So does anyone besides me remember the early microwave ovens -- we're talking like 1970s here -- that had a meat thermometer built in to them? I remember it being this tether thing that you could use to tell the microwave "cook this meat until 170 degrees and stop." Of course, this was back at the height of microwave cookbooks, when they thought one day EVERYTHING would be cooked in the microwave. On the moon. While watching the vacuum cleaner make its rounds. The crappy rubbery texture of meats and cakes quickly disabused us all of that idea, and microwaves became the province of frozen foods and reheated leftovers.
But now we have microwaves with a so-called "defrost" feature that calculates times by either poundage or food type, or both, depending on the fanciness of your model. YMMV taken to the extreme: the microwave at my workplace sears a frozen burrito in under a minute, while the one at home leaves the middle stone cold after twice the recommended time. I know this has to do with the microwave's wattage or whatever, but this level of variation means that in one microwave I'll get nicely defrosted chicken, and in another I'll end up with the rubbery cooked stuff coming straight out of the nuker.
So here's my crazy idea: let's bring back the thermometer attachment. Now, thanks to Modern Digital Technology, we could have some kind of fancy schmancy algorithm that figures out how to get the meat or veg or whatever to close to the right temperature without going over. Maybe call it the "Price is Right" algorithm. Like current microwaves, you'd have buttons for various common food items like chicken, and you'd also have an option for manually setting the correct temperature.
Of course, there's still the matter of needing to turn over the food since microwaves never seem to cook evenly on all sides. Well, again, thanks to Space Age Technology, we can solve that problem! Just add one of those nifty little gyroscope things that we watched the astronauts spin around in back when we were all still enthralled by space travel. That way your food will be in constant motion, which I'm sure in of itself makes it better. And I bet I could get Jamie Oliver to back me up on this. Jamie and his big soft pouty lips, beating my eggs ever so gently... Oh... what? Right.
Anyway, once we build this thing, you'll just put in your food, stick in the probe, and go off and polish your flying car, content that your Mechanical Turkey Defroster is doing your work for you.
