Yup, just about to suggest the same. The most important feature of a microwave that most people never think to use is the power selection.
Imagine using a stove and always setting the burner to max and never using the dial to go to lower level. Then saying “the stove sucks because it’s always burning my food.” That’s equivalent to how most people think about a microwave.
imadethis@fedinsfw.app 4 days ago
Binga bango. One of the most important things to realize with microwave warming is that just like all (okay, probably most) other forms of heating, it works from the source of the heat (which is outside of the burrito) towards the matter being heated.
In the form of government horrors to curb protests, it means shooting microwaves at you and causing your skin to feel as if it is being boiled. In the form of your burrito, it means that the outside of the burrito will be blistering hot, and continue heating, and the heat has to slowly be conducted inwards. If your plate is not perfectly resistant to the operation of the microwave, it will also be getting hot, and since it is typically thinner and has less heat capacity (because most food has water, which has gargantuan capacity) than your burrito, it’s going to get a lot hot, very totly.
So yes, use the power settings to allow the heat time to work it’s way into your burrito and not fry the outside to death while causing your plate to consider whether today’s a good day to go molten.
QuizzaciousOtter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
I don’t think that’s entirely correct. When heating a burrito in the microwave, there’s no source of heat outside the burrito and there’s no heat transfer from outside into the burrito. The heat comes from excited water molecules in the outer layer of the burrito. The burrito itself is the source of heat. But the microwaves only penetrate so far - around 3 centimeters. The inner layers are heated by heat transfer from the outside to the inside which is probably very similar to traditional heating.
This is just being pedantic because your main point stands but I couldn’t help myself…