Microwave oven today is available in almost every kitchen. The biggest advantage of microwaves is the ability to quickly warm up and cook food.
Important Features of the Microwave Oven
What are the main characteristics of a microwave oven? How to choose the model that best suits you, and not too hard on the family budget?
Volume of
The volume of the internal chamber of the microwave oven can vary from 12 to 50 liters. Furnaces of small volume will suit rather for single people who do not need to prepare a lot of food, respectively, a large family needs to buy a microwave with a large capacity.
Many people think that in any case it is better to take a microwave with a large internal camera, but this is not so. If you often use an almost empty microwave oven, it may break down. With the same capacity, a large stove will spend more energy. In addition, for a large microwave oven, it is much more difficult to find a convenient place in the kitchen to install it.
For an average family of 3-5 people usually quite enough stove with a volume of 20 to 30 liters.
Power
The high power of the microwave oven is also not very necessary. Of course, with more power, food will warm up faster, but the difference will be quite small. But when cooking or warming up at maximum power, food often dries up, or it can burn out. In addition, the consumption of electricity increases.
On sale there are furnaces with a capacity of microwaves from 500 to 1500 watts. However, for almost all domestic needs, 800-900 watts of power is enough. More powerful microwave ovens are much more expensive, and it is possible that you will never need this power. The small power stoves, less than 700 watts, can be effectively used only with a small volume( less than 20 liters).
Grill and convection
In case you plan to cook a grilled chicken or other similar dishes in the microwave, where an important element is a crusty crust, you should definitely purchase a stove with a grill, since classic microwave ovens can not achieve the same effect.
Built-in grills can be made of quartz or ten. Quartz differs in that they occupy less useful space, practically do not need to be cleaned, and they heat the air faster to the required temperature than the tempered ones. Tan grills can also be pulled out of the microwave, if necessary, while freeing up space. Some furnaces with a grill are also equipped with a lower infrared heater, it becomes a wonderful addition to the quartz grill.
The convection function allows you to cook food using hot air circulating around the dish. Simply put, this function brings the microwave closer to the oven, and it's already possible to bake pies and other pastries in such an oven. However, according to very many housewives, before a real oven, the microwave oven with convection still does not hold, and baking really delicious pies and buns is much more difficult.
Controls
There are three types of control in microwave ovens.
Mechanical is the simplest option, just turn the knob for the time you want, and the other handle for the power you need. But on a microwave with such control it is impossible to create any complex program.
The stoves with touch and push-button control are usually equipped with an electronic unit that allows you to set the programs of one or another degree of complexity, and also has several built-in programs( defrosting, cooking in different modes, etc.).The sensor system is usually used with more complex and multifunctional control units, but it hardly tolerates jumps and voltage drops, which we have quite often. A simpler and more convenient option would be a button control system.
Microwave oven is an excellent assistant in any home or office, with it you can spend more time on more attractive matters than cooking.