Food Of The '90S: Micros Still Are The Wave Of The Future

As the 1990s get under way, microwave ovens - abetted by restaurant chains and high-tech packaging - promise to have a strong influence on what we eat, from grilled cheese sandwiches to prebrowned chicken parts.

``One product trend we see are those that key off the restaurant chains,'' said Chuck Haberstroh, editor of Food Engineering magazine. ``There is a whole range of products that are clones of restaurant food - cheeseburgers, French fries and even milkshakes.

``Basically it's the food companies looking to provide microwave versions of what people are comfortable with in food chains,'' Haberstroh said.

Pat Custis, group research manager for the Campbell Microwave Institute, agrees:

``The consumer is evolving from reheating to cooking familiar foods, food they know how to make on top of the stove and now make in the microwave, but much more quickly.''

These familiar foods include fried chicken nuggets, French fries and grilled sandwiches - ``all, unfortunately, not ideal to make in the microwave,'' Custis said.

``Grilled sandwiches come out white, fried foods are not crisp,'' he said. So companies such as Campbell's will continue to research methods to bring the consumer browned sandwiches and stay-crisp foods.

Food processing and packaging - specifically retort processing and controlled atmosphere packaging - also promise to lead the way in the 1990s.

Retorted foods are processed like canned food. ``They are put in plastic tubs or a tray, then in a large cooking unit with hundreds of others and cooked like canned foods, except they are in plastic. The end result is that they are portable and reheatable,'' Haberstroh said.

Another advantage of these single-service, shelf-stable products is that they work well in vending machines. ``However, that isn't being done here as much as it is in Japan,'' Haberstroh said.

Controlled-atmosphere products such as oven roasted-chicken, are cooked, covered with a barrier plastic tray and wrap that limit the exchange of gases, and filled with a non-oxygen gas such as nitrogen or carbon dioxide. ``That allows the product to stay fresh without being frozen, without going through the freeze/thaw process,'' Haberstroh said. Such products typically are sold in the refrigerated sections of groceries.

Foods such as chicken that are sold in controlled-atmosphere packaging have the browning that is normally associated with conventional cooking, and need only to be reheated in the microwave oven.

``Controlled-atmosphere packaging will be a pretty big growth market, particularly as food stores increase their takeout foods departments,'' Haberstroh said.

Does all this packaging mean that people will use the microwave oven increasingly to reheat foods rather than cook them from scratch? Not necessarily, says Judith Benn Hurley, Washington Post columnist, Prevention magazine contributor and author of ``Healthy Gourmet'' (NAL books, $18.95):

``I do see a trend in people becoming more relaxed with the microwave, incorporating it into the kitchen, as an adjunct. You can't bake bread in the microwave oven, but you can heat the liquid to 110 in the microwave oven, and it's a nice, moist environment for the dough to rise.

``People need to know that it is just as quick to microwave a fresh fish fillet in the microwave oven as it is to buy prepackaged food and reheat it in the microwave,'' Hurley said.