Steaming



Steaming is a method of cooking using steam. Overcooking or burning food is easily avoided when steaming it. Health conscious individuals may prefer steaming to other methods which require cooking oil, resulting in lower fat content.

Steaming also results in a more nutritious food than boiling because fewer nutrients are leached away into the water, which is usually discarded. A 2007 USDA comparison between steaming and boiling vegetables shows the most affected nutrients are folic acid and vitamin C. Compared to raw consumption, steaming reduces folic acid by 15%, and boiling reduces it by 35%. Again compared to raw consumption, steaming reduces vitamin C by 15%, and boiling reduces it by 25%. All other nutrients are reduced by a similar amount by both methods of cooking.

Steaming works by first boiling water, causing it to evaporate into steam; the steam then carries heat to the food, thus cooking the food. Such cooking is most often done by placing the food into a steamer, which is a typically a circular container made of metal or bamboo. The steamer usually has a lid that is placed on the top of the container during cooking, to allow the steam to cook the food. When steamer is unavailable, a wok filled with below half water is a constant replacement by placing a metal frame made of stainless steel in the middle of the wok.

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.

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.