The advantages of steam cooking
- It respects vegetables’ qualities: under 100 °C, vitamins and minerals are better preserved than with high temperature cooking. Cooking al dente allows to preserve vitamins and minerals. Furthermore, this mode of preparation does not require fat.
- It respects the taste of foods: vegetables keep their flavour but nothing prevents you from adding herbs or spices in the cooking water to lightly perfume them.
- It also allows to make canned vegetables: thanks to a specific industrial process called “steam cans”, they are prepared in a small quantity of juice (3 times less than in traditional cans for green beans!), which saves the water resources and reduces the weight of cans. Lighter, they are easier to carry.
The right utensils to steam cook
- The steaming basket: it can be integrated to a stew pot such as a couscous maker or removable and retractable (it is the famous “daisy”, which perforated petals deploy to embrace the shape of the pan). Or you can use a system D with an inox sieve, a cloth and a cover.
- The bamboo basket: the one that is used in Asia to cook dim sum. Put it on the grill of a wok or in a pan with a smaller diameter. To avoid food sticking, add cooking paper, spinach or cabbage at the bottom. Its advantages: light and inexpensive.
- The electric steam-cooker: often with a timer, it has several plastic or inox baskets on top of each other. Be careful, the closer food is to the water, the quicker it will cook: potatoes and carrots go at the bottom! Other possibility: the food processor which often has a steam basket.
- Pressure cooker: with the removable basket of the cooker, cooking is done in high pressure. It is quicker, but the temperature is higher with a “soft” steam, which does not allow to preserve all the vitamins.
- The steam oven: chefs’ favourite, it is also the most expensive of steam cooking devices. Fall-back solution: the microwave by putting the cut vegetables in a glass recipient adding a bit of water at the bottom and covering everything with cling-film pierced with a few holes.