In 2020, Nigella Lawson almost broke the internet just by saying the word “microwave”. The food writer was heating milk for mashed potatoes on her TV series Cook, Eat, Repeat when she commented that she liked to heat the milk in a mee-crow-waa-vay, as if it were some kind of obscure yet deeply sophisticated European food gadget. It was a joke, clearly, but some people didn’t understand this and Nigella was forced to explain that she did actually know how microwave was normally pronounced. By the following year, the clip of Nigella saying “mee-crow-waa-vay” had become so popular it was nominated for a Bafta.
The joke works only because the microwave is generally so undervalued as a kitchen item. It’s hard to think of another household object owned by so many and praised by so few. In 2018, 93% of UK households owned a microwave oven, up from 67% in 1994. Yet when the microwave is spoken of, it is usually in negative terms. We jest of “nuking” or “zapping” food, or we talk disparagingly of “microwave dinners”, as if the technology’s only real use were heating up ready meals. The American food writer Michael Pollan spoke for many when he protested – in his book Cooked – that “the microwave oven is as antisocial as the cook fire is communal”. In an interview with the Guardian in 2013, Pollan commented that, “nobody wants to get too close to a microwave. It gives them the willies because of the mysterious waves jumping around inside.”
