The True Story of Cooking a Chicken Dinner in the Microwave

This article is part ofEpi Loves the Microwave,our exploration (vindication?) of the appliance everybody loves to hate.

Most people think of a microwave oven as theBoone's Farmof the culinary world: a cheap shortcut to getting drunk, but one you usually feel guilty about.

Not me. Not anymore, anyway. Last year I woke up and realized that in this age ofModernist Cuisineand sous vide machines, it's time to start paying attention to the miraculous contraption that's already in every kitchen. A device that uses a magnetron—a magnetron!—to generateactual microwaves, which pass through most objects (glass, ceramics, plastics) only to be absorbed by water molecules (technically, polar molecules).

In other words, a device that cooks dishes quickly, efficiently, and, in some cases, better than any other method.

Take artichokes. Steaming takes a good half hour or more, while apressure cookercuts that time down to 20 or so. But a microwave kicks out a tender artichoke in about six minutes.

And that's just the beginning. In my experience, almost all vegetables love the microwave. Broccoli comes out shockingly bright green and crisp. Spinach wilts in seconds. Eggplant slices come out soft and greaseless.

Then there's chicken. When the editors of this site decided to assign stories about microwave cookery, I raised my hand and said I could probably roast a chicken in the microwave. Imagine the glory: the workhorse (workbird?) of weeknight dinners, roasted to crispy-skin perfection in mere minutes. It'd be gold!

After several attempts, I now know that roasting a chicken in the microwave is less like gold and more like a goldmine. If such a thing existed, it would have been mined a long time ago.

Countless recipes, most housed in graying old cookbooks I picked up at the library, claimed that it was possible, but my quixotic quest for a gloriously browned bird in the microwave resulted in a collection of overcooked carcasses, flabby skin, and damaged pride.

What did I learn? Thinness matters. Turns out microwaves only penetrate the first inch or so of any item. In the case of my chicken, that meant that the outside layer of meat was tragically overcooked before the center ever came close to 140 degrees. The best way to avoid this is to keep the ingredients thin and evenly sized.

So a whole bird is out, but what if I pounded a chicken breast to an even ½-thick? I stuck two flattened breasts in a dish with a tablespoon of lemon juice, some capers, and butter, and then covered everything with plastic wrap. Three minutes later I had juicy, moist chicken, with a ready-made sauce.

Yes, this really came from a microwave.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Alex Brannian, Food Styling by Ali Nardi

In the Epi Test Kitchen, where Anna Stockwell cross-tested the recipe, she pounded the chicken even thinner, to 1/4-inch thickness. She also rotated and flipped the chicken halfway through, because when she didn't she found what I found in my roast chicken experiments: a bird that was cooked on the outside, raw in the middle.

把我的四分钟微波小鸡的英特尔en piccata over the top came from my experiments cooking beets. When you cook beets in the microwave, you zap for five minutes, let the beets rest for five minutes, then repeat the process of zapping. The resting lets the vegetable cook evenly.

Of course, all chicken should rest after you cook it. But for foods cooked in the microwave, this is actually more important. Even if you flip and rotate the chicken, a microwave can produce uneven results. A rest helps redistribute the heat.

And with this piccata recipe, a rest is built in. I originally put the butter and lemon juice in the dish while the chicken cooked. The butter melted, but it didn't incorporate with the lemon juice very well. So Anna—who also put a layer of asparagus under the chicken, to add a veg but also allow the chicken to steam more evenly—changed the recipe, keeping the butter for the end. When the chicken comes out of the microwave, it gets transferred to a plate, and cold butter gets whisked into the hot, lemony chicken juices left in the pan. Soon you have a silky sauce, a well-rest cutlet, and proof that, just like the oven and stove, a microwave can cook a chicken that's, well, golden.