Reheating food in a microwave often results in an uneven temperatures throughout your food. In fact, those temperatures can vary up to 150 degrees. To avoid this problem, you need to locate the hot spots in your microwave and place your food accordingly. Wired Magazine has discovered you can do this easily by nuking a plate of Marshmallows:

Cook a tray of marshmallows in your oven. In the hot spots, "the marshmallows puff up and melt, and in the cold spots the marshmallows don't change much," says Lou Bloomfield, professor of physics at the University of Virginia. If there are too many hot spots, your best strategy is to keep your food moving, which is why most microwaves have turntables (one study showed these can increase the temperature uniformity by 40 percent).


If you have trouble keeping your food in a place where it will always hit the hot spots, just avoid placing it in the center. That pretty much guarantees not variation. As previously noted, the edge of the microwave is almost always your best bet.


Photo remixed from originals by John Morgan and Wired.

Microwave Food Evenly | Wired

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