On Monday morning when I cooked my porridge the microwave blew up. I had to open the window and use a hair dryer to disperse the smoke. It was over 7 years old (Samsung ME733K from Argos 6 July 2015 £49.99) but I never thought its life would end like that! I drove to Asda Fareham to buy a new one and came across a George Home Flatbed one for £50 which means it had no turntable. I liked that idea because turntables are a pain in the ass. They limit the size of the rectangular containers you can use to cook food, often slip and they stop turning so the food doesn’t cook properly and they have to be kept clean. I bought it even though it only provided 700w of cooking power. My old one provided 800w and I thought I would therefore have to change all the formulas I use to cook my food but not having a turntable seemed to be worth the trouble to me.
Having used it for several days now, I do think it is wonderful because it cooks the food thoroughly by turning the microwave gun underneath the bottom instead of by turning a turntable. I read a review which said it didn’t do things like potatoes very well because the bottoms ended up soft while the tops remained hard. However, with this kind of food all you have to do is cook it inside the smallest possible sealed container so that steam envelopes the food as it cooks and makes sure it is heated all over! I usually use a container with a 1L capacity for this purpose. It works well for cooking raw fish too – just cook on full for 3 minutes whatever kind of fish it is. I tried this on a fresh salmon for Christmas lunch and it was delicious.
The only valid disadvantage I could find for a flatbed microwave is the cost, and the George Home 20L Flatbed Digital Microwave only cost £50, so I cannot understand why they bother to sell microwaves with turntables any more!
The 700w power turned out not matter because I didn’t have to change any of my cooking formulas. This was apparently because my old microwave had become less efficient over time and wasn’t delivering 800w any more! Also the old one used 1400w of electricity power to produce 800w of cooking power which is an efficiency of 57% whereas the new flatbed uses 1150w to produce 700w which is an efficiency of 61%. Combined with the fact that I didn’t have to change any of my cooking formulas, that means the average amount of electricity I use each day for cooking will actually reduce from 710wh per day to 575wh per day.
Also I can now use a much larger rectangular container for cooking larger amounts of food as it only has to fit into the space available of 290x260x180 (mm width, depth, height) which is 11.4×10.2×7 in inches. This will be useful when I cook a load of rice for the week. I put 300ml of brown rice into a 4L container, add 5 cupful’s of boiling water, clip down the lid and cook for 5 minutes @ 100% and 35 minutes at 30% which produces lovely fluffy rice every single time. I always rinse thoroughly to remove most of the starch and arsenic. I then keep this is the fridge in a 2.2L container and use 240ml of rice for each meal that I need it for. That give me 9 portions of rice before I need to cook some more. I boil the water in the kettle because a kettle is 100% efficient and therefore uses less electricity than the microwave would because it is only 61% efficient. Always use a kettle with a flat bottom over the heating element so that you need only boil the amount of water you want. It is totally pointless to fill a kettle to boil some water and then only use only a portion of the boiled water!
I therefore strongly recommend that you convert to a flatbed microwave next time you have to buy one and that manufacturers stop manufacturing microwaves with turntables now it is clear that they are totally unnecessary.
Multiple programs
For example if you want to cook 500g of potato in a sealed container for 5m@100% & 10m@50% you press:
- Microwave (which shows P100)
- Start
- Up Arrow until 5:00 comes up
- Microwave (P100), Microwave (P50)
- Start
- Up Arrow until 10:00 comes up
- Start
The cooking then starts by showing the first time set counting down and then the oven beeps when it moves on to the second time set.