Steaming

Steaming is a way of cooking food using steam. In this method, the food is placed in steam with no air around it. The steam touches the food and then moves away, which helps cook it gently. People often use a special kitchen tool called a food steamer for this, but food can also be cooked in a wok.

People in the American Southwest have used steam pits to cook food for about 5,000 years. Steaming is seen as a healthy way to cook because it keeps the food's nutrients. It is faster and uses less energy than boiling because it needs less water and steam moves heat very well.

History

Early people used steam to cook food thousands of years ago. In places like the Yellow River Valley in China, Gunma Prefecture in Japan, Italy, Sardinia, and Cochise County, Arizona, people made special tools to cook with steam. Over time, new kinds of steamers were made from materials like bamboo and metal. Today, steaming is a popular way to cook food, especially in Chinese and East Asian cooking.

Method

See also: Bamboo steamer

Steaming is a way to cook food using steam. When water boils, it turns into steam. This steam surrounds the food and cooks it without the food touching the water. The steam gives the food a nice, moist texture.

Usually, people use a special container called a food steamer to cook this way. It has a lid to trap the steam. If you don’t have a steamer, you can cook food in a wok by putting a metal frame inside with water below and the food above. Some microwave ovens also have a way to cook food with steam.

Benefits

Steaming is a good way to cook food without burning it or adding extra fat. Many people like steaming because it doesn't need oil.

When food is steamed, it keeps more nutrients than when it is boiled. For example, steaming keeps more folic acid and vitamin C in vegetables than boiling does. Steaming also helps keep more glucosinolates in broccoli, and it keeps more β-carotene in carrots than boiling. Overall, how cooking affects nutrients can vary.

Steamed foods

See also: List of steamed foods

Western cooking

In Western cooking, steaming is mostly used for vegetables, but it is not common for meats. However, steamed clams are made by steaming. In Chinese cuisine, vegetables are usually stir fried or blanched, but seafood and meat dishes are often steamed. Examples include steamed whole fish, steamed crab, steamed pork spare ribs, and steamed ground pork or beef, as well as steamed chicken and steamed goose.

Rice

Rice can also be steamed, though in Chinese cooking this is simply called "cooking" instead of "steaming". In Thailand, steaming is a very simple way of cooking. Wheat foods are steamed too, such as buns and Chinese steamed cakes. In Mexican and Central American cuisine, tamales are made by steaming dough made from nixtamalized maize in wrappers made from corn husks or banana leaves.

Chinese dishes

Steamed meat dishes (except fish and some dim sum) are less common in Chinese restaurants than at home, because meats usually need more time to steam than to stir fry. Commercially sold frozen foods used to be reheated by steaming, but now home microwave ovens are more popular because they cook faster.

Staple foods

• Mantou, steamed buns
• Wotou, Chinese cornbread

Dim sum

• Siu mai, meat dumplings
• Har gao, shrimp dumplings
• Baozi, filled buns
• Lion's head meatballs
• Steamed meatballs
• Pearl meatballs, pork meatballs covered in sticky rice

Rice

• Steamed rice with crab, Fujian cuisine called 蠘飯 (蟳飯)
• Fenzhengrou (粉蒸肉): Steamed pork with rice flour

Seafood

• Fish: Chinese perch, grouper, Japanese black porgy
• Crab: Chinese mitten crab, Shanghai cuisine for the autumn

Soup

• Weitang: Steamed pork rib soup, Jiangxi cuisine
• Buddha Jumps Over the Wall: Fujian cuisine
• Winter Melon Soup: Using a hollowed out and sculpted gourd as a vessel
• Qi Guoji Steamed Chicken Soup: Chicken soup cook in a double steamer, Yunnan cuisine

Sweets

• Double skin milk, said to be made in the 1850s in Daliang in Foshan, Guangdong
• Guilinggao: also known as Turtle Jelly, a jelly-like Chinese medicine, also sold as a dessert

Others

• Chinese steamed eggs similar to custard with local variety of ingredients and vessels.

Variety of dim sum

[Buddha Jumps Over the Wall](/wiki/Buddha_Jumps_Over_the_Wall), or Buddha's Temptation

A small bowl of [winter melon](/wiki/Winter_melon) soup

Steamed [silkie](/wiki/Silkie) soup

Turtle jelly

Japanese dishes

In Japan, glutinous rice is steamed to make mochi rice cakes. Traditional Japanese sweets or wagashi often involve steaming rice or wheat dough for making mochigashi and manju.

• Glutinous rice. Instead of boiling, glutinous rice is steamed to eat. Okowa (おこわ (強飯)) as it is called, receipts with ingredients and vessel chestnuts (kuri okowa) or wild herbs (sansai okowa) are popular.

• Red rice (赤飯, sekihan): served at festive occasions with azuki bean and color agent added to enhance red color.

• Mochi: prepared with steamed rice and kneaded.

• Chawanmushi: savory egg custard

• Odamaki-mushi: udon in a cup of chawan-mushi. Osaka specialty.

There are recipes where sauce is added to the main ingredients, aiming to control smell or aroma, or keep moisture to the ingredients.

• Awayukimushi: egg meringue over fish or seafood and keep moisture as well as retain aroma.
• Kaburamushi: grated or shredded turnip covers crabs and fish to keep moisture.
• Sakamushi: add sake to steam sea bream and clams which will reduce fishy smell.

Recipes named after the container.

• Dobin-mushi: matsutake and fish in a pot together with dashi soup.

• Yugama: yuzu citrus is hollowed out into a cup to hold and add zest to the food.

• Sea bream milt steamed in yugama

Sweets: steaming is an important process in Japanese sweets making such as manjū, yōkan, uirō, karukan or suama.

Chawanmushi (foreground)

Manjū

Mochi as offering to the deities

Korean dishes

• Gyeran-jjim, a custardy dish