As a cook, I have a dirty little secret: I love my microwave oven. His name is Herman, and he's a short, dark, quiet type who sits quietly on my countertop until I've issued my instructions, and then he does what he's told. He's terrific at boiling a cup of water to make the morning tea. He's great at quick-thawing stock from the freezer if I take a sudden urge to make a risotto for dinner. He can steam vegetables like a microwave with a mission.
Visit Panasonic during IH+HS in booth L12505.
Truth is, that's about all he does, really. For most of what I do in the kitchen, I never go near him. But I love him anyway. He's kind of like having a man who's really good in bed. As long as he gets that one thing just right, I'll probably forgive him for all the areas where he's just plain worthless. I just don't talk about him with my foodie friends.
Of course, I never made any actual vows to Herman, so my ears perked up when Panasonic's Julie Baumann started talking to me at the International Home + Housewares Show. (Although we explored the matter only cursorily, it does appear that, despite the coincidence of our last names, we are not related. Nevertheless, it must be said that the discussion was a bonding experience.) She told me about a microwave oven that she says will do things that would satisfy me in ways that Herman never dreamed of even trying. Braising. Poaching. Even warming – all the techniques that require cooking with constant low heat instead of just blasting the food with a quick burst of energy.
The secret is proprietary inverter technology that means that when you tell a Panasonic microwave oven to cook at 50 percent power, that's really what it does. When you tell Herman and every other microwave oven on the market that wasn't made by Panasonic to cook at 50 percent power, what they really do is to cook at 100 percent power for 50 percent of the time. They just cycle the full power on and off until the food has been nuked into submission. And of course, while sometimes that's just great, at other times, the food fights back.
The Panasonic ovens, on the other hand, use their inverter technology to cook the food with a gentle hand. They come in 1.2, 1.6, and 2.2 cubic foot models with white, black, or stainless steel exteriors. Suggested retail prices for a range of models vary according to size, finish and features but are generally competitive with other brands. Because the inverter technology is an electrical circuit rather than a bulky power source, it doesn't take up much space in the guts of the microwave oven, which means that for a machine with a footprint on your counter that's no larger than another brand of oven, you get greater capacity inside.
And since the Panasonic ovens don't cook like the microwave ovens you know and probably hate, Panasonic has teamed up with the Culinary Institute of America to develop a cookbook full of recipes for dishes like a vegetable frittata, Vietnamese pho and New York cheesecake that are possible to make in a microwave oven that knows how to cook low and slow. Julie assures me, just between us girls, that I could learn to love an oven with a slow hand. I might even call him Clark. You know, as in Clark Kent.
