Steaming is a method of cooking using steam. Cooking is the act of preparing food for consumption. ...

Two types of steaming utensils

Steaming is a preferred cooking method for health conscious individuals because no cooking oil is needed, thus resulting in a lower fat content. Steaming also results in a more nutritious food than boiling because fewer nutrients are destroyed or leached away into the water (which is usually discarded). It is also easier to avoid burning food. Image File history File linksMetadata Steamers. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Steamers. ...

Steaming works by first boiling water, causing it to evaporate into steam; the steam then carries heat to the food, thus cooking the food.

In western cooking, steaming is most often used to cook vegetables, and only rarely to cook meats. By contrast, vegetables are seldom steamed in Chinese cuisine; vegetables are mostly stir fried or blanched instead. Wikibooks Cookbook has more about this subject: Chinese cuisine The cuisine of China or Chinese cuisine is widely regarded as representing one of the richest and most diverse culinary heritages on Earth. ... Stir frying is a common Chinese cooking technique used because of its fast cooking speed. ... Wikibooks Cookbook has more about this subject: Blanching Blanching is a cooking term that describes a process of food preparation wherein the food substance is rapidly plunged into boiling water and then removed after a brief, timed interval and then plunged into iced water or placed under cold running water. ...

In Chinese cooking, steaming is used to cook many meat dishes, for example, steamed whole fish, steamed pork spare ribs, steamed ground pork or beef patties, steamed chicken, steamed goose etc. Other than meat dishes, many Chinese rice and wheat foods are steamed too. Examples include buns, Chinese steamed cakes etc. Steamed meat dishes (except some dim sum) are less common in Chinese restaurants than in traditional home cooking because meats usually require longer cooking time to steam than to stir fry. Dim sum (Chinese: 點心; Cantonese IPA: dɪm2sɐm1; Pinyin: diǎnxīn; Wade-Giles: tien-hsin; literally dot heart or order heart, meaning order to ones hearts content; also commonly translated as touch the heart, dotted heart, or snack), a Cantonese term, is usually a light meal or brunch, eaten sometime...

The Chinese chefs developed an efficient method of restaurant cooking: Big bamboo steaming baskets, each three feet in diameter and four inches tall, can be stacked up on top of a wok like a chimney. The bottom of each basket is a grid which allows the steam from the wok to rise all the way to the top of the stack. In the kitchen of some dim sum restaurants, a steaming stack can be 20 levels high. The bottom level is removed when done and the entire stack simply shifted downward. This technique ensures a constant supply of freshly steamed dim sum. Cooking in a wok A wok on an electric stove The wok (Traditional Chinese: 鑊; Simplified Chinese: 镬; pinyin: ; Cantonese: wok6) is a versatile cooking utensil used especially in East Asia and Southeast Asia. ...

Steaming at home can also be done with a wok. A shelf is put on the bottom of the wok, and a small steam basket or a dish of food is put on the shelf. Water is then filled to just below the dish or basket. The water is kept boiling, and a lid is placed over. Most vegetable dishes can be cooked in approximately five minutes using this method; most meat dishes, however, take longer than 20 minutes.

A common alternative is to put the dish to be steamed on top of rice which is being cooked. A pot of rice which takes about 30 minutes to cook will then be ready at the same time as the steamed food.

Specialized steamers are often available for purchase; however, although they are more convenient, they are not necessarily better.

A related technique is enclosing food in a container or material that will release steam when heated, such as clay pot cooking. A kind of steaming can be done outdoors by wrapping meat, poultry, or fish in banana leaves and burying it in hot sand or ash. Another form of outdoor steam cooking is covering a large piece of meat, poultry or fish in wet clay and placing it in a fire. Clay pot cooking is a technique of cooking food in an unglazed clay pot which has been soaked in water so as to release steam during the cooking process. ...

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Steaming

See also : Cooking