears that people are taking my remark "as a part of the food preparation process" to mean "they cook with a microwave." Whereas I meant, "take a prepared sauce or ingredient out of the freezer and thaw with the microwave before continuing with the meal."

In much the same way that I take a stick of butter out of the fridge and nuke it for exactly 9 seconds to get it (at least the bottom) to spreadable consistency. In fact, this is 90% of what I use a microwave for.

Yes. If a restaurant microwaves, it would be some horrible place meant for the equivalent of "white trash" or the kind found in tourist traps (which for tourists might be the only kind they ever try, especially if they don't bother much to see where locals eat).

There are all kinds of industrial heated plates, continuously running pots on stoves, or always on ovens, etc restaurants use to keep the day's food heated or slightly reheat it.

Please don't speak authoritatively about things of which you are ignorant.

Almost every restaurant uses microwaves for some part of food prep. Go work in a kitchen for a bit.

Indeed, the vast majority of restaurants are filthy, terrible over priced eateries where you are gambling your health. Especially after covid.

How much would you like to bet on sone Michelin starred restaurants having microwaves in use?

You'd be surprised of what I'm cognizant.

If "almost every restaurant microwaves" in one's area, they should probably move to a better area.

Though I'm not sure what you call a restaurant. Does it include fast food "restaurants" for example? Or some 2x-3x the local price tourist trap in places like Barcelona, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris (say, Montmartre) or the Greek isles?

Most restaurants use microwaves. They may not use it to prepare the entire dish (that’s reserved for mass-market faux-nice places like Red Lobster), but it’s a standard piece of commercial kitchen equipment. Reheating frozen soups, for example, usually starts with a quick zap to get the process going.

Even in the US there is definitely derisiveness towards the type of restaurant that just microwaves frozen food.

When I was a kid, secondhand smoke was everywhere. Now it is rare. If people learn, things can change.

Smoking inside public buildings became illegal where I am. Sometimes learning and habit breaking needs a push.

Most smokers I know still smoke inside their houses.

That's probably an age (culture) thing. The smokers I know smoke -- and even vape -- only outside. The oldest one is 48 but they're married to someone a bit younger.

It's an exquisitely fine gradient if one includes enough dimensions. My dad (now in his late '60s) saw the writing on the wall ca. 1990. He still smoked regularly, but realized that both smoke in the house and being seen smoking were bad for his kids. For a few years he made a nightly ritual of going out into the garage to smoke, then quit altogether.

A quick warm water bath serves a similar purpose while often giving me better results.

It was just an example, but since you mentioned it, that perfectly points out what I meant about convenience.

I can stick a package of meat in the microwave and hit a couple buttons and then go do something else instead of running water for a few seconds until it heats up, possibly having to fill the sink or a bowl and put the meat in. All of which takes more time and effort for basically the same result.

I find it more convenient to use water because I have to watch the thawing meat in the microwave like a hawk; it’s very easy to cook the edges on accident. The center also stays more frozen. To each their own.

Again, I'm not thawing meat!!! I'm making it easier to remove from the packaging.

If you're patient, you could also use cold water :) It seems to me that time management is a bigger part of food preparation than any specific technique for cutting or cooking.

>This falls into the category of "the tiny bit of extra safety I may gain is not worth the huge amount of inconvenience that it causes."

Could also be "the high adverse effects we pay for with extra cancers, higher inflammation, even lower fertility maybe, but were too preoccupied with some received idea of convenience to notice and attribute to such bad habbits".

>Even if I were to stop putting stuff in the microwave, that won't account for all the other foods I eat outside the home that may have had microwaving as part of their preparation process

Whether at home or "outside the home", microwaving is just not seen in a good light in most of Europe I know, and is seldom a thing except as a low-class convenience when you're like a student or something. Though most fellow students I knew would never go for it either, and would start to cook simple but proper food themselves after the 2nd year or so.

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