Mugs: Microwave Cooking Miracles

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It’s about that time and lunch is right around the corner. Your stomach is rumbling and the anticipation of food is starting to overwhelm. What to do? Well, if you’re fortunate enough to have a microwave, a mug and a few basic ingredients, you can cook up a meal right in the office.

Washington Post Food and Travel Editor Joe Yonan whips up some macaroni and cheese in an NPR mug. Maggie Starbard/NPR — Washington Post Food and Travel Editor Joe Yonan whips up some macaroni and cheese in an NPR mug.
Maggie Starbard/NPR

Morning Edition’s David Greene recently started microwaving scrambled eggs in a mug for those early mornings on hosting duties. It led him to wonder about the other possibilities of this culinary art.

So he turned to Washington Post Food and Travel Editor Joe Yonan for help expanding his mug menu. “The mug gauntlet was laid down in front of me, and so I picked it up and decided to do a mac and cheese,” says Yonan, who writes the “Cooking for One” column.

When he joined Greene in the NPR offices to demonstrate his recipes (below) for mac and cheese and brownies, the steps were pretty straightforward: Put some things in a mug, nuke for a bit, add more things, stir, and finish nuking.

It doesn’t get much easier than that, folks.

But whatever you decide to whip up, there’s one thing you need to remember: Things get really hot in the microwave.

“They’re not just getting heat from the surface that they’re in contact with, like a pan would on the stove. They’re heating from the inside out,” Yonan explains. “All their molecules are all excited, and the whole thing is kind of exploding inside, so you have to be careful.”

Also, don’t cook anything with fish. Do that, and you might get kicked out of the building because the smell will seep into every corner.

Yonan says a lot of people think microwaving is a lesser form of cooking. There are plenty of people who just reheat things and make popcorn, “but the microwave is incredibly versatile, and I think people have realized that.”

So go wild and experiment with whatever happens to be in the fridge today. Just don’t steal somebody else’s lunch.

Many thanks to NPR for story contributions.

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Carol Bell

Carol is a graduate of the University of Alabama. Her passion is journalism and it shows. Carol is our unpaid, but very efficient, administrative secretary.

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