Finding the chase and cutting to it

Learning how to make good use of our microwave to reduce our power consumption while cooking has highlighted just what we were missing out on in terms of the unit being an extra pair of hands in the kitchen, almost a sous chef.

It should be noted we bought the microwave in 2017, as our previous combination microwave had failed after 15 years. I have had three Panasonic Inverter microwaves and wanted one with a steam function. When it came to this replacement, I bought the NN-CS894S.

I had made use of stage cooking with the microwave and standing time with our previous models. You know those ready meals from the supermarket that have heat on high power for 3 minutes then stand for 2 minutes. But this was not exploiting it to the full! You can put a delay start and a delay end: when I do fish and vegetables. This is how I get to do this in a single pass: when the potatoes go on to start boiling, I set their timer for 12 minutes. I then delay stand the microwave to come on with the second stage of high and the time the fish is going to take, with a two minute stand to time the fish to be ready as I drain the vegetables and serve up the meal.

This version came with a manual with some pre-prescribed “recipes” that combined different functions, such as multimode and delays. This is not uncommon in more recent machines, but the beauty with ours is we get to do this ourselves, we just had to work out how to do this.

One of the things that is quite tricky, is that it has icons instead of labels for the controls. If you use the microwave daily, that works well, but we didn’t use the microwave frequently when we first got it and setting the clock is buried under a couple of menu choices, as are the self-cleaning functions!

I’m not convinced that you should need to have the operating manual to work out what is going on!

But it was worth persevering, and I did that by working through the recipes in the back of the manuals. Each microwave is an evolution and this latest one we use instead of an air fryer. It is convection oven has a big fan, so with the right basket, you have all that functionality and capability too.

Newer versions have included far more predefined recipes. The roasting method I use for our Sunday roast chicken is now such a recipe, all you need to do is pick the “Auto sensor” recipe for a Roast Chicken and enter the weight for your chicken.

Cooking a 600g lasagne is done in 8 minutes. Some of these recipes work without the need to preheat first. Like a lasagna recipe, fresh pasta is your friend if not pre-heating.

It all looks like a great deal of faff! And for what?

If you are working full time, raising small children, and can afford to do differently: such tooling may be optional, a nice to have.

But if one of those things is missing, money, a little free time, then the rewards cost in.

Running the microwave at the same time as the convection oven instead of just a convection oven costs in for doing a roast chicken. I did a 1.625 kg chicken today with roast vegetables for 43 minutes. That’s as quick as doing it spatch-cocked, for a fraction of the effort, and the vegetables were done at the same time. Doing the same chicken traditionally in a fan oven would have been 1 hour 36 minutes.

Plus that chicken was moist in the middle and brown, crispy skin. Just like a traditionally roasted chicken. We had it with roasted carrots, potatoes, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, leeks, baby marrow, and baby corn. That’s 8 vegetables and a portion of meat served from out of the fridge and on to a plate in less than an hour for three adults and loads of left overs for the week.

Then there’s things like pies. We’ve moved to cooking from scratch, but if there’s one thing that kind of food is, it is quick. One pot to wash up, multistage cooking but otherwise, painless. 21 minutes of cooking, and 10 minutes of prep, if you peel the potatoes.

Soups are revolutionary. A stick blender and a litre pyrex jug, and the washing up is minimal. The stilton and celery soup I made last week was brilliant in colour, texture, flavour, and scent, in 18 minutes of getting the vegetables and herbs out of the cupboard and having soup to eat. Carrot and coriander soup in 13 minutes, and that has much less prep time. No faffing with a tetra-pak or bottle or can, just fresh vegetables.

All the washing up disappears in to the dishwasher too. Midweek cooking is nutritious and easy.

I make the most delicious flans, but what with standing the pastry then baking the entire flan is looking at 80 minutes of hard cooking. With the “turbo-cook”, a Quiche Lorraine can be baked in 7 minutes instead of 35-40! This brings our 5 minutes to make the pastry, 30 minutes to stand in the fridge and 35 minutes to cook down to 42 minutes. It does help if the proportions are right, that took more time to master. (Pre-packed pastry means it’s significantly less time, I just like doing everything from scratch).

Even if we’re not using the microwave function, the small oven heats in nothing flat. When there are fewer than four people in the house, it is our preferred method for cooking one thing in the oven. Yes, it will do a 2kg chicken comfortably, but there is not enough room for a few racks above or below it. Size does have its limitations.

We chose not to build it in. That gives us a service to warm plates on with wasted heat. I do this for the roast dinners and flans. When we get the kitchen done, I am really keen the microwave has that space to warm six plates.