Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

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> The actual recipe section starts with the recipe for a bowl of cereal, which I am 70% sure is a joke

For years, I would get up insanely early and be the first in the office, with no-one around other than the cleaners. My breakfast every day would be microwave-cooked oats - but it wasn't quite as easy as the recipe from the book makes it out to be, mostly because of the milk.

Unlike water, when you heat up milk to a high temperature in the microwave, it behaves just like it does on the stove top: it wants to crawl out of the container and nicely spread itself everywhere.

So, I developed sort of a technique that consisted of short bursts of microwaving at full blast, then stopping and stirring, and back in with bowl. I repeated that a few times, but after I had the technique down, it didn't require much attention any more, it worked quite reliably.

The oats got cooked nicely, and thanks to the pectin of an apple that I also added in, it also thickened. (And in case you wonder, the apple's acidity does sometimes split the milk somewhat, but in most cases it doesn't.) However, there's definitely a difference in smoothness between microwaved oat meal and one that's made slowly on the stove top - the latter being much nicer in texture.

But it was a quick breakfast that I really enjoyed (with a dash of cinnamon) at my desk every morning while I was going through my email from the night before.

Every microwave I’ve ever looked at from a distance, or actually used, has the ability to set the power level, typically in 10% increments.

The typical workflow is: power button > number button 1-9

My daily driver is a bit more fancy, and has a single button to cycle through the available power settings.

For your milk oats I’d suggest a power setting around 30 to 40% and increasing the cooking time by a factor of 2.

The majority of those microwaves pulse the power on and off at intervals, sometimes very long intervals (measured in seconds!).

Good microwaves, with an inverter (see the thread above!) actually adjust the power being output. You can evenly heat a cup of liquid to any desired temp using these microwave ovens. They are well worth the few extra $s (although mine actually cost less than a fancy smart microwave!)

Sure, but you want to go as hot as possible to get the oats cooked. Besides, I wanted to be as quick as possible. Like, quick oats, you know? ;-)

The power setting just pauses the power for % time like your doing manually. I do 70% for my oats in a big bowl so the bubbles die down before the power repeats.

I would have to try that but since I never measured exact amounts, I preferred to pause upon visual inspection, as in: as soon as the milk started bubbling, I stopped and stirred.

Nah, sorry, I don’t know.

Rolled oats don’t need to be cooked.

If you want soft outs you can soak them over night in the fridge.

No heat required.

The starch in the oats get released when you heat them up which is the reason the oat meal becomes creamy. The pectin from the apples helps, too.

That isn’t an argument against my claim that rolled oats don’t need to be cooked.

No, they don't need to be cooked, you can certainly eat them raw.

What you say is true, but good microwave ovens have fine-enough power control to avoid any such problems caused by milk and also the problems caused by exploding eggs or exploding meat (which happens when you cook raw meat, instead of just reheating already cooked meat).

The great advantage of microwave ovens is that even if the first time when you cook something that you have not cooked before, you must experiment carefully to find the optimum time and power level for a given amount of food ingredients, once you have determined good values you can use them forever with perfect reproducibility and the food will be good every time and there will be no incidents with food exploding or overflowing in the oven.

I'd never make porridge with water at home - but in winter in the office I used to cover a 1/3 bowl of oats with boiling water and then microwave for just 30 seconds.

Once the oirriois cooked (it really should be already) add a teaspoon or two of salted butter to the middle and stir, then sugar to taste.

Suprisingly delicious, quick and repeatable.

I won a few people over who couldn't believe that porridge made with water would be any good, but it was a great winter staple, especially after cycling in, in the cold.

Oats with water is like oats with oat milk.

Revelation hey.

a surprising amount of people disagree with that!

It’s not milk unless it comes from the ancient traditional cows from the Milk region in France.

As a USian, I disbelieve in Geographical Indications in food names, thank you very much. There's no reason to restrict Easy Cheese vendors to cheese processors in the Easy region of Wisconsin or for Cheez Whiz to be limited to the Whiz region of Chicago. :P

My solution was to half the requested liquid for a thick oatmeal. Ok, thick is underselling it, it’ll be quite dense. Add cinnamon and chopped dates.

Another easy microwave win is polenta, I sometimes make a polenta-ish porridge with masa flour because its more nutritious and the taste is nice.

Indeed, making polenta and any other kinds of porridge is so much better than with the traditional means.

When polenta is made traditionally, you have to stir it continuously, which keeps you occupied and can even be physically demanding. In a microwave oven, you can make perfectly homogeneous polenta without any mixing (except for a few seconds, before putting the vessel in the microwave oven).

You can also bake bread in a microwave oven, and it grows tremendously with yeast or with baking powder. Even without a leavening agent, unleavened bread still grows well enough in a microwave oven, if you use excess water for the dough.

Nowadays, my standard breakfast consists of a polenta made in a microwave oven, which contains not only maize meal, but also sunflower seeds and whey or milk protein concentrate, so that it has an adequate balance of starch and protein, while also providing my daily intake of essential linoleic acid and vitamin E. After this breakfast, I am not hungry again until late in the evening, when I have my main meal.

My technique for oatmeal is to warm 1 cup of milk in the microwave with the oatmeal, and boil a cup of water in the kettle. Then add the water to the porridge and mix.

That recipe uses a tablespoon of sugar!!

I use no sugar as the apple has enough sweetness.

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