[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Free

Microwave Cooking: The Microwave Cook Book Collection by Rodney Cannon

You can prepare an amazing meal with this wonderful device. Meals that will be quick and easy. You can cook things that you were told are impossible for a microwave like cookies, cakes, stir fry, tacos, Risotto and even crispy bacon. This two volume set will teach you all the basics.


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Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Grabbed it for the Risotto.

Shortly after sales of microwave ovens began to soar (let's say the mid 1980's), microwave oven cookbooks began to proliferate, too. Most manufacturers included at least something resembling a cookbook with their ovens. But it seems (I didn't do much cooking back then) that the recipes were not any good, with maybe a few exceptions. Many of the foods in the grocery stores intended to be cooked with the microwave ovens just weren't hardly palatable. It seems to me that manufacturers of frozen foods especially had trouble creating items made with flour (like crusts of pot pies) that would turn out decent. Honestly, about the only thing that I used my microwave oven for was warming up things that had been cooked in a conventional oven, and for baking potatoes, which turned out, well, good enough.

There has been a long learning curve for manufacturers of ovens, professional cooks, cookbook authors, et al., it seems, to figure out how to adjust recipes, and maybe create some new ones, that are microwave-friendly. Back when I was scrounging the thrift stores (second-hand stores), etc. (okay, to be honest, I still do it some) for used dead-tree books, there were always a large number of microwave oven cookbooks among the books for sale. People with the ovens didn't want them, and it seems that it was because the recipes weren't any good.

It seems that that situation has changed, thankfully. I now readily buy frozen foods intended for the microwave, even flour-based ones, and am generally pleased. Apparently, from what people like Cinisajoy said about the risotto, for example, that peeps who put out cookbooks are doing a much better job of coming up with recipes for the microwave than they used to.

I still am very wary of cookbooks intended for the microwave, though. I just simply won't buy one, no matter what the ratings or reviews. Maybe it comes from the bad experiences years ago, and it will take some more time for me to get over.