hello there, I have been searching for much longer than planned for a simple answer about the temperature (Plus I would have liked Celsius but that’s another story) and time under which to put frozen meals in silicone bags to reheat as to avoid microwaving them. that’s actually why I have bought this unit and didn’t think it wouldn’t come with a manual.
Hey @Noelle_Laissy. Let’s answer your first note about Celsius. To change or toggle between Celsius or Fahrenheit, please see the post below:
As far as how much you’ll need to reheat your food, it depends on what it is, how thick it is, and what temperature you went with in the first place. Some more info can help us figure that out.
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Nicole, you are too economical with sufficient detail to satisfy your long quest here. You might be further disappointed if your search is for just a single time and temperature answer.
Similar to reheating frozen meals in your evil microwave oven, the transfer of heat energy in a water bath is dependant on the type of food and its all-important thickness. That’s a basic tenet of SV cooking and reheating and it leads you next to your time and temperature determination.
If you are able to disclose the components of your frozen meals someone here could be of assistance.
thanks. got the Celsius. as for the rest, I do not know what I have to reheat, let alone what I will have to reheat. I was looking for a very simple minimal answer as to a minimum time for one portion of whatever to maybe a medium or maximum time. it’s not cooking, it’s heating…
- my name is not Nicole.
- why would you add “evil” to microwave? it could very well look like a statement to show some ridicule…
- I always use my evil microwave with the same amount of time
- I always vary what I eat
thank you for you time anyway
Hi Noelle,
Let me see if I can provide you with some information you’ll find useful!
So first off, even in a microwave the amount of time and the power level needed to reheat an item will vary from one item to the next. While you can always use the same power level and time to reheat everything if you want, the results can vary wildly as far as how successful each reheat is! (I usually use a lower power on a microwave for most reheats - seems to keep the food texture better - and I vary the time reheating any item by quite a bit.)
When it comes to sous vide the thickness of items is key, because the heat from the surrounding water bath needs to penetrate all the way to the center of whatever you are re-heating. So, longer times for thicker items. The big advantage with sous vide is that you can re-heat items without ever worrying about overcooking them - just set the water bath temp to the same temperature to which you originally cooked the item. How long you need to re-heat can get complex, but if you were to reheat it for twice as long as you actually needed to you would still not overcook your item!
Here’s a link to a ChefSteps page going into some detail regarding re-heating via sous vide… I hope it helps give you what you need, but please post more questions if you need more info! There are plenty of people here happy to help! (And @chatnoir has an amazing amount of knowledge to share. Don’t be put off by his phrasing. He really does want to help you with what you’re looking for!)
Noelle, my apology, i suspect auto-spell hijacked your name as i try to live by the rule that the most important sound to every person in any language is that of their name.
Guilty as charged your Honour, - i frequently ridicule the use of microwave ovens.
I understand. It’s hard to give a straight-forward answer when really, it just depends on a few variables. But we can try our best answering with more info. Also for clarity sake, are these meals that you want to reheat sous vide before? Or are these frozen meals that are meant to be microwaved, but you want to try sous vide to reheat?
I’m very interested in his thread. I have vacuum packed uncooked food ,frozen it and then defrosted and cooked sous vide. However, I have not vacuum packed cooked food and then used a sous vide cooker to warm it to serve. But, Noelle, if you provide me a recipe, I would love to experiment and then report the results. 
What’s with the chip on your shoulder. So what if someone calls a microwave evil.
Noelle and Mirozen, i used the word evil to draw attention to the harm microwave ovens can do to humans and our food.
Consider the differences that sous vide or conventional heating has on food where heat is applied to your food’s surfaces by conduction or convection respectively. Then it slowly flows into the food. Microwave radiation impacts the cells and water inside food by transforming its energy to frictional heat. This heat causis the destruction and degradation of food molecules including the enzymes required for human nutrition.
However, much of the evil microwave ovens have lies in the impact on your body. When using a microwave oven get out of the room and never let children use one. The radiation in the ovens are designed to heat water which is the largest constituent of our bodies, Your eyes and gonads are particularly susceptible to microwave radiation and almost all microwave ovens leak somewhat.
You do not have to watch your food heat.
And where do we typically place microwave ovens?
Yep, often right at either eye or waist level.
How safe is your microwave oven?
Here’s a simple test.
Place a connected cell phone in your microwave oven and close the door.
Do not turn on the oven and cook your communications device.
Simply call the cell phone from your land line or another cell phone.
If it rings that means microwaves are leaking into the oven and they can leak out just as easily.
If it stays silent, you’re likely safe.
One more thing, please never use a microwave oven to heat milk or formula for an infant as it destroys important nutrients and antibodies.
Our Microwave oven died about a month and a half ago. I don’t really miss it, but my wife demands we replace it. I’ve stalled her attempts at re-introducing the evil microwave back into our home by implementing a “cunning plan”! What plan? I told her she gets to decide on a replacement - I’ll be happy with whatever she chooses. The research into which microwave oven to buy continues! 
You have a lot of useful things to say on this forum, but I really don’t think this kind of misinformation has any place here.
Hmmm… Heat, by definition, is friction (kinetic energy). So, when I put a pot on a stove, the heat somehow doesn’t cause degradation, but heat from microwaves does?
Reputable source please. If this were true, there’d be injury reports all over the place.
And heat from a stove top does not? Again, reputable source, please.
What you have written there is, at best, extremely ill-informed. There has been a boatload of research into the safety of microwave ovens and the effect of microwaves on nutritional value, none of which supports your claims.
For a more balanced and objective perspective, see
Here’s a more contemporary piece of government literature, not that i consider them to necessarily be factual these days thanks to political and lobbyist interference.
Consider the significant difference in the manner and speed of heating between the use of a stove and microwaves. Someone with more time than i have may wish to search for the details of a medical research project in Switzerland into the impact of foods heated in a microwave oven on the human body. The the microwave oven trade association intervened with the Swiss government and the result was the doctor was forced to halt his research and to never publish or speak of his findings or suffer both prison and fines.
Very interesting.
I supported a team of Biomedical Engineers in a university linked medical centre with many microwave ovens in use. The ovens were periodically tested for excessive radiation leakage and those that exceeded acceptable limits were removed from service. The impact of microwave radiation is not like being struck by lightening or being close to a nuclear reactor malfunction, it’s far more gradual. I suspect that may account for the absence of injury reports all over the place.
The Department of Clinical Nutrition in the same facility advised against the use of the ovens for heating milk or formula. The most immediate hazard was the scalding of infants’ mouths by overheating, and it happened too frequently. Again, the cause of injury was the different way a microwave oven heats, fast, deep, and spotty rather than slow and even.
I’ll retract my comments on the unfavourable impact on nutritional values until i can do a media search in the scientific literature although the first item, Health Check, eludes to it.
Mirozen and others considering an alternative cooking and reheating appliance to a microwave oven or sous vide might investigate the Cuisinart Cookfresh Digital Glass Steamer (Item STM-1000C). I have found pressureless steam cooking to be particularly useful for reheating meals and cooking vegetables in about twice the time required in a microwave oven.
Very interesting indeed. Do you have the name of the doctor? Any press release or similar that mentions that he was forced to halt his research? Maybe the contact details of the microwave oven trade association so I can get in touch with them and follow up? Any link that would tell me in more detail what happened? Maybe the link to where you found out about this in the first place?
Aha. So, there is damage, but not so that people would notice it. In other words, people don’t know that they’ve been damaged unless someone tells them that they have been damaged?
Someone didn’t shake the bottle and didn’t test the temperature before sticking the bottle into the baby’s mouth. Yes, the problem here definitely is the microwaves…
So, there are all the dietitians, food scientists, universities, microwave manufacturers, the WHO, FDA, NIH, governments, medical journals, the trade press, TV channels, newspapers, and my neighbours… All of them are in cahoots to prevent people from finding out that microwaves are harmful.
It’s a conspiracy, for sure! Because all these people and organisations stand to gain a lot if half the world’s population were to die of microwave exposure. Mega-riches coming right up, closely followed by world domination.
I live and learn.
Michi, i don’t retain the depth of media and links from as long ago as you expect, but i do have a little helpful information for you.
It was food scientist Dr. Hans Ulrich Hertel who conducted his 1991 research that was objected to by the Swiss Electrical Appliance industry. As i recall he was subsequently tried in court and found guilty of interfering with commerce (and no i do not have the court transcripts as i am not fluent in any of the official Swiss languages, except maybe culinary French.).
Here’a an article with more details on Dr. Hertel’s research:
There is a wealth of detailed opinion on the topic from many Naturopaths with whom i have little truck, but if you are interested Case Adams’ book is a good place to start along with studies by Lita Lee, Ph.D.
For a more contemporary and exhaustive, - at least for me, review on the topic of microwave ovens you might want to avail yourself of the research from Professor Emeritus Martin Paul, Ph.D. If you have some spare time you might want to go through his published “List of 123 Reviews on Non-Thermal Effects of Microwave/Lower Frequency EMF’s”. It provides a wealth of detailed information on what’s available in the scientific literature with each item citing a dozen to over a hundred references. And if you consider the references in those citations there must be many thousands of items to read on the existence of adverse health effects.
All that is far too much for me although i might consider in the fullness of time writing a detailed and useful contribution on my experience of further media searches of the topic for the International Journal of Polymorphous Pomposity.