Cooking Healthy and Nutritious Meals in a Microwave – Can it be Done?

When you think of a student using a microwave, you no doubt picture them heating up a frozen meal or a microwave burger they’ve picked up from the local shop. To test what kind of meals you can prepare and cook using a microwave, Panasonic teamed up with Barry Vera to challenge 3 students to cook a healthy and nutritious meal.

I must admit, I use my microwave for defrosting things and cooking ready meals I get in the supermarket; rather than using it to cook meals I’ve prepared myself; something the students also confessed to.

Given only a bag of ingredients, a recipe card and a microwave; Jamie, James and Tyanah were asked to cook something a bit more complex yet still making it healthy.

Jamie was given the unenviable task of making vegetable couscous, and in 40 minutes was able to make a healthy meal. Watch him in action here:

James was up next, and got the easiest one – Chili con carne. In just over 40 minutes he was able to make a meal for 4 people, and afterwards was really impressed with himself: “So today was the first time I’ve actually cooked using a microwave and the results are really good. I’ve tasted three dishes, all delicious and I think ’ll add them to my repertoire and cook them from now on.”

Last up was Tyanah, who was asked to cook Salmon with Chili Mango Salsa. It sounds hard, but in just 15 minutes this was ready to go. Like my, Barry isn’t too keen on cooking fish in a microwave, but was confident it would still be a tasty success, saying: “Now I wouldn’t normally cook fish in a microwave cause I’m worried about it taking away all the moisture and it overcooks it. But with this Inverter technology it senses how much moisture is in the fish…. and cooks it to perfection”

Tyanah was also happy with her new found cooking skills: “It was very interesting to see how the Panasonic Microwave dealt with the fish; it’s still managed to keep all the flavour and all the juices”

To find out more about the new Panasonic microwaves and to get the recipes for these dishes, head over to The Ideas Kitchen for a breakdown of how they are made.