When I microwave a frozen pot pie, I end up with a few patches that are boiling hot and a few patches that are not even warm. While I could lower the microwave power or simply bake the pie in an oven for a more equitable distribution of thermal energy, using the microwave at full blast is expedient, as I want to prepare the pie quickly. On the other hand, I could stir the after cooking it, but this would destroy the pristine surface of the crust.
What I desire is a stirring device with an angled shaft, similar in function to the directional drilling apparatus used on oil rigs. The entire apparatus resembles a manual hand mixer. Instead of beaters, the device has an L-shaped stirring rod that is inserted into the pie through a small hole in the center. At the end of the stirring rod is a small whisk, which rotates around the axis of the rod at its terminal end (i.e., parallel to the table) and it powered by a hand crank. As the device is cranked, the whisk bit traces a circle around the bottom of the pie dish, while the whisk itself rotates, thoroughly mixing the pie constituents while leaving the crust intact. After sufficient stirring, the rod is carefully threaded back out through the crust (or clumsily yanked out, depending on how hungry I am).-- Cuit_au_Four, Jul 16 2012 Try opening the microwave door every twenty seconds, and then moving the pie to a different location and orientation, inside the oven.-- Vernon, Jul 16 2012 //but this would destroy the pristine surface of the crust//
Are you going to eat this thing, after you heat it?-- UnaBubba, Jul 16 2012 We understand that the Buchanans keep a breeding colony of kitchen menials (Servitorius Buchanensis Domesticus) on one of their estates. If you ask [MB] nicely he might sell you a couple.
Sturton will certainly supply you free of charge, but you'll have to perform a number of obscene, degrading and depraved sexual acts with him, his Great-Aunt Morbidia, and Hounslow, her pet tapir.-- 8th of 7, Jul 16 2012 Not having ever consumed a pot pie, I'm relatively unfamiliar with their construction, but might you not accomplish the same task by shaking it? Perhaps place some sort of close-fitting cover over the top to reinforce the crust, invert the pie, and agitate.-- ytk, Jul 16 2012 Assuming that the pie filling is viscous and heterogenous as well as polytropic, the best non-invasive agitation technique would probaby be to subject the pie to a large circumferential acceleration- generating sufficicient shear force between the rapidly moving crust and the inertially-damped gravy lubricated contents to set up turbulence.
This "jerk" should be followed by a gentle deceleration, the velocity profile being represented by a sawtooth waveform with a short rise time and a slow decay.
The main risk would appear to be detachment of the top crust due to adhesion failure at the top/side joint. This could be addressed by rolling the edge.
The possibility of alternating the direction of rotation at intervals should be considered.
Given the intense E-M field, pneumatic actuators fabricated from plastic appear to offer the best option for power, size, cost and durability.-- 8th of 7, Jul 16 2012 I like the idea of a steaming hot pie being spun up to around 6000rpm before it is removed from the oven, presumably with its internal contents still spinning at high revolutions.
Thereafter, the would-be eater struggles to hold the pie against its contents' gyroscopic effects before it suffers some sort of catastrophic structural failure and splatters everything within 30-40 feet with boiling pie guts.-- UnaBubba, Jul 17 2012 I inherited a set of pie funnels not so long ago and perhaps something like that is the answer if they're modified to have a key-type handle that extrudes from the side of the pie.-- Phrontistery, Jul 17 2012 random, halfbakery