Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the basic mechanisms of microwave (MW) heating, with a focus on its possible applications in the food sector (pasteurization and sterilization, baking and cooking, heating, and tempering, freezing, drying, and extraction), underlining, for each application, the main limits of conventional thermal technologies and the potential advantages of MW treatment, together with its drawbacks. Moreover, to overcome typical limits related to MW application, especially nonuniform temperature distribution, the concept of a hybrid/combination approach, also called MW-assisted food processing technologies, will be described. These technologies integrate the advantages of MW energy with unconventional processes (e.g., ultrasonication, ohmic heating, electron irradiation, freezing, osmotic dehydration, infrared heating, and vacuum processing) to enhance product quality and process efficiency and reduce time and operational costs of conventional processes (e.g., drying, extraction, baking, pasteurization/sterilization, tempering).
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