Q: When you don’t have much time but you really feel like eating some meat, a beef steak cooked in a microwave is your perfect meal. Let’s see what you should do to make the best use of your microwave in this process.
How to Cook Beef in a Microwave?
It is a very simple process but first of all, you have to decide how big your stake will be. The size and the thickness of the steak will define the required cooking time and temperature. Additionally, these aspects also depend on your eating preferences – whether you like your steak a bit raw or totally crispy.
Here, we are going to talk about the cooking method for a medium-sized and thin steak since it is the best kind for a microwave preparation.
The first step would be to defrost your meat properly. Upon taking it out of the freezer, leave it in the fridge for about 4-5 hours to defrost properly, or it can stay at the room temperature.
After it is completely defrosted, you should add a bit of olive oil on it, sprinkle some salt, pepper and some timing. Then turn your stake over and add the same substances on the other side.
It is important to have a microwave-safe plate or bowl and preheat it for about 40-50 seconds. The best dish would be a microwave pizza pan for this purpose, but if you don’t have it at your home, any type of microwave-safe dish would be fine. Then place your steak on the bowl/plate.
The microwave setting should be at low or medium but never high since the high temperature will make your steak tough and dry and it has to be tender for the best meal. Cook your steak for about 5 minutes, then take it out and flip it over. It has to be properly cooked on both sides.
After you’ve done this, return your steak in the microwave and cook it for another 5 minutes. After this time, your steak should be ready for eating, but it all depends on your taste. If you are not satisfied with its look, you can always cook it a bit longer.
Roasting Beef from a Microwave
Yes, it is possible to prepare beef in a microwave to make it look as if it came out of the oven. All you need is:
- a microwave-safe dish
- a microwave-safe roasting bag
- meat thermometer
The preparation goes as follows:
First of all, you should defrost your meat in the refrigerator or at a room temperature for a few hours. Then add the spices and herbs you prefer and place your meat in a microwave-safe bag. Don’t forget to leave some room for steam to come out.
Take a microwave-safe dish and place the bag with the meat on it. Then cook it at a medium temperature for about 10 minutes per pound of meat. Since most people don’t use more than one pound of meat for this process, 10 minutes of microwaving will be more than enough.
Then take your meat out of the microwave and insert the meat thermometer into it to check if the temperature was good enough, that means to check if your meat is properly cooked. If the temperature is around 70 degrees Celsius or higher, then your beef is ready for eating.
If the temperature is lower than 70 degrees Celsius, then you should return it in the microwave and cook it for a few minutes more.
All of this will depend on the actual type of the microwave you possess and its general settings. With smaller microwaves of lower wattage, it is sometimes even possible to cook beef at the highest temperatures, but you should know your microwave first, before starting any cooking at all.
