A Guide to Help You Choose the Right Microwave

Never has baking been as popular as now; most of us have at some point loved to bake and whip out cakes, pasta and the best of gourmet cooking for our loved ones. Considering buying a microwave so you can do that as well? About time you did that, though the market is full of options. Here’s a guide to help you choose the right microwave for you and your family’s needs.

Solo microwave

First you need to ask yourself what kind of cooking you do in your kitchen and what your needs are. Do you need a microwave only to heat food or to bake those awesome cakes or cook meat? Depending on your needs, choose from among a solo, convection or a grill type of microwave. The solo is the least expensive of them all, and can be used for basic functions such as defrosting, reheating or heating. The functions are limited and you can’t exactly roast or brown food in a solo microwave.

Convection and grill microwave

Convection microwaves are useful for baking – could be pizzas, breads, cakes or pasta. The convection kind of microwave has all functions and modes, and is often also called combination microwaves. The grill microwaves come with the grill function which lets you grill meat, cheese, vegetables, and are ideal if you love grilled cooking.

The other feature you need to keep in mind is the capacity of your microwave. It is the capacity that indicates how much food you can cook at one time. To decide what capacity you need, you would need to consider the size of your family, and the usage. For a family of four that does all kinds of cooking (including defrosting and heating), you may need a medium-sized microwave between 20 and 20 L. If it is a family of two, and you do all kinds of cooking, you need a small Microwave Oven with a capacity of 15-20 L.

Other features

• Auto cook menu: Different models and brands have a different number of inbuilt menus, wherein all you need to do is press a button and the cooking begins immediately.

• Child safety lock: This feature helps you continue cooking without interruptions, as you can enable the child safety lock, wherein your child can’t interrupt the operations.

• Express cooking: This feature will let you enter the weight of the food and push the quick start button.

• Delay start: You can make some changes to the settings and start cooking whenever you want by choosing the time.

• Keep warm: This is a feature that lets you keep your food warm, so you can cook ahead of time and continue to keep food warm for as long as 90 minutes.

• Defrost: Self-explanatory! It lets you defrost frozen foods such as meat, peas etc.

• Steam clean: This option ensures that it is easier to clean the microwave and rid it of all dirt and stains.