Cooking Times for Microwaves Vs. Conventional Ovens

Microwave Oven

• Microwave ovens, introduced to the consumer for home use in the 1950s, use short radio waves to penetrate food, causing the molecules to vibrate, resulting in friction and causing heat. Because the food cooks from the inside out, foods don't brown on the outside, making cakes and meats less visually appealing than baking or roasting in a conventional oven.

Conventional Oven

• A conventional oven is a traditional oven, not to be confused with a convection oven. Similar to a conventional oven, the convection oven has internal fans that circulate the air inside the oven, thus speeding up the cooking time. While a convection oven cooks faster than a conventional oven, it does not cook as fast as a microwave oven.

Microwave vs. Conventional for Cooking

• While the microwave cooks much faster than a conventional oven, it is not the ideal choice for cooking or preparing all foods. For some recipes and food preparation, the conventional oven is the best choice. For example, the conventional oven produces better results for meats or baked goods that require external browning, while microwaves are better for reheating foods, cooking some vegetables and heating liquids. The actual cooking times, when comparing a microwave to a conventional oven, varies by what you are cooking. For example, while the microwave might cook some meats three times faster than a conventional oven, it might heat water more than 10 times faster.

Temperature Controls

• You set the heat temperate when using a conventional oven, while you set a power range when using a microwave oven. When you set a conventional oven that is working correctly and not at a high altitude to 350 degrees F, you have a clearer understanding of how long certain foods will take to cook, when following a reliable recipe. Microwave ovens vary; some have a higher power than other microwave ovens and cook faster. Instead of setting the actual desired temperature, as in a conventional oven, the user selects high, medium or low. Some microwave ovens have just one setting.

Cooking Times

• While cooking times vary by microwave model, for many microwave ovens you can cook a single medium-sized potato in less than five minutes, while the same potato takes about 50 minutes to bake in a conventional oven. Yet, cooking time increases when cooking more than one potato in the microwave. It takes about 25 minutes to cook eight potatoes in the microwave oven, thus only saving you about half the cooking time compared to a conventional oven.