Many people reheat these 6 common foods without even knowing the health risks they’re brewing in their microwave.
1. Chicken and Other Poultry
Most cuts of poultry are at risk of carrying salmonella, and have to be cooked and prepared carefully to avoid contamination.The biggest risk with reheating your chicken in the microwave is uneven heat distribution, causing some parts of the protein to be broken down faster than others, potentially upsetting the stomach.
To reduce the risk of food poisoning or stomach discomfort, rotate your chicken frequently to ensure even cooking from the inside and out.
2. Potatoes
Like chicken, microwaves heat potatoes unevenly. This means that some parts of the potato may be at a higher temperature while some other parts may be at a lower temperature.
And this makes microwaves ineffective at killing bacteria and other pathogens that may lead to food poisoning.
When heating potatoes, the heat needs to be lower and the cooking time much shorter.
Going on to increase the temperature and rapidly heating potato can cause pressure to build up inside it, causing the cell walls to burst, releasing starch molecules that glue together the broken cell walls together.
If the potato doesn’t splatter all over the interior of your microwave, then the resulting potato you would get would be rather dense and sticky.
Also, going on to increase the duration of heating the potatoes could cause them to lose their nutritional value.
3. Hard-boiled eggs
Shelled or unshelled, when a hard-boiled egg is cooked in a microwave, the moisture inside creates an extreme steam build-up, like a miniature pressure cooker, to the point where the egg can explode! Even scarier, the egg won’t burst inside the microwave while it’s being heated, but afterward, which means the scalding hot egg can erupt in your hand, on your plate, or even in your mouth. To avoid turning your egg into a steam bomb, cut it into small pieces before reheating, or better yet, avoid putting it in the microwave altogether.
4. Leafy Greens
We all want to make sure our family eats plenty of leafy greens on a daily basis, but reheating leftover celery, kale, or spinach in the microwave may not be the way to go. According to scientific studies, naturally occurring nitrates in leafy greens may convert to nitrosamines, which can be carcinogenic. If you really need to reheat some spinach or kale, do so in a conventional oven rather than a microwave as it lowers this risk of nitrosamines.
5. Tomato and tomato sauce
Tomato and tomato sauce do not belong in the microwave. Like boiled eggs, heating tomatoes in a microwave can cause an explosive mess.
Tomato and tomato sauce are naturally liquid content, and the heat from the microwave can cause pressure buildup.
This can then cause them to bubble up and splatter all over the interiors of the microwave.
Even though they are heated for only a short time, the ingredients and heavy consistency of tomato sauce make this splatter inevitable.
To avoid having to lose a majority of your tomato sauce or going through the stress of cleaning your microwave, it is best to not reheat tomato and tomato sauce in a microwave.
References: firstforwomen, rdasia, simsng, moms.com
