Junior Member
Registered: 04-11-08 | A friend of my Mom's said that he steamed some cut up carrots and when he went to warm them up in the microwave they caught fire. |
Senior Member
Registered: 11-22-07 | I would describe it more as arcing rather than catching fire, but yeah, they do. Cut beans, onions, green peppers, and many other foods sometimes do too. Cut grapes arc fairly reliably. You can see lots of youtube videos doing the grape demonstration. |
Senior Member
Registered: 01-21-07 | I have microwaved sliced carrots several hundred times, and I have never noticed any arcing or fire. |
Senior Member
Registered: 11-29-07 | When I first read this myth (on this forum) it said green beans. So I went out and got some and cut them in various sizes and at different angles. Tried them in the microwave and all they did was get hot. No sparks, No flames, No explosions. |
Junior Member
Registered: 09-08-08 | the easiest way to get a carrot to ignite is to chew the center of a baby carrot down so the center is very small in circumfrence, but leaving the ends big. So it looks like somewhat of a dumbell, then put it in the microwave. It should flame and break the carrot apart at the center, leaving it charred! |
Junior Member
Registered: 09-08-08 | If anything like that is even remotely possible, why would they advertise on TV steam bags for the microwave, or, steam containers for the microwave? Think about it people!!!!!! |
Senior Member
Registered: 01-02-08 | My Granma often burned food in the microwave oven. She always had set the timer like for a weak conventional oven. A lot of foods catch fire after more than half an hour!
When the water is gone, the food becomes charred. And hot char coal is flammable! No surprise there. |
Senior Member
Registered: 11-22-07 | quote: Originally posted by fatmermaid2shy:
If anything like that is even remotely possible, why would they advertise on TV steam bags for the microwave, or, steam containers for the microwave? Think about it people!!!!!!
It does happen, though it isn't very common. Grapes will arc fairly reliably. With other veggies, arcing is much more rare. Having a higher power microwave is more likely to cause arcing, but the main determining factor seems to be the mineral content of the soil that the veggies were grown in. It also helps if the veggies are cut so that you've got a nice sharp edge for charge to build up on. Here is a video showing it happening: http://video.nbc5i.com/player/?id=235707As for the steam bags, the water in the microwave will absorb a lot of the radio waves leaving less energy that goes directly into the vegetables. You are even less likely to have an arc when using these steamers. |
Junior Member
Registered: 01-09-10 | This is TRUE! I had never heard of this happening, then yesterday I tried to microwave some steamed, diced carrots for my baby's lunch. Within 3 seconds of heating, they started sparking and catching fire! I immediately stopped the microwave and pulled out the food to check for bits of metal, because why in the world would plain carrots be sparking? I didn't see anything, so I put them back in. Same thing, only now they are starting to char. I threw them out and tried a new batch - same thing!! I knew it wasn't my microwave because I had just heated up several other veggies and it was fine. So I quickly Googled "carrots catch fire in microwave" and up popped this forum. What engineer_comp_geek said about sharp edges is true - when I switched out the diced carrots for pureed carrots, there were no more sparks.
We had friends over last night and they all thought I was full of it until I showed them - they couldn't believe it! Then all the guys kept asking me to do it again because they thought it was cool. |
Junior Member
Registered: 02-12-10 | This just happened to me and it was a complete mystery to me. I thought the microwave was bad but then I found this thread and it all clicked. The carrots were under a bed of rather fatty pork that was ignited by the arching carrots. It was almost a really bad situation. |
