Some folks think they're unsafe; others associate them with convenience foods and laziness.

And finally, there are some folks who just think they're unnecessary.

My team and I are here to tell you, microwaves are great.

Now, you can't believe the infomercials because this, it can't do everything, but it can do a whole lot more than reheating or defrosting.

When I develop recipes, there are so many times where I call for a microwave, because it's so good at heating small amounts of food.

Who wants to dig out a pot to bring a quarter cup of water to a boil or turn on the oven to toast a tablespoon of nuts?

There are right ways and wrong ways to use a microwave and in order to make the most of this appliance, we really need to understand how they work.

Be sure to hit that like button and let's dive in.

Microwave ovens contain a device called a magnetron and that magnetron, it generates microwaves.

Those are the things that are heating up your food.

Microwaves are a part of the electromagnetic spectrum and when you think about that spectrum, you should know it has two sides.

There's a safe side, and then there's like the scary side.

On that safe side, you're gonna find things like visible light, radio waves and microwaves.

There's squarely on the safe side.

Manufacturers have designed these to keep the microwaves on the inside.

Why would you want them on the inside if they're safe?

You want those microwaves heating up the food that's inside the cavity, not whatever's out here.

Now microwaves can pass through glass, and so in order to allow you to see what's going on in the oven, they will put a mesh on that door. That mesh has holes that are small enough that the microwaves just can't pass through.

Obviously, you can't see microwaves but you can hear when a magnetron is generating them.

Magnetrons don't generate microwaves of various power levels.

Instead they're just on or off.

So when you go to adjust the power level of your microwave what you're doing is telling it how long to be on and how long to be off.

Microwaves only act on the surface of the food.

Their heating may be the top quarter half inch of the food.

When you run a microwave at full power, you're bombarding the surface of your food with heat.

By reducing the power level, you're giving it a little break.

During that break, heat in the surface, it'll have time to move towards the center.

The result is more evenly heated food.

I'm gonna demonstrate how useful that power button is with this stick of butter.

My goal is just to soften it, not to melt it.

I am gonna microwave this for 45 seconds at 50% power.

And if you're listening carefully, you'll hear that magnetron flip off right around 30 seconds and it'll come back on right around 11 seconds.

(magnetron whirring)

And there it came back on. Got that?

This looks great.

This is nice and uniformly softened.

If I had microwaved this at full power I would get hotspots where the butter is fully melted and cool spots where it's pretty solid.

Reducing the power level is one way to help food heat more evenly.

Another way is to just move that food around.

Annie Potatoes, best baked sweet potatoes use this method really effectively.

It would normally take about three hours to get the level of sweetness that she achieves in an hour and a half and it all starts in the microwave.

She puts her sweet potatoes in there and they microwave for six to nine minutes.

Every three minutes they get flipped and that helps them heat up to 200 degrees really evenly.

They'll spend an hour in a 425 degree oven before they come out.

We slit 'em open, give 'em a quick squeeze and garnish.

If your microwaves are only penetrating a quarter of an inch and your food is only a quarter of an inch thick there's no center that's not being heated.

Take beets for example.

These dense vegetables can take a while to cook, but when you microwave them, after cutting them into quarter inch pieces, they cook through quickly and evenly.

So we've established that microwaves are acting on the surface of the food.

But what's happening at a molecular level?

Unlike you're your oven which heats whatever you put inside, microwaves, they only heat certain components of food.

Specifically, we're talking about the water and to a lesser extent, oils, sugars and fats.

Microwaves will cause those molecules to vibrate and that vibration, it translates to heat.

Molecules that don't vibrate, they can't be heated.

Why does this matter?

Well, when you take water and you freeze it, in order to get solid blocks of ice, those water molecules, they get locked into place and once they are locked into place, microwaves can't interact with them.

Microwaves don't do anything to ice.

Let's do an experiment.

I've got an ice block here.

I've put a hole in the top and I'll put this whole thing in the microwave.

After that, I'll use this pipette to fill that hole with this blue water.

Then we'll turn this microwave on and let it run for about two minutes.

What we wanna see is how the microwaves interact with ice and water.

Yikes.

What happened here, besides me spilling some of the water onto the plate, you can see that the ice block, it's still pretty much the same.

It hasn't changed.

What has changed is the water in our little hole

it got hotter and it melted the ice around it.

This is what happens when you try to microwave frozen food at full power.

What little bit of water is there it'll heat up and it'll melt the surrounding ice.

But everything else where there is no water nothing happens.

Now, you've probably experienced this, if you've tried to reheat frozen super stock, some parts boiling hot, other parts ice cold.

How do we do this properly?

I have some frozen creamy white bean soup here.

It's one of my favorite Cook's Illustrated soups, and I'm gonna microwave it at 50% power for eight minutes.

Nice and creamy, hot all the way through. I did it.

I reheated frozen soup.

Microwaves are for more than just defrosting and reheating.

In fact, I can use this microwave to take this soup to the next level.

Let's talk garnishes.

One thing that distinguishes restaurant dishes from so much home cooking is the garnishes.

They can add pops of color, flavor, texture to the simplest of dishes.

When I was a restaurant cook, I would make garnishes by the bucket full and some of my favorites:

They were fried, fried shallot, fried ginger, fried garlic, fried leeks. They were delicious.

Now, when I want them at home, I use my microwave.

I can make a reasonable amount, and when I'm done, I don't have a gallon of oil that I have to deal with.

To garnish this soup, I'm gonna make microwave fried capers.

I've got a third of a cup of extra virgin olive oil here and to that I'm adding some capers.

This is a quarter cup of capers that have been rinsed and padded dry.

Just gonna give this a quick shake to make sure they're submerged.

They'll go right in.

And I'm gonna microwave for five minutes.

I'll stop halfway through to give them a stir.

When you're microwaving a liquid, you don't need to reduce the power because heat transfers through liquids much more efficiently than it does through solids.

Whatever it is, your microwave frying.

It's really important to use a big bowl.

When you're frying, you're turning the water that's in the food into steam, and that can create a lot of bubbling and boiling, and you don't want that bubbling and boiling to overflow your bowl.

So I'm looking for these to darken in color and for them to shrink slightly.

Awesome.

These are gonna come out of the oil.

One other thing to keep in mind: whether you are frying on the stove or with your microwave, don't put wet utensils in.

You'll cause more of that boiling over action and it could get dangerous.

These capers are looking really crispy.

I'll let them finish draining and cool slightly, get this soup into a bowl and have a taste.

I have my fried capers here and I also have some of that oil.

When you fry garnishes, a lot of their flavors will infuse into that oil, and it's great for finishing a dish.

So I'm gonna give this a quick drizzle and a nice little sprinkle.

This is so good.

The white beans are creamy and smooth and just subtly earthy.

And then right on top is this punchy oil and these crisp briny capers.

Now of course, fried capers aren't the only thing you can make in your microwave.

Here at Cook's Illustrated, we make a lot of garnishes in the microwave.

For fried shallots who want a thinly slice about three shallots, add 'em to your oil.

Make sure you use a large bowl and just microwave that at full power for about five minutes.

You're gonna get in there and stir occasionally to help them brown evenly, and when they come out, you'll transfer them to a towel-lined plate.

Season them up while they're hot, they're delicious.

For frico, you're gonna wanna use a hard cheese and grate it.

Spread one tablespoon of cheese onto your plate into a little disc.

Pop that sucker in the microwave and let it go until they're light golden brown.

After they come out, you're gonna wanna transfer them to a cooling rack where they will crisp up as they cool.

Frico are great crumbled over a super salad or just eat 'em outta hand.

One of my favorite compound butters starts in the microwave.

A quarter of a stick of butter is melted, and then to that you stir in orange zest, honey, almond extract and salt along with the rest of that stick of butter.

Give that a quick stir and then let it rest for two minutes.

At that point, your butter should be softened enough that you can whisk everything together.

This orange almond compound butter it's great on toasted English muffins, waffles, or pancakes.

We even have a recipe for caramel sauce in the microwave.

Great for ice cream.

You're gonna need granulated sugar, water, corn syrup and lemon juice.

Microwave that mixture until it's pale, golden brown.

Let it hang on the counter until it's amber colored.

Then just whisk in heavy cream a little bit at a time because it's gonna bubble vigorously.

Once all that cream is in, add a tablespoon of butter and you're done.

If you feel like you need to jumpstart your cooking and save some time or you just wanna whip up some toppings to punch up a meal, a microwave might be your best bet.

I'm hungry. I love soup.

What's your favorite microwave technique?

Let me know in the comments below.

Be sure to like this video, subscribe and check out more great recipes and techniques at cooksillustrated.com.