The microwave is a kitchen horror. It signals nothing but pure laziness

Woman demonstrating a microwave
‘A microwave emits warmth and heat, but no flavour’ - Getty

He’s better known for lobbing cheese boards at the wall, having noticed a minor aberration by some youthful pesky stove monkey.

If a young cook complained the kitchen was too hot, rumour has it he would slash holes in the back of their chef whites to manifest some economic air conditioning. Marco Pierre White is the working-class boy from Leeds who, having opened his first restaurant in London in 1987, stunned the culinary world by becoming the youngest chef, aged 33 in 1995, to win three Michelin stars.

He’s irrational, childish, and Machiavellian, he’s the most naturally gifted chef, he is incredibly funny and wildly good company – but now, at the age of 62, he’s finally gone potty.

“Microwaves are sensational things,” he said this week. Adding that they are his cooking tool of choice when it comes to kippers, veal kidneys and marrowbone.

For heating things up, microwaves are “wonderful”. Haters, he said, should “take off the blinkers”.

Well, I’m a hater, a loather, a confirmed sceptic and a lifelong detester of the microwave. My blinkers are firmly on and while I genuflect in the glorious wake of MPW’s unrivalled palate in the case of restaurant critic (me) versus acclaimed chef (him), it’s pistols at dawn. Be in no doubt, I will triumph.

For microwaves are actually the enemy of the genuine foodie, a futuristic aberration whose space-age appeal should have gone out in the 1970s as quickly as it came in.

Marco Pierre White
Marco Pierre White has been singing the praises of the microwave, but William Sitwell couldn’t disagree with him more - Getty

There is something soul-destroying at seeing that little light come on, watching the slow grin of the turntable, hearing that abysmal low hum, before the machine emits that final ping heralding the news that your edible, or drinkable, substances are now consumable.

Prototypes were developed in the US in the late 1940s, with the first domestic models sold in 1955. The first UK product was released in 1974. The Amana Radarange RR-4, a chunky heft of stainless steel, chrome and glass, would, declared its makers, “Make the greatest cooking discovery since fire even greater”.

Today 88 per cent of British households possess one. And I say, shame on you. For no minor convenience that these weapons of cookery might offer can make up their unsustainable, non-biodegradable and frankly unnatural character.

Yes, parents of babies and toddlers declare their necessity for warming milk but that sort of single-use attitude is as contemptible as those who defend their use of disposable vapes (for which, of course, there is no defence).

A simmering pan of water can do the job, and if you claim the wretched machine’s saving grace is that it can defrost, well so can room-temperature. I suggest it doesn’t demand aching amounts of pre-planning to simply remove your sausages, bacon, steaks and pies from the freezer a few hours earlier, or as the last thing you do before bedtime.

At home we have a small, electric Aga with a boiling or simmering plate, one electric oven and two induction hobs. Other than that, as you might expect from a foodie, it’s fire. There’s a small fire brick grill in the yard outside the kitchen.

And in my shed, albeit quite a large one where I welcome in folk for my supper club, I have one small fire pit, one large one, one ember-fuelled grill, a pellet-driven Traeger grill and smoker and a wood-fired pizza oven.

The latter nurtures everything from lasagne to shoulders of lamb, whole heads of pig to roast potatoes. The food that I cherish, that I dream of eating, that I relish and desire are those touched by flame and smoke.

I crave the Aga-toasted char of sourdough, the blackened crusts a dose of carcinogen I’m willing to risk so magnificent is the texture. The fat of a pork chop or the grilled stripes on a stem of broccoli are the glorious gifts of flame.

A microwave, as it shimmers the particles within whatever sad morsels are condemned to the device, emits warmth and heat but no flavour. It favours and encourages the ready-meal, that ghastly symbol of the modern age so much to blame for our obesity epidemic.

It ushers in laziness and salutes the bland.

It’s an unnecessary horror and if, given his fundamental gastronomic integrity, Marco says he likes them then I can only assume that, like his feud with Gordon Ramsay, is just another of his wickedly funny jokes.