Microwave Cooking

Microwave cooking heats food by inducing its polar molecules to rotate, producing heat directly inside the food through a process called dielectric heating, rather than heating it from an outside source. The effect is fairly uniform only in the food's outer one to one and a half inches, and because microwave ovens rarely reach the temperatures needed for Maillard browning reactions, they usually cannot brown or caramelize food. For this reason microwave cooking has a limited role in professional kitchens and is used mainly for quick reheating and cooking rather than for the flavor-building reactions that frying, browning or high-heat baking produce.