Pizza boxes are generally built and designed in a way that they are heat resistant up to a certain extent. Since they are usually used to deliver pizza across varying distances, they are made to be durable, to retain heat inside the box and to prevent the pizza from becoming too soggy.
Sometimes, when we receive the pizza at home, some of the heat may have dissipated due to the long journey. Alternatively, you may have some leftover pizza in the box that you want to heat up. Is it possible to do this in a microwave? Can you pop the entire box inside?
Technically, you can do this up to an extent. However, there are ways to go about it and things to keep in mind before you go ahead with it.
How Can I Microwave a Pizza Box?
You can put the entire pizza box containing the pizza inside the microwave. The microwave will heat up the pizza with the radiation passing through the pizza box and warming the pizza up.
The pizza box, however, will also absorb this radiation and will become warm itself. This is why it is important to note that you should only microwave a pizza box for less than a minute. If you only have a couple of slices inside the box, then perhaps 30 seconds might also be enough to warm up your pizza.
Anything beyond a minute will cause the pizza box to heat up too much, potentially causing it to catch fire.
If you want to warm up your pizza a bit more, you can try microwaving the box in short intervals.
Will It Be Safe to Eat the Pizza?
If you microwave the pizza box for less than a minute and then try to eat the pizza, it might be okay. However, it is possible that there might be toxic chemicals in your pizza box that might seep into your pizza at such high heat. This might then cause health hazards to yourself if you end up eating it.
Is There Anything I Should Keep in Mind?
If you do want to microwave a pizza box, make sure you keep the following things in mind:
- Only microwave the box for 30-60 seconds. Anything longer than that might cause the pizza box to catch fire, leading to a safety and fire hazard to the appliance as well as you and your surroundings.
- Make sure there is no aluminum foil, metal or plastic inside the pizza box as these are not entirely suitable for the microwave. Read through the pizza box to see if it says what the box is made of.
- Do not microwave a pizza box that does not contain any food inside it. This will cause it to catch fire fairly quickly as there will be no food to absorb the radiation.
Ideally, it would be better to stick to other ways of heating your pizza inside a microwave instead of putting the whole box in. If you need to do it, however, make sure you do so safely while keeping all of the above in mind.
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