Warm up food in the microwave or on the stove?
Created: 12/20/2022, 2:11 p.m
By: Stella Henrich
Microwaves are ideal for heating up ready meals or briefly reheating food that has already been cooked.
You can replace the oven in no time.
Munich – Microwaves are not just practical kitchen aids that can be used to quickly and easily heat up food at the touch of a button.
They are also energy efficient.
Because while the stove or oven takes a long time to reach operating temperature, microwaves are ready for use immediately.
A microwave uses the radiation emitted to heat the water molecules directly in the food.
That's very quick.
Energy consultant Norbert Endres
The soup is hot in no time, the ready-to-eat meal is warm and the apple strudel is swimming in the liquid hot vanilla sauce in no time at all.
Who wants to waste time cooking when you can use the microwave really quickly?
In addition, thanks to modern technology, the kitchen helpers are now really economical in terms of energy consumption.
However, according to Norbert Endres from the Bavarian Consumer Advice Center, this only applies to “warming up small, already cooked meals”,
Bild.de
quotes the energy consultant as saying.
But the longer the device runs, the more inefficient it becomes.
What to do with the food?
In the microwave or the oven?
If you want to go fast, the microwave often does the trick.
(Iconic image) © Eva Blanco/imago
microwave or stove?
Food has to be heated to kill germs - stove is an advantage
Endres sees the advantage of a stove when larger quantities of food are cooked that have to be heated to over 100 degrees.
Then a stove would be more efficient.
An argument that Daniela Krehl also sees.
The food expert emphasizes that it is often important to kill germs when cooking - for example with minced meat or poultry.
To do this, entire dishes would have to be heated to over 70 degrees for several minutes.
A microwave turns out to be impractical for this.
Off to the microwave?
With these foods, that's not a good idea
View photo gallery
For small dishes, on the other hand, there is nothing to be said against a microwave.
According to Krehl, the food does not lose any more vitamins when it is heated in the microwave than when it is prepared on the stove.
What happens to the food in the microwave?
Microwaves
-Kitchen appliances work by causing
the
water molecules in the food to vibrate.
This causes the molecules to heat up.
This saves up to 80 percent energy when heating food compared to the stove.
If you heat the food for too long, it can also burn.
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microwave or stove?
The cost of energy speaks for the microwave
Another important topic for consumers is the energy efficiency of food processors.
The costs for electricity and gas are still dramatically high, many consumers will have to pay up to 1000 euros more this year.
Everyone likes to try to save kilowatt hours in the household somehow.
The comparison portal Verivox has therefore calculated the savings when comparing the two kitchen appliances and, according to the
picture
, comes to a saving of 33 euros per year if you heat
one
meal per day in the microwave instead of in the oven or on the stove.
After all.
You can find out what consumers should look out for when buying a microwave in our product recommendations.
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