The Microwave Magically Cleans Itself

I have a microwave.

I have a teenager.

Microwave + teenager = DISASTER

I grew up in a household where dinners were cooked in the microwave.  Seriously. Meatloaf was made in the microwave. I always thought it was a little weird. Non of my friends' moms did that, but it worked for my mom.

I remember her scrubbing the microwave with Windex and paper towels.  I didn't bother her when she did that. I am crazy, but I wasn't stupid.  She had to work hard to clean that gigantic mess.


I have a pretty powerful 1200wt microwave. It's smart enough to cook popcorn without burning it and steam veggies with the push of one button.  With two button pushes, I can defrost meat.  And that's all I care to do with it.  I prefer to cook on my stove and my oven.

The teenager? Ugh! I wish she would cook in the oven or on the stove. She likes the microwave.  A lot.
She's always been hard on it- when she was 8, she set fires inside of it-- twice... in a month.  To be fair, the first time, we have no idea what happened.  A 20 second bread stick reheat turned into an unexplained smoky mess.

Needless to say, my microwave is almost always a DISASTER.

Does the teen clean it?  HA! HA! HA! HA!  You must be joking.  She thinks we have a house elf or that it magically cleans on its own.

I have found a way to clean it almost by magic, though.  You may have even seen the tip floating on Pinterest and Facebook.  I've seen it so many times, I am not linking to a source web page. I also didn't take pictures this time, so I must ask you to paint pictures in your mind. 

Imagine, if you will, a metal cave with light dimmed by... uh, tomato sauce?  The walls are splattered like a culinary Jackson Pollock protege eager to please his master with over-exuberant fervor. There are mystery stains of dubious consistency below the plate.  The interior was once an almond color, but now it is impossible to isolate a single color.

Yuck.  I don't want to scrub this crap.  No wonder my mom was cranky. 

So, I take this tip I find on the Internet where you take a bowl of water, add some vinegar, and basically cook it until it magically turns into a house elf that scrubs your microwave, or something like that. 

Fill a microwave safe bowl (I used a 2c Pyrex bowl) just shy of 1/2 full of water and added enough vinegar to fill it most of the way full and pop it in the microwave. I ran the microwave at full power for 4 minutes and busied myself with dinner construction.  I didn't rush to the microwave when the timer went off, either. I let it sit.

Even after letting it sit for quite some time, all I had to do was wipe the microwave down. No scrubbing. The plate just rinsed clean with hot water-- the crap just melted away.  It was like ice cream melting on the hot, Texas sidewalk.  No lies.  The inside of my microwave looks brand-flipping new.  Take that, Teenage-Mess-Maker.

If only cleaning the rest of my house was that easy.