The beauty of modern microwave ovens is that they can take the guesswork out of cooking or reheating your food. In the past, you needed an oven or a stovetop to cook food, and you had to do so without much in the way of precision. Sure, you could employ a kitchen timer, but set the burner or oven temperature too high or too low, and you could end up with an unsatisfactorily overcooked or dangerously undercooked meal. Unlike in a restaurant, at home you can’t simply just send the food back for further cooking. You can’t blame anyone but yourself.

Making Popcorn Is Easier Than Ever

Then again, with a microwave oven you don’t have to. If you’re all set to watch the latest DVD release at home with a bag of popcorn, with modern microwaves you can simply throw in the bag right side up, press the popcorn setting, and wait a few minutes until it’s all heated and popped up to perfection. The precision of the popcorn setting is one thing that makes microwaves stand out from ovens or the stovetop method of cooking popcorn. The latter has long since gone out of fashion though some stalwarts stubbornly persist in cooking it on the stovetop.

Eat, Reheat and Repeat

Another convenient aspect about microwaves is the ease with which you can reheat a meal a day or two after it was first cooked. Sometimes, you just have too many leftovers than you know what to do with. You can give some away to friends or neighbours, but you’ll likely be keeping a fair share of that food for yourself. So, you wrap it up or put it in reusable containers until the next time you want to eat it. When you do, cue in the microwave. You need only put the food on a plate or in a bowl, slide that dish into the unit, set the time…and wait. It’s so easy, it’s ridiculous.

It also works for coffee or tea, too. It’s all too easy to get distracted after pouring a cup, and when you finally make it back to it, it might be too cool to enjoy. Well, take that cup and put it in. You’ll likely only need a short warm up, but that’s what manufacturers of microwaves expect. You can just press the thirty-second timer on most microwaves and pull that reheated cup out, and enjoy coffee or tea as warm as it was when you first brewed it. In this way, microwaves can come to the rescue at any time, day or night, whenever procrastination dooms your liquids to lukewarm status.

Good for Cooking Everything Else

Of course, microwaves are also incredibly useful for uncooked foods as well. Most of them have Smart settings that can be used for many different types of food. There’s no need to memorise cooking temperatures anymore. You can even use microwaves in conjunction with regular ovens or stoves, to preheat or defrost items prior to cooking them as part of the main course. They just make life easier, which is what technological progress is all about