Microwave meal

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A typical TV Dinner
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A typical TV Dinner
Gastropub ready meal from Marks & Spencer
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Gastropub ready meal from Marks & Spencer

A microwave meal (also referred to as a frozen dinner, ready meal, or TV dinner because it is often eaten while watching TV) is a prepackaged, frozen meal which usually comes packaged in a flat cardboard box. They require very little preparation, and contain all the elements of the meal in one package. An example might be a chicken tikka masala meal, where the rice, chicken, and all other parts of the meal are prepackaged in a plastic tray.

They are typically purchased at a supermarket and stored in the freezer for later use. When it is time to prepare them, the plastic cover is removed or vented, and the meal is heated in a microwave oven for a few minutes, after which a fully prepared meal is ready—one requiring minimal effort to prepare. They are the ultimate in convenience, particularly for providing a relatively complex meal with no preparation time, but they can be more expensive than preparing food from scratch (though oftentimes the opposite is true).

[edit] Drawbacks

The freezing process tends to degrade the taste of food, and the meals are thus heavily processed with extra salt and fat to compensate. The dinners are almost always significantly less nutritious than fresh food, and are formulated to remain edible after long periods of storage, thus often requiring preservatives such as BHT.

[edit] Current Trends

In recent years there has been a push by a number of independent manufacturers and retailers in making microwave and ready meals that are low in salt, fat and free of artificial additives. These are primarily based in the United Kingdom and do not sell to supermarkets but instead retail their products either over the internet, through their own retail stores or in Farm Shops. These include COOK Trading Limited, EazyCuizine and Chef On Board.

These types of meals are rather popular in developed countries; for example, the United Kingdom spends £5 million a day on microwave meals, and it is the largest consumer of microwave meals in Europe.

Before the proliferation of microwave ovens, TV dinners were packaged in aluminium trays and heated in conventional ovens.

Many microwave meals are fully cooked during preparation, and need only to be reheated by the consumer (thus eliminating the possibility of undercooking by misjudging microwave powers and cooking times), but more recently versions have been produced whose packaging is designed to operate as a steamer, allowing rapid cooking of essentially raw ingredients (typically fish and vegetables) immediately before consumption.

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