Microwave Love: Bacon, Sausage, Baked Potatoes, and Popped Corn

Today, we're going to talk about, well, bacon, sausage, baked potatoes, and "popped corn."

The advice we get on bacon:

I should note at this point that the little cooking times that the booklet lists probably won't work for your microwave; I'm certainly not going to try them. Every microwave cooks a little differently.

Anyway, I think it's funny how the diagram suggests that you stack towel on bacon on towel on bacon on towel on bacon on towel on bacon on towel on bacon paper plate. Must be awfully hungry for some bacon, because by my mental calculations that'd probably involve about ten or twelve pieces of bacon (by the rate my family consumes bacon, that'd feed three or four people at least).

Also, it sounds utterly disgusting. Microwaves can't crisp things, so that's an awful lot of flaccid fat.

And finally, it looks kind of like our good buddy the lightning bolt of microwave cooking is covering the bacon with a blanket instead of putting a paper towel on it. And whatever is holding the bacon is levitating.

Now for sausages:

Behold:

1. Notice how much that sausage is enjoying being cut? It's a masochisausage.

2. ...Are you allowed to show sausages cuddling with each other? PUT THAT PAPER TOWEL DOWN BEFORE WE END UP WITH AN R RATING, GUYS!

3. Have you ever used a spatula to flip a sausage (or other item) you're cooking (EDIT: with a microwave, I mean) into the air like that? Neither have I.

4. And now there's a lightning bolt with a yellow toque.

They're multiplying.

Baked potatoes:

1. Is that or is that not the most embarrassed potato ever?

2. Equating having microwave radiation suffusing your body and boiling your internal fluids with tanning at the beach? Sure, give people stupid, dangerous ideas that'll be referenced in Weird Al songs decades later.

3. So that thoroughly dead potato has been resurrected so that it can do the work of wrapping itself in foil so it'll still be hot enough to eat in half an hour? Somebody's getting their necromancy license revoked.

4. Have you ever seen potatoes that look like that stuff on the plate the lightning bolt is holding? It looks more like somebody used a highlighter on a pile of sugar cubes.

5. ...Why is an army of sweet potatoes and yams marching around? It just kind of defies analysis.

Popped corn:

1. Despite my mocking, of course, popcorn is a staple of pre-packaged microwave cooking. Obviously, with the lightning bolts putting it in paper bags, that wasn't really a thing yet.

2. Butter can not burn. If you mean "butter can't burn from cooking it with a microwave," you're right; if you mean "it's impossible to set butter on fire," I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

3. Obviously, they hadn't yet perfected the technique or something. Every time I've ever popped popcorn in a microwave, you're not supposed to pop things more than once. Unless that's a scam to make you buy more popcorn?

4. The salt and butter are levitating. This is the second time in this set that something's been levitating rather than being moved into place by lightning bolts, and it hasn't happened previously. A new trend?

5. The Marshie voice I mentioned last time returns in my head to note that the "kernals" are hot. (Said voice also read all the individual titles.)

Join me next time when I talk about poaching.

Eggs, you guys.

-Signing off.