Microwave + grill

Our microwave oven plate was not revolving, so I thought that it was time to replace it with a more modern microwave oven. The tendency these days is to have a microwave and a grill combined in one device and so this is what we bought last week ago. The grilling function intrigued me: the oven comes with a grilling rack that of course is made of metal, and I wondered how such a rack could work in a microwave oven, where metal is a strict no-no.

One can use the grill function on its own, which is what I did yesterday when grilling fish for lunch. The grilling element is in the 'roof' of the oven and can just about be seen in the picture on the left. I covered the top of the grilling rack with aluminium foil, both to prevent leakage from the fish (and the plate at the bottom is meant to catch any leakage that escapes the foil) and to help cook the other side of the fish. 

This works reasonably well; when comparing it to cooking the fish in the oven, there doesn't seem to be much difference. I grilled for 14 minutes as opposed to 15 minutes in the oven, but I could just as easily cut a minute from the oven time with little change. I assume that the microwave oven uses less electricity than the oven, but otherwise things are the same. I suspect that because of the aluminium foil, the fish didn't have 'grill lines' on it but that's purely aesthetic and doesn't affect the taste.

I wonder about the possibility of 'microwaving' and grilling simultaneously; obviously this would be without the frame and foil, but in such a scenario, the food would be relatively far from the grilling element. Microwave ovens work by stimulating water molecules in the food to revolve at speed; this causes them to heat up and it is this heat that cooks the food. Such ovens 'cook from the inside out', which is why the outside of microwave cooked food looks uncooked, whereas grilling (and all other kinds of cooking) cook 'from the outside in', which is why the outside layers of something can be hot and the inside cool.

According to a thread on Reddit, After a lot of research and asking and carefully reading the manual, I found that in combi mode the maximum power it uses for microwave is 440 watt (in microwave mode it can reach 1200 watt). So I guess as it is relatively low power and the fact that the included metal rack has insulated legs it is safe to be used in low power. 

So what's the point? I am not convinced by this explanation.

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