In many parts of the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year, as the autumn wind blows and temperatures fall, thoughts turn to warm and comforting foods. Japan is no exception.

At convenience stores, for example, this is the season when steamed buns begin appearing, tempting customers in their display cases strategically positioned near the cash register. We fell for it when we recently reviewed these delicious steamed cheese curry buns supervised by Japan's most popular curry chain CoCo ICHIBANYA.

Sometimes, you'll also find steamed buns sold from traditional bamboo steamers, for example, at Chinese food specialty booths in department store food corners or at street stalls in front of restaurants in the Chinatowns of Yokohama or Kobe.

Whether you have a frozen bun you bought from a supermarket or you bought a hot steamed bun outside and it's cold by the time you brought it home, you're going to need to heat it up.

The thing is, not everyone has a bamboo steamer to rely on, so the microwave oven is the next best thing. However, heating steamed buns in the microwave oven is hardly a fool-proof process. The dough may either become sticky if you put too much water or too dry if you don't put enough.

Heating up a steamed bun using a mug

Japanese chef 麦ライス Mugi Raisu (@HG7654321), who provides delicious recipes and easy-to-follow tricks and tips to overcoming difficulties in cooking, posted a method for warming up steamed buns on their Twitter account.

Here is what may be one of the best ways of heating up a steamed bun in a microwave:

According to Mugi Raisu, this method of warming the steamed buns will make them fluffy every time!

The steamed bun in the photo certainly looks soft and fluffy and very appetizing...

The useful tip and mouthwatering photo elicited many comments, such as:

If you ever need to heat up some steamed buns, why not give it a try?