Out of all of the kitchen appliances I own, my built-in microwave is the most under-utilized. Sure, I use it to reheat lasagna and to pop a bag of popcorn on movie night, but when it comes to using its fancy functions like defrosting, I'm a lost puppy.
I began to look beyond my microwave's reheating functions once I heard of Anyday, a line of cookware designed to reject the appliance's questionable reputation. Rather, the Anyday bowls succeed in leveraging the microwave by helping home cooks make faster, more sophisticated meals. Not to mention, the bowls start at a decent price tag of $30 (for The Medium Shallow Dish), which is significantly less than the cookware and appliances it's meant to replace (think: your pot, steamer basket, and oven). You'd never have a reason to think your microwave could cook poached eggs or banana bread—until now.
The Anyday bowls succeed in leveraging the microwave by helping home cooks make faster, more sophisticated meals.
Overview
The Anyday bowls are built to cook entire meals in the microwave. At the most basic level, you throw your prepped ingredients into the bowls, pop on a lid, pull up the knob, and begin cooking. The bowls themselves are made out of frosted borosilicate glass while the lids are made of borosilicate glass, platinum-grade silicone, and microwave-safe stainless steel. The bowls can break if you drop them, but you won't have to worry about cracking if you plan to put them in your oven or freezer (which they're safe to do). Plus, all parts are dishwasher safe, and the bowls are stackable which makes for convenient storage.
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You can purchase Anyday bowls individually or as a set. If you're new to the whole cooking-with-your-microwave thing, the Starter Set comes with The Deep Dish and The Shallow Dish and has the option of purchasing in medium ($55) or large ($75). This set will allow you to make a decent variety of dishes—from orange chicken to Brussel sprouts.
What can the Anyday bowls make?
Anyday's website is stacked with one-ingredient recipes (like beets, chicken drumsticks, and couscous) to more in-depth ones (like cacio e pepe cabbage, squash curry, and fish over riced cauliflower). The bowls can make an impressive array of microwavable meals: perfectly cooked filets of salmon, set-it-and-forget-it grains like farro or rice, and even pumpkin pie. I found the free provided recipes easy to follow, especially since they all have photos of the end result, though I wish the recipes had ratings from fellow home cooks.
Admittedly, I was unhinged at the idea of using my microwave for actual cooking. Still, I remained hopeful that the bowls were able to deliver on their seemingly promising claims. For my testing, I tried cooking a vegetable (cauliflower), a protein (a poached egg), and a starch (baked potato) in the Anyday bowls. I became increasingly impressed the further along I got during testing.
I cooked a cup of cauliflower florets to fork-tender in three minutes, a perfectly poached egg in two minutes and 30 seconds, and a medium-sized baked potato in five minutes and 30 seconds (which, by the way, was sloppily cut in half in uneven sizes, yet still cooked evenly). Taste-wise, all dishes had the same flavor they would have if I cooked them under my standard method of cooking (a pot with a steamer basket for vegetables, a shallow pan for poached eggs, and the oven for baked potato).
How to use Anyday
While the brand encourages you to learn your microwave's wattage for best results, I relied on good ol' fashioned trial and error to figure out what works for my meals. (FYI: the recipes default to 1000w and you really should know your microwave's wattage if you're cooking things that require water like pasta or grains.) I know that my built-in Viking is pretty powerful, so for most recipes I tested, I cut 30 seconds to one minute off of the cooking time under the assumption that I can always go back and add extra if need be.
After putting the raw ingredients into the corresponding bowl, you simply have to pop on the lid and set the cooking time on your microwave. You'll want to make sure the knob on the lid is always lifted—this allows for excess steam to escape from the valve. The glass bowls will be extremely hot after cooking, but thankfully, the bowls feature an ergonomic curve that conforms to oven mitts for safe handling (they really thought of everything, folks).
If you're anything like me, you rarely bring your meals tableside in the same dish you cooked them in. That being said, not only are the Anyday bowls elegant enough to serve in, they can even be used to store leftovers. Essentially, you can cook, serve, and store your meals in the same bowl without having to dirty up a pot, a serving dish, and a leftover container. This gets a massive checkmark in the "pro" column for anyone who loathes washing dishes (hi, that's me!).
Opponents to the concept of microwave cooking may have some lingering fear—namely, dryness and sogginess. Anyday accounts for both of these doubts by designing the lid with a silicone gasket underneath the stainless steel rim. This ensures that the lid remains locked in airtight to prevent moisture from escaping (and thus, preventing dry chicken and tasteless veggies). And to ward off sogginess, the knob that's meant to be lifted while cooking helps excess steam to escape, which, combined with the right cooking time, makes for delicious results.
Are the Anyday bowls worth it?
That's a resounding yes, Anyday bowls are worth it. While the bowls are designed to fit a slew of lifestyles, they're best suited for busybees—from moms who'd rather babysit their toddlers than their steamer basket to working professionals who prefer whipping up an easy home meal versus hitting a record number of takeout meals in any given week, but lack the resources to do so. Anyday serves as the quintessential kitchen side-kick once you can get past the idea of using your microwave to do more than just reheating.
In my pre-Anyday life, I would have much rather preferred tossing a frozen baked potato into my airfryer than having to pre-plan for a 30-minute oven affair. I would have rather succumb to cooking scrambled eggs for fear of messing up poached eggs on a stovetop (even though that's my preferred way to eat them). I'd rather hover over my steamer basket of vegetables than use a fancy appliance because I always end up under- or over-cooking. Now, the Anyday bowls have made cooking all three of these staples in my diet—plus more—an absolute breeze.
Michelle Rostamian is a freelance beauty, wellness, and lifestyle writer with bylines at Cosmopolitan, USA Today, Yahoo, W Magazine, Women's Health, and more.
