We use our microwave daily to warm food, but here are a few things you might not know you could do easily with your microwave:
- Cook Bacon – put your bacon over the top of an upside down bowl sitting on a plate. Cook for about 5 minutes. The plate will catch the grease.
- Steam Milk – place about ½ a cup of milk I glass jar and shake it. Microwave for about 30 seconds and you will end up with steamed foamed milk.
- Citrus – microwaving an orange, lemon or lime for about 30 -45 seconds will let you squeeze out a lot more of its juice.
- Garlic – You can roast garlic in the microwave. it takes about 1-2 minutes.
- Toast nuts – coat nuts in a oil and place them in a bowl. Microwave for 1 minute, stir, 1 minute, stir and repeat each minute until roasted. It usually takes about 5-7 minutes.
- Clumpy Brown Sugar – remove clumps from your brown sugar by covering a bowl of brown sugar with a wet paper towel and microwave for 20 seconds, stir and repeat if needed.
- Tear free Onion slicing – cut off the top and bottom of your onion, microwave it for 25 seconds. This will cut back on the tears.
- Soaked Beans – if you find that you have a recipe that needs “soaked beans” but you haven’t soaked them yet, you can put them in the microwave. Place 1 cup of dry beans in 3 cups of water. Microwave them for 15 minutes and then allow them to sit in the water for about an hour.
- Shuck Corn – cut one end off the unshucked cob, microwave for 30 seconds and then pull the other end off.
- Clean your sponge – put your soaking wet sponge in the microwave for about 90-2 minutes to kill germs.
While we're talking about things you can microwave, lets remind you of a few you should NOT microwave:
- Aluminum, tin foil, silverware, plates with metal trim and the like.
- Grapes, hardboiled eggs and water - they could all explode when you open the microwave door. (My friend had a hardboiled egg explode in her face when she opened the microwave door. It really can happen. She had to wear an eyepatch for weeks)
- Styrofoam and plastic containers - they melt
- Hot peppers - they could catch on fire.
