Ah, the joys of cooking in the microwave! Reader Darren has bought and enjoyed Tyson pre-cooked “Grilled & Ready” chicken strips, so he thought he knew what he was in for when popping a couple in the microwave. He thought wrong.

Darren took all culinary precautions when preparing his meal, following the microwave cooking instructions to the T: “3-4 minutes on high, covered. Do not overheat.”

Just after three minutes in, he caught a whiff of burning and saw his microwave spewing smoke. As he puts it so eloquently, “This isn’t normal microwave behavior.”

He goes on in detail about his chicken catastrophe: “After immediately stopping it and waiting for the smoke to settle down, I opened it up to examine the remains of my chicken strips. I expected them to be black, shriveled strips of their former chicken-glory, but what I did NOT expect was for them to be… melted.”

Darren adds, “I have never seen meat melt before.” Neither have we, and it doesn’t sound appetizing, either. He says he plans to send a note to Tyson, but wanted to warn all other chicken strip microwave chefs out there as well.

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