My guess is you’re getting contamination from something else. All a microwave does is emits microwave radiation inside the faraday cage that is made from the microwave’s frame/cover, and as the microwaves pass through, they flip di-polar molecules (molecules that have one side slightly more positively charged and the other slightly more negatively charged), which creates friction and heat. Water is one such molecule.
One reason some people don’t like to use it to cook have to do with how it affects the texture. Microwaves heat food up from anywhere the waves spin water, whereas most other cooking methods involve heating it from the outside, so water is evapourating more there, plus you can get some oxidization to add a brittle crunchy layer.
It can also damage other molecules and affect their structural integrity in ways different from other forms of cooking.
It can occasionally do this thing where it heats the water past the point of boiling but without boiling the water (superheating). Not sure if that affects cooking as much, as it usually requires pretty pure water and is more a safety concern because that water will explode when it realizes that it should actually have changed into a gas already (which usually happens because you bumped it while picking up the container it’s in).
And that container is the last part. You don’t usually cook with plastic containers because they melt in the high heat used for cooking, but they seem fine in a microwave. But who knows what’s happening at a micro level. A metallic taste is probably something other than plastic, but my guess is that it’s coming from whatever container you were using, especially if you’re microwaving something in a metal container of some sort. That would form current eddies that can arc, but if the surface is smooth enough it won’t necessarily spark visibly, but could be breaking particles off into your water that you then taste.
My guess is you’re getting contamination from something else. All a microwave does is emits microwave radiation inside the faraday cage that is made from the microwave’s frame/cover, and as the microwaves pass through, they flip di-polar molecules (molecules that have one side slightly more positively charged and the other slightly more negatively charged), which creates friction and heat. Water is one such molecule.
One reason some people don’t like to use it to cook have to do with how it affects the texture. Microwaves heat food up from anywhere the waves spin water, whereas most other cooking methods involve heating it from the outside, so water is evapourating more there, plus you can get some oxidization to add a brittle crunchy layer.
It can also damage other molecules and affect their structural integrity in ways different from other forms of cooking.
It can occasionally do this thing where it heats the water past the point of boiling but without boiling the water (superheating). Not sure if that affects cooking as much, as it usually requires pretty pure water and is more a safety concern because that water will explode when it realizes that it should actually have changed into a gas already (which usually happens because you bumped it while picking up the container it’s in).
And that container is the last part. You don’t usually cook with plastic containers because they melt in the high heat used for cooking, but they seem fine in a microwave. But who knows what’s happening at a micro level. A metallic taste is probably something other than plastic, but my guess is that it’s coming from whatever container you were using, especially if you’re microwaving something in a metal container of some sort. That would form current eddies that can arc, but if the surface is smooth enough it won’t necessarily spark visibly, but could be breaking particles off into your water that you then taste.