Kitchen Gadget Guide

The convenience a microwave offers can never be matched by normal gas or electric cooking equipment. They may not cook everything perfectly but they sure are fast. Not only are they easy to use, they are also energy-efficient. Also, because no fire is used, even the kids can use the microwave without burning themselves or the entire house down… probably. I’m sure my kids could probably figure out how to burn the house down with only the microwave as their tool of arson.

Now, these days pretty much everyone can afford a microwave of some sort. However, a stainless steel microwave is something desired by all and owned by few. My wife decorated our kitchen in a minimalist style (except for the few bright spots) and that style included a lot of stainless steel. The think I like a lot about stainless steel is that it’s stainless. Our microwave cleans up in a snap. We’ve only done it once or twice but every once in a while we get out the stainless cleaner and go t town on all the stainless steel in our kitchen. Makes everything nice and shiny.

In my humble opinion a stainless steel microwave oven looks altogether more purty than the other kinds available. The polished surface has a reflective effect which looks quite dazzling. I’ll pick at my teeth in my reflection while I’m reheating the pizza.

The great thing about buying stainless steel microwaves is that they go with any kind of color and design combination. Whether you have a simplistic starkly designed kitchen or the latest modular one, you can be assured that your stainless steel microwave will go with it. All the top brands have stainless steel microwaves in their range. There is a great variety available online.

We went for broke and got the Panasonic NN-SD997S Prestige microwave. It was pretty spendy but you get what you pay for. It’s very well built. It gives the impression that it’ll last forever. All of the buttons, the dial, the door and its release mechanism are all very solid. The inner rotating tray and the rotation mechanism it sits on are also well done — even with a really lopsided load (like when I asked my son to defrost 5 pounds of pork shoulder) the rotation of the tray remains smooth.

The unit itself is quiet. It probably operates at about a third of the volume of my old one (that’s not saying much our last one was one my wife had from college). Also we think it’s hilarious that the display says “Enjoy Your Meal” after it finishes heating.