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Quick but controversial

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Why you can trust SCMP
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FOR PROFESSIONAL chefs and amateur cooks alike, the microwave oven is something of a dirty little secret. Almost everybody uses one but nobody likes to admit it.

As far as most people are concerned, they are too cheap and convenient to be dispensed with, but there are those who argue that microwaves are a lazy way to cook or take the view that 'nuking' food cannot be good for you.

Raymond Blanc, the double-Michelin-starred chef of Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Oxford, Britain, for example, is not a fan.

'Shove something plastic into the microwave and then shove it in front of the kids who are sitting in front of the TV?' he says. 'That's not an act of love, it's an act of hate.'

Be that as it may, few more than nominally equipped home kitchens today are without a microwave oven, and restaurants - which have to do many things in a hurry - can ill afford to forego the saving in time the equipment offers.

Most of us cannot imagine how anybody ever got along without one. Microwave cooking, after all, has been with us for decades.

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