I Microwave A Curry

I felt lunchtime hungry at 11.12am today, despite having porridge for breakfast.  I usually try to hold out until noon, but I'd brought some of last night's leftover chicken curry and rice into work and whilst I was answering emails, I saw the plastic box out of the corner of my eye, and it winked at me.   


I put the curry, with rice, onto a paper plate into the microwave in my office, and set the timer.  I ate it with a plastic fork at my desk, looking at my inbox.  The plate and fork are part of a never-ending stock which someone extremely optimistic brought to the 2012 Christmas party.  I burnt the roof of my mouth, slightly.


In my experience, the heat of food heated up in a microwave tastes different from the heat of food heated up on a pan or oven.  But I often mistrust my experience, so I searched, 'Is food heated up in microwaves differently hot?' on the internet. 


According to Yahoo Answers, in microwave cooking, the outside of the food gets heated by direct radiation, whereas the inside has to be heated by conduction. Conduction is a much slower process, and so the few minutes my curry was in the microwave was long enough to make the surface of the rice grains and sauce very hot, without the whole meal having an integrated sense of heat.  In future, I will leave microwaved food to stand for a few minutes and conduct itself properly.


Lunch, for me, was over by 11.32am.  In my experience, I'll be hungry again before home time.