I cooked dinner for
a week using
only a microwave
to see what it
would do to
my body

One small beep for man,
One giant weep for my wellbeing

The microwave, accidentally invented by a 1940s scientist, has long been synonymous with ease.

They’re seen as the epitome of convenience, laziness, and unhealthiness. The latter of these has mostly come about from the ready meals themselves, rather than the cooking method. The profitability of the ready meal market has created a saturated market of saturated fats, with human food being just a ding away from consumption.

If it’s just the meals that are unhealthy, then surely cooking full meals itself will negate that entirely? According to a Harvard Health Publishing, microwaves can actually be nutritiously advantageous, due to the lack of vitamins and minerals lost to water when cooking foods using stovetop methods. After reading this, I was adamant to begin testing.

What if I tried to eat for an entire week using only a microwave? No ready meals, no pre-prepared produce, no shortcuts. Would using the microwave still be easy? Would I feel healthier? I took it upon myself to find out.

Day One: The Warmup

Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a microwave?

Jacket Potato

I thought I’d start off with something that I actually would normally do and eat. The humble jacket potato - a British staple, criminally underrated. This one was about as unimaginative as you’d probably expect - cheese, sour cream, spring onions and black pepper. Nothing special, but the kind of food that makes you yearn for your mother’s cooking.

Granted, some of the microwave’s first flaws were immediately apparent in the lack of any crispiness that you’d find on an oven baked spud. The textural difference between its hardened shell and soft fluffy interior is part of the simplistic magic of a jacket potato. Then again, it took about an hour shorter than it would have done in an oven; a moderate price to pay for flaccid potato skin. 

Given almost all of the ingredients required zero cooking, my microwave debut was off to a good start, proving by default that soul-warming food is often the simplest.

Maybe this week wouldn’t be too bad after all? 

Day Two: The First Real Hurdle

Could be worse, right?

Three Bean Chilli

My first attempt at cooking, per se, came in the form of a mixed-bean chilli. The mise en place of the dish was near indistinguishable from your average weeknight chilli. Diced onions, garlic, spices, chopped tomatoes; even the order of adding to my chosen cooking vessel - the largest bowl that fit into my tiny microwave - was identical. 

The process involved mimicking what I would normally be doing. For the first time in history, I think ‘sweating’ the onions and garlic was actually appropriate terminology, given how a microwave is just a very small hot room, minus some science. From start to finish, it took about the same time as a stovetop chilli too. 

I was expecting far worse than what I made. I didn’t measure any of the spices I threw into the dish, as I normally wouldn't. Consequently, the dish was overspiced. It appears I subconsciously masked the sadness of my reality with the taste of ground cumin. Thanks, brain. Day two was again, passable. 

Day Three: Chilli 2, Radiation Boogaloo

Double the microwaving, double the fun

Chilli, again

Day three was the first occurrence of me questioning why I even bothered down this quest. My meal was identical to the night before, except this time the pain and misery of the microwave was effectively squared, as my preparation and cooking involved putting a meal cooked in a microwave, back into the microwave again to reheat, the use of most people's microwaves around the world.

Most saddening, however, was how it forced me to commit one key culinary sin. Microwaveable rice; the standard-bearer of Western cronyism. I’m all for fighting elitism and snobbery within cooking — if it tastes good, who cares? But the line must be drawn at rice. Not only is rice stupidly cheap, it’s also stupidly easy to make. Each passing rotation around the microwave’s centreplate felt like a fresh stab into the heart of my Asian ancestors. 

Ironically, as I continue to eat my dinner in true 21st century style on a sofa, back hunched over a coffee table in front of the TV, my chosen entertainment is the late great Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. Bourdain dedicated much of his later life to the discovery and exploration of various cooking methodologies and ingredients from across the globe. I’m not sure the viability of double microwaved-chilli and a plastic pouch of basmati was the culinary odyssey he was hoping to inspire in future food writers. 

Day Four: The Pasta Disaster

An attempt was made

Carbonara

Carbonara stands as the epitome of great Roman cuisine; a beautifully simple selection of ingredients coming together to something greater than the sum of its parts. The theory behind the dish is simple too. Hard cheese whisked together with eggs is emulsified with the pasta water and cured pork, with the residual heat of the pan providing just enough heat to cook the eggs without scrambling them. 

My inspiration for this dish actually came from two stoneware bowls that sit in my cupboard. They claim to be microwave safe, but retain a suspiciously large amount of heat compared to other dishware when being used for reheating leftovers. In my mind, this would act as the perfect vessel for the carryover cooking qualities of a still hot pan for the cheese-egg mixture. 

From the boiling pasta causing a cloudy eruption of starchy slurry all over the microwave’s inner chamber, to the pancetta mysteriously coming out both soggy and leathery at the same time, like rehydrated beef jerky, it was a failure across the board.

My theory about the bowls didn’t work either. What had started off as an idyllic quest for carbonara, had been reduced to a screeching halt. I felt deflated, miserable and disappointed. Can I really call myself a decent cook if I can’t even microwave bacon? Hopefully the next day would provide some respite against an otherwise.

Day Five: Redemption..?

Not your typical Chinese

Dan Dan Noodles

Noodles, like rice, are a staple in my weekly rotation of meals. I’m guaranteed to eat at it at least once a week, if not more. Again, like rice, they stand as the foundation for a whole world of flavour. My latest obsession has been learning about the food of the Chinese province of Sichuan. In particular, one dish spoke to me; Dan Dan noodles.

Chinese food is incredibly diverse. What most of the West would consider to be Chinese food is almost all Cantonese dishes. Thus, ingredients for regional cuisines are not so easy to find. Over the last few months, I have been in an elusive hunt for Sichuanese chilli oil, or even the ingredients to make it. Trying to make any dishes without it would be like French food without butter, or Italian without olive oil.

When planning the menu for this week, Dan Dan noodles were alluring because the sauce actually didn’t require cooking. The sauce, made of sesame paste, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil and the chilli oil, is mixed cold and assembled in the bowl you’ll eat from. Similarly, to the pasta, the emulsification of the sauce comes through the water the noodles were cooked in, resulting in beautifully glossy spicy noodles. Once again, I found myself boiling my main dinner component in the microwave. 

As the only microwaved element here was the noodles, they came together very well. They gave me the glimmer of hope I needed to continue through this otherwise hellish pursuit.

"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories"
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Day Six: The End is Near

Soggy veg, losing my head

Buffalo Cauliflower

I love fried chicken with all of my heart. Six days into this madness, the worst element wasn’t the food itself, but the cravings. I have never felt a more visceral pull towards crunchy, oily fried foods before. My mother tells me I’m insane; my brother sends me a picture of a pizza he’s eating. I will not give in.

Not fancying my chances against salmonella, I substituted chicken for the next best thing: cauliflower. While I do enjoy fried cauliflower as a substitute, it never quite hits the same spot. This feeling of missing that insufferable itch was exponentially multiplied by the microwave. Not only did I not even have the joys of chicken, but I didn’t even get the crunch of something fried. 

Steamed in a bowl under a plate (you know the drill at this point), I was left with soggy, mushy cauliflower, doused in Frank’s Red Hot sauce. My heavy-handedness with the sauce had resulted in the cauliflower being nothing short of drenched. I wasn’t even subconsciously compensating this time, I knew exactly what I was doing. 

I wasn’t even subconsciously compensating this time, I knew exactly what I was doing. 

Day 7: The Home Stretch

It's all about the chhonk

Red Lentil Dahl

The finishing straight was in front of me. The final hurdle. The last (microwaved) supper. I chose red lentils for my final meal as their simple preparation was all my exhausted brain could conjure. Once again; water, a bowl, and an upturned plate were central to preparation.. Also similarly to the pasta, they decided to explode water into just about any crack and crevice possible.

But, the secret of any lentil dahl isn’t really in the cooking of the lentils. Most are cooked without many spices at all. However, as highlighted by food writer Priya Krishna, it’s all about the chhonk. Making a chhonk requires you to heat oil or ghee to a smouldering temperature, quickly adding dried spices, such as cumin seeds, asafoetida, dried chillies, and more. This spiced liquid is then mixed with the lentils, acting as the heart of the dahl, offering the warmth and flavour to an otherwise neutral foundation. 

Chhonks aren’t microwaveable, so I just mixed the untoasted dry spices into the lentils at the end. It wasn’t the same. I ate it alongside a naan, microwaved for 30 seconds to regain some resemblance of flexibility. In reality, I’ve paid for far worse. More importantly, it meant my struggle was complete.

Digestif

Just like that, my week of microwaving was finished. After a week of experimentation, failed bacon and exploded lentils, my quest was complete. I felt no change to my physical health across the week. Perhaps this was due to the timeframe of the experiment, but I’m more inclined to say that this simply reaffirms the research that microwaves have a near zero effect on physical health. After all, there are people who manage to go 17 years eating only boxed mac and cheese without their body imploding. Something still didn’t feel right though. Physically I was okay, but mentally I was battered. 

My evening meal was one of the few things I could consistently depend on across the pandemic. Yet, at the close of the week, after seven days of meal monotony, I found myself totally uninterested in food altogether. What had once been my key form of escapism had descended into a chore, something I despised. I was anxious, stressed, and generally fed up with food. 

Going into the experiment, I was blinded by the physical implications I had completely unforeseen the effect on me mentally, and the central role food plays within people’s lives. The Mental Health Foundation says that the relationship diet and physical health are well documented, but there is a distinct lack of “lack of investment in research” into the effects on mental health stability; this, too, was certainly true here. 

Perhaps worse was that this was entirely self-imposed. After just a week I was exhibiting symptoms common in eating disorders. This was, in essence, a restrictive diet, something a lot of the UK have been doing since lockdown restrictions have started to ease. The chasing of the infamous ‘21st June body’ is one which will ultimately affect people’s relationships with food, and in turn, their mental health. These effects are sadly already visible. I spoke to Tom Quinn, the Director of External Affairs at Beat, a charity supporting people with eating disorders. He noted that demand for their helpline had risen 302%, stating that people chasing physical goals often neglect their mental health. 

In many ways, this entire quest had ended in a pyrrhic victory. While I had proven that microwaving had no effect on my physical health, it had come at the cost of my sanity. It reaffirmed the importance of food in my life, and how critical it is to my wellbeing. After all, as once stated by Virginia Woolf: “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if not has not dined well."