I know there's a race to make electronics smaller, but this is this a little ridiculous. Inventorspot reported today on the world's smallest microwave, which made its debut at this springs Chicago International Home and Hardware Show.

The IWaveCube is so named because of its dimensions: about one cubic foot. That doesn't leave a lot of cooking space. I mean, what are you going to cook in it? The only place where I can see this being useful is in an office break room. I gather that people in an office setting generally only need to heat up small portions of food or cups of coffee, and the IWaveCube could handle that without taking up too much space.

No word on when it'll be available, if it's not already. Do you see this being a useful new kitchen tool?

Bread is a miraculous thing. It's delicious, it gives you energy, it softens your cookies, and it can help you de-clump your brown sugar.

Simply put your sugar in a microwavable container (read: NOT plastic) and place a slice of bread on top. Seal the container and pop in the microwave for 15 seconds.

Voila. The moisture from the bread and the resulting steam will make the sugar softer and more pliable, allowing you to work on the clumps (as seen in the highly scientific "cookie osmosis" chart above).

via [lifehacker]

You're baking cookies and you reach to the back of your cabinet only to find that your brown sugar is hard as a rock. Don't head to the grocery store just yet.

The Minimalist suggest new ways to use your microwave - chocolate pudding, parboiling vegetables, baked apples.

The Curious Cook, Harold McGee, follows, explaining the science behind the microwave. You can put aluminum foil in the microwave! Hear that, mom?

Why higher food prices could be a good thing (less cheap junk food; better for small farmers, etc.).

Chatham cod have disappeared from off the coast of Massachusetts. But not from menus.

Wine critic Eric Asimov taste-tests California Pinot Noir.

What to do with tough old birds? Stew! Braise! Slow-cooked rooster with mushrooms and scallions, anyone?

The Minimalist is back, with a video on cooking clams.

As Joni Mitchell so eloquently put it, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

I think she was talking about my stove.

You see, earlier this week, the gas line to my stove developed a leak. The good news? The gas company responded promptly to my frantic phone call, and switched off the gas. The bad news? Until my landlord returns from the country to inspect the site (long story), I'm stuck without a working stove.

My point in telling you all of this? I've become a slave to my Foreman grill. Salads and hummus-on-cold-tortillas only get you so far before you're craving decent, warm food.

In case any of you are ever stuck in a similar predicament, I've decided to list some of the conclusions I have come to during The Week Without A Stove:

• You can successfully cook the following vegetarian-friendly foods on a Foreman grill: tofu, polenta, onions/zucchini/eggplant, veggie patties and virtually any type of imitation meat product, toasted sandwiches
• It is impossible to cook decent pasta in a microwave
  
• The following food/imitation food products have started to appeal to me solely for their ability to heat quickly without the use of a stove/oven: Easy Mac; toaster pastries; those soups in cardboard containers; individual, microwavable oatmeal packets; 90-second rice
  

Potato chips are, as a general rule, fried, greasy and unfortunately addictive, as illustrated by the longtime Lay's slogan "bet you can't eat just one. All these traits make them the bane of many health food activists' existences, but those same activists might go a little easier on the popular snack food if they knew you can easily make a non-fried, fat free version that is just as crispy as the "real" thing at home All you need is a microwave.

This Japanese potato chip maker allows you to make chips in the microwave. All you need to do is slice up a potato into fine rounds and place in the stand, then microwave until crisp.

It sounds implausible, but microwaving chips really does work. I've done it myself with great success thanks to the recipe for Uncle Bill's Microwave Potato Chips, which doesn't require a potato chip stand to work. The chips actually do crisp up well, especially if you take care to slice them thinly and evenly. In the photo above, the chips that I made are on the left, while the chips made with the chip-maker (not made by me) are on the right. I cut my potatoes freehand with a sharp knife, but using a mandoline will produce results even faster and guarantee consistency. Make sure to season your chips with salt and pepper or seasoning salt before microwaving them, as it is difficult to get the salt to adhere to already crisp chips.

There is more than one way to cook a turkey, just as there is more than one way to cook just about every other type of meat, but because there is some pressure on Thanksgiving to produce a big, beautiful bird for family and friends, it's hard to know whose advice to take when prepping the turkey for the big day. If you roast it, should you brine if first? Should it be braised? Can you cook it in the microwave?

To answer these questions, you can take a look at the Turkey for the Holidays guide from the University of Illinois. They cover everything from turkey-cooking techniques, which includes guides on eleven good techniques and reasons to avoid a few bad ones, to turkey nutritional information and turkey history and trivia. Aside from the cooking techniques, which might be the most useful tips on the site for cooks, the turkey carving instructions are going to be helpful even if you buy your bird. The site seems to be a great Thanksgiving resource overall, and anything that helps decrease holiday stress really is something to be thankful for

So you dreamt about what you'd like to see in the kitchen of the future, right? Well, if it included being able to tell a machine to cook something without having to get up from in front of the tv, you don't have to wait for the future. You can do it now! I said now!

Daewoo's new microwave oven can hear me loud and clear. The countertop microwave oven has a brushed aluminum finish, and though it has a full keypad, it doesn't need it because this baby is voice-activated. It stores 40 commands and responds to anyone who speaks to it. Not only is it voice-activated, but it also has the ability to automatically determine the cooking time with 95% accuracy. Just hope that it's not popcorn in there the other 5% of the time (unless you're like me, who kind of likes the smell of burnt popcorn).

We already know that not all prepackaged food combinations are a good idea (like the hot dogs with microwaveable buns), but manufacturers cannot resist trying to come up with new ones anyway. Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick is a frozen breakfast food, an all-in-one breakfast that is ready after just two minutes in the microwave. As good as chocolate chip pancakes are, the idea of a frozen chocolate chip pancake wrapped around a sausage just doesn't sound all that tempting. Possibly even less tempting is the blueberry pancake variety that is listed on the Jimmy Dean site.

This is one food that sounds as if it would have a better reception at a state fair, with other foods on sticks, where it can be with its own kind.

I like my hamburger and hot dog buns to be lightly toasted when possible. Usually, I will simply open them up and toss them onto the grill while the dogs cook. If I'm not grilling, I just eat the buns plain. I have never put a hot dog bun into the microwave to attempt to achieve a "bakery-fresh" texture and, even if I did so, I would certainly not put the hot dog in the bun before microwaving it. In my experience, microwaving does nothing to improve the texture of bread and having an unheated hot dog in it would help even less.

As such, I fail to see the appeal of Oscar Meyer's newest product: Fast Franks. Three hot dogs are packaged in buns and, when you're read to eat, you just put the whole thing in the microwave. Oscar Meyer says that Fast Franks are "mouthwatering to imagine." I'm imagining, and I have to disagree. 

A lot of that popcorn   I have eaten in my life has come from microwave bags, and the rest has come from popping corn the old fashioned way: on the stove. To my knowledge, most of the popcorn has been of the hard, yellow-kernel variety. I now think that I was missing out.

Fireworks Popcorn, most likely named after the audible similarities between popping corn and distant fireworks, packages naturally-grown gourmet popcorns, offering more than ten different varieties. One of the things that they point out about their popcorn, in addition to saying that it is both colorful and flavorful, is that it is smaller and has a more delicate hull than conventional popcorns. When I popped the some of the Starshell Red popcorn, using the microwave method, I found that to be very true. Even the half popped kernels were not very hard (yeah, I accidentally ate a few) and took no more effort to chew than a hard pretzel stick might.

 

 On this week's episode of Bravo's Top Chef, the theme tried to integrate a very hot topic in cooking: speed. Along with speed, convenience was really emphasized in the theme of Food on the Fly. While the contestants are used to being behind the scenes in restaurant kitchens, working on their own terms, a Top Chef has to have the capability to appeal to home cooks' desire for easy, accessible meals. The episode started in a convenience store and ended with a microwave - and another elimination.

In the quickfire challenge, where the prize is immunity, the contestants were given $20 and 30 minutes in a gas station convenience store to shop for the ingredients to make a main course dish. One contestant called it "a nightmare for any chef" but they managed to pull it together. They were given 30 minutes to prepare and plate their meal. Two contestants - Miguel and Tiffani - attempted krispy kreme bread puddings without too much success, though Tiffani seemed unnecessarily hostile over their use of a similar idea. In addition to their in-store finds, the contestants were allowed access to the dried herbs and spices in the kitchen. Stephen pretended that he hadn't heard that instruction and used fresh flavorings. It didn't help his case, though.

Behind all the other odds and ends, stacked up alongside some canned tomatoes, was this lone, canned Heinz Treacle Pudding. Generally known as cake and not pudding on the US side of the Atlantic, this traditional British dessert is a round of sponge cake that is saturated with a golden syrup known as treacle. Treacle is a type of light molasses that is left over during the sugar refining process. It makes what would otherwise be a plain and fairly dry dessert moist and sweet, so the combination of treacle and sponge is a time-honored British favorite. Come to think of it, the combination of treacle and nearly anything is a British favorite.

The label on the cake promised that it was microwaveable, meaning that I could avoid a 30 minute stove-top steaming just to eat it. I put it on a plate, covered it with a microwave-safe bowl and hit "start."

I like cereal as well as the next person, even the plainer kinds like Rice Krispies and regular Cheerios, which are not exciting enough to be "kids cereal" nor are they healthy enough (i.e. made to enhance "regularity") to be strictly for adults. Let's face it: they're pretty uninspiring as far as cereal options go. I'll buy a box on sale and eat it when I run out of other things. They will last quite some time when the box is unopened. This is an excellent feature since it is only rarely when I put plain-jane cereals to their best use: marshmallow cereal bars. With three ingredients, there is hardly any simpler snack and few more delicious. Since these involve no baking, prepared entirely in the microwave, a batch or two is a great way to clean out the cupboard and make room for newer, more exciting breakfast options. It's also a great thing to make with your kids.

It's (almost) always fun when someone holds a mirror up to our daily routine. The Sydney Morning Herald recently ran a piece that categorizes the ways people eat in office environments. I don't know that I'm familiar with the folks that eat cereal throughout their workday, but I can definitely relate to the image of folks creating mini assembly lines for sandwiches and salads at their desks, as well as those with a seemingly endless supply of plastic snack tubs. The myriad of smells that come out of a high-traffic office microwave also gets a nod, as does the offensive tuna can left to stink in the trash.