i bought microwave fettuccine and it came with a piece of garlic bread. The instruction were to microwave for 15-20 seconds. Being the daredevil that I am I went for the 20 and threw caution to the wind. It was pretty gross.
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"Moris should be here soon to rub it in my face..." -Pizza
damn microwave ovens and their heating of the center of foods before the outside of foods. damn them and their soggy messes.
According to Mythbusters, that's not how microwaves work, and it really doesn't make sense, when you think about it.
Hence the icy center of the microwave burrito.
the fact that the center of the burrito remains cooler than the rest of the object is caused by an inhomogeneity of heat capacities within the burrito. the center has a higher heat capacity than the outside; hence, it is more resistant to the absorption of heat when being heated and it is more resistant to the liberation of heat when it has cooled. that is why the center of the burrito cools much more slowly than the outside.
furthermore, mythbusters exploits extremely flawed experimental methods. it is shoddy empiricism, at best.
"A common misconception is that microwave ovens cook food from the "inside out". In reality, microwaves are absorbed in the outer layers of food in a manner somewhat similar to heat from other methods. The misconception arises because microwaves penetrate dry non-conductive substances at the surfaces of many common foods, and thus often induce initial heat more deeply than other methods. Depending on water content, the depth of initial heat deposition may be several centimetres or more with microwave ovens, in contrast to broiling (infrared) or convection heating, which deposit heat thinly at the food surface. Penetration depth of microwaves is dependent on food composition and the frequency, with lower microwave frequencies (longer wavelengths) penetrating better."
So if the water content in food is evenly distributed, a microwave will, in fact, cook it from the outside in.
if the heat capacities of the aggregate foodstuff are symmetrically distributed, the foodstuff will cook symmetrically.
since the microwaves are not coherent, there is no preferred geometric cooking pattern in an arbitrary foodstuff. (yes, i concede my first claim). however, it is not the water content of the food that determines how the food cooks, rather the geometry of the foodstuff and the power of the microwaves.
if the attenuation of the microwaves is negligible, then the rate at which the foodstuff absorbs heat depends on the geometric distribution of the heat capacities within the foodstuff and the power of the microwaves. however, if the attenuation of the microwaves is not negligible, then rate at which the foodstuff absorbs heat depends on the aforementioned parameters AND the geometry of the foodstuff. then again, many microwaves ovens have a rotating tray to limit the effects of attenuation to promote symmetric heating of the foodstuff.
