Making pasta in the microwave?

[mathsnerd]

Hello all!

I'm hoping to pick to your collective brains in the hopes that someone has the answer to this question. I have recently acquired a 20L microwave/grill/convection oven and am now facing the cold hard truth that I don't know how to use it other than re-heating things. (Oops.)

The weather here in Germany is getting colder, and I am craving PASTA! Hence, my question to you all: how can I cook pasta in a microwave? What kind of dishes/equipment do I need to purchase? (I have, quite literally, nothing.) Are some sorts of pasta going to be harder than others? I do own an electric hot water cooker, so I can boil water ahead of time, if that helps.

In other important information, I share a tiny room, have next to no storage space, have almost no prep space, have a sink, share a tiny under-the-counter-fridge, do NOT have a freezer, have two hot plates but do not use them (hence the microwave/oven) due to fear of burns, do not currently have any storage containers but can get some when I get cooking dishes/equipment if it's recommended.

I am disabled, hence the not cooking on hot plates, use crutches and hand/arm braces, and have reduced motor skills in my hands/arms/legs. Spoons vary wildly by day and time of day.

I need to eat more and eat warm food. I turn to you in hopes of being able to start having pasta. If I can cook pasta, I can make a batch and refrigerate it, and then re-heat it and make sauces or dress it as my stomach permits (I have weird food things due to a chronic illness) and a lot of things would be better. At least one of my closer friends and her mother would stop bitching (they bought the microwave).

I thank you all in advance and look forward to being able to have pasta! X-posted to boilingwater

Comments

[the_rck]

Pasta will cook in the microwave. I know that. I don't know the proportions of water to pasta or how long cooking takes, though. You may have to experiment a bit. My best guess on the amount of water is that it should be a bit more than enough to cover all of the pasta. You can always drain off the excess after cooking.

[the_rck]

Oh, and I forgot to add-- For cooking, you'll want a microwave safe bowl, probably ceramic or pyrex if you can lift one. Plastics in the microwave can be iffy. Some don't hold up well. Some may leach chemicals into the food. I still use some plastics in our microwave (a spoon tradeoff), but I'm careful to stick with those packaged as microwave safe.

The size of the bowl will depend on the size of the microwave (you might want to measure before shopping) and on what you can reliably lift. A larger bowl will let you make bigger batches of pasta but will also be harder to lift.

I do recommend caution after cooking the pasta. The bowl will probably be hot, and you could burn yourself on it if you're not careful. Some bowls heat up more than their contents do.

[fred_mouse]

I haven't tried it with past, but what I have for cooking in the microwave is a pyrex jug - the handle doesn't heat up from the cooking, and as long as I'm not cooking a lot, the weight isn't too much (or I can use a teatowel underneath to support it)

[highlyeccentric]

I have a great plastic dish designed for cooking rice in the microwave; we also use it for preparing instant noodles, and I bet it would work for making pasta in the microwave.

In Australia, Decor make microwave-safe plastic dishes (and non-microwave safe ones): of their ordinary dishes, the red ones are safe for cooking (as opposed to reheating), as is anything specifically marked 'microwave rice cooker'. I don't know what the situation is like overseas, but something like that might be worth investigating: my plastic rice cooker doesn't heat up very much while cooking.

[snowgrouse]

You can. The best ones would probably be those cheapo ones with very small noodles (macaroni or those one-inch spaghetti type things), and cooking times vary a bit (it depends on the type of pasta and the microwave), but yeah, cover 'em with water and start the microwave and see what happens. I've found that a deep plastic dish such as a children's breakfast bowl with a brim you can grip with your thumbs is very handy for microwaving food, because they don't get as hot as ceramic dishes. Also, if you have trouble handling heavier dishes, it's a good idea to put a flat plate under a heavier bowl so you can use that plate to lift the bowl in and out of the microwave (it doesn't usually get as hot as a bowl in the microwave, either).

[attie]

Don't know if you count them as pasta, but ramen noodles can be cooked just by pouring boiling water over them and waiting 5 minutes. They don't quite taste like pasta, unfortunately, but they go reasonably well with sauces if you drain the water once they're soft.

(They're also really good fried, but that obviously won't work in your situation...)

[killing_rose]

To go along with attie's suggestion, if you get rice noodles--the type used in Asian cooking, not the type favored by gluten-free folk--, most of them can be cooked with boiling hot or even just reasonably warm water. It takes a bit of experimentation, not going to lie, but it's easy once mastered. (Which took me maybe half a box to figure out a way that worked for me.)

[jesse_the_k]

+1, and this GF-free person likes Asian rice noodles a lot! (I also found that once I soften them to the "just right" stage, plunging 'em back in cold water prevents over "cooking".)

Wheat pasta requires boiling water, so the microwave won't magically reduce the scalding issue.

We've got something much like this silicone potholder. The grooves help with my iffy grip; the silicone is a good enough insulator I can grab both in and outside the pot to lift it up.

[killing_rose]

That was why I switched to Asian rice noodles from the gluten-free commercial rice noodles. I couldn't handle boiling water on a stove, but almost-kind-of boiling water in my tea kettle, combining the two in a mixing bowl and waiting was much better for my spoons. Plus, I live on the third floor and there's only so many times I can manage to walk up and down stairs without plunging headfirst.

Also, I think I love you for pointing out that potholder. My parents have similar, but the more traditional silicone potholders are too big and bulky for me. (And I'm notorious for being out of it, setting down square potholders and then grabbing the pan or dropping it or having the potholder and still managing to burn myself. Silicone's been the best, but again, too big.)

Oh, mathsnerd, one thing you might want to invest in is a rice cooker with a steaming basket; that allows you to cook a wide range of things, steam stuff, and then microwave the leftovers.

[jesse_the_k]

I accept love from all and sundry *grin.*. The potholders have reduced my kitchen anxiety dramatically. I can even hold on to a pan fresh from the broiler for almost a minute without feeling it!

[highlyeccentric]

Asian egg noodles work really well for this purpose too! The instructions say to prepare them in boiling water on a stove, but we use a sturdy plastic dish, boiled water from the kettle, and just leave them for five or six minutes instead of two or three.

[shopfront]

I've never used one, but I understand that convection ovens can be used for recipes created for regular ovens by adjusting the temperature/cooking time. If no-one pops up with actual experience on the subject, this looks fairly comprehensive. This would probably extend your pasta capabilities to pasta bakes and lasagnes, both of which reheat really well and make excellent cold weather food. See if there are 'oven-ready' lasagne/pasta options (the packaging usually specifies that the pasta sheets don't need to be boiled before baking, you can just pop them straight into the lasagne from the packet while they're still dry) in your local stores, I often use them for lasagne when I'm low on spoons. I also don't worry about the crazy layering many people like to do with lasagne and just do one or two thicker layers, to make it more manageable.

Pasta bake style dishes might also help if you find you have to fuss a little to get the pasta as well cooked with the microwave as you would on the stove. You could pre-cook a batch, and then when you re-do it in smaller portions for the bake style recipe it'd finish cooking the pasta for you. The grill setting on your oven would also probably warm/crisp a pasta bake and melt any cheese on top quite nicely, for a texture that's less microwave-y.

[fred_mouse]

what about couscous? pretty much the same as pasta, but the very small grain means that you can cook it by covering it in (near) boiling water and leaving it to stand. Then you can mix in pasta sauces.

[alumiere]

The above info covered almost all of it, and the pyrex with a handle is a brilliant solution. Be very cautious about plastics in the microwave though; I just came back with excessively high, almost toxic levels of cadmium in my bloodwork, and the doctor is fairly certain most of this is from my propensity for using plastic bottles, cups, and dishes in the microwave to re-heat food.

And since it takes the body a long time to break down and get rid of cadmium it's not worth the risks. If my levels don't start decreasing I may need chelation therapy.