surprising flames

[lauradi7dw]

I was sauteing some farmers' market mushrooms and garlic gloves together in a little olive oil. The mushrooms were done quickly but the garlic was still hard, so I turned off the heat and put the garlic cloves into the microwave for a few seconds to cook them faster. After a couple of seconds (literally), there started to be a weird noise, and by the time I had pushed pause at 7 seconds into the cooking time, there were little flames, which died down as soon as the microwaves stopped. Startling. I guess I won't try to microwave anything oily in the future (?)

Comments

[nosrednayduj]

I wonder if it was oily food combined with too small quantity. The microwave "divide by zero" problem.

I've had a microwave fire once, when we were attempting to re-constitute dry bread. We put a bowl of water in with a loaf of hard french bread, thinking that the water would boil and make a steamy environment for the bread. Instead the bread caught fire!

[acw.livejournal.com]

What it sounds like to me is that the garlic had moisture in it, which boiled, blowing tiny droplets of oil off the surface of the garlic. Little tiny droplets are very flammable because they have so much surface exposed to the air, and could ignite spontaneously, producing little sparklike flames moving away from the food.