An electromagnetic cooking device includes a cavity in which a food load is placed, a plurality of RF feeds for introducing electromagnetic radiation into the enclosed cavity, and a controller configured to select a heating target including a plurality of unrotated resonant modes; detect asymmetries of the food load relative to a center of the enclosed cavity and select rotations for the plurality of unrotated resonant modes that compensate for the detected asymmetries of the food load to generate a plurality of optimized resonant modes; generate a heating strategy having a selected sequence of the optimized resonant modes; cause the RF feeds to excite the enclosed cavity with a selected set of phasors for a set of frequencies corresponding to each resonant mode of the selected sequence of optimized resonant modes; and monitor the created heating patterns using closed-loop regulation to selectively modify the sequence of optimized resonant modes.