• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

• Don’t waste time with a flavored liquid unless its on it’s way to becoming a sauce.

• Use tongs and dry dishtowels or potholders when removing lids. Unlike boiling water, steam moves out and up very quickly—and it bites.

• Season foods before steaming if possible. This includes salt and pepper. Marinating or brining is a good idea too.

• Consider herbs. As steam heat pushes inward, it can take flavors with it, especially if the herbs have strong essential oils: try mint, basil, and members of the onion family.

• Don’t go heavy on the water. One of the great things about steam is how fast it happens. A mere 1 cup of water in a 5-quart pot will produce steam for 15 to 30 minutes over medium-high heat, depending on the simmer range of the cook top.

What happens if you forget to pull the vegetables out in time? Think of a botanical prison riot. You see, the stuff in those little cells doesn’t necessarily get along, which is one of the reasons they’re in cells to start with. If the walls break down enough, those substances will begin to chew on each other, acid on base, enzyme on protein . . . it’s ugly. The gentle green pigments are the first to go, and the last are the fibers, the tough cellulose that so proudly held that little stem erect. And once the outer walls fail, those substances (including flavor and nutrients) will hightail it for the open sea. Now you’re faced with a choice: serve your disgusting, mushy veggies, or try to make soup with them.

Even with perfectly timed cooking, blanched vegetables won’t hold their color forever. Leave them sitting around in an acidic environment such as a salad dressing or a marinade and their color will be lost.

Blanching is also one of the easiest methods for peeling thin-skinned fruits such as peaches or tomatoes. That same cell breakdown that allows the color to brighten lets you remove the skin in a few quick peels, with no damage to the flesh underneath.

Steam

Through no fault of its own, steam has become the official cooking medium of the food inquisition, who use its power to inflict needless suffering on dieters who, thinking that if it’s bland it’s good for them, don’t know to fight back. But if used only for good, steam is a powerful ally.

Vaporous H2O is the result whenever heat produces enough molecular motion to break hydrogen bonds and enough internal pressure is generated to overcome atmospheric pressure.

Master Profile: Steam

Heat type: wet

Mode of transmission: 65:35 percent conduction to convection ratio

Rate of transmission: very high

Common transmitters: any liquid

Temperature range: 213° F and up (depending on atmospheric pressure)

Target food characteristics:

• Delicate meats and vegetables that would be destroyed by the convection of boiling

• Wide range of vegetables

Culinary advantages: steam doesn’t extract and wash away food components the way immersion methods do

Non-culinary application: riverboat, locomotive, nuclear sub

I own two actual steaming devices. The first is a typical folding steamer basket (the kind that looks just like the laser-dealing satellite from Diamonds Are Forever, only without the diamonds). The second is an Asian-style bamboo steamer. Despite its ultra-low price tag I really, really dislike it. It’s amazingly inefficient, makes everything taste like dry grass, and is impossible to clean. But when my daughter was an infant, we needed a way to steam lots of vegetables at once while keeping them separated from one another before puréeing them and we needed something that would stack. I later discovered a company that makes metal stacking steamers, but the kid’s on to more solid fare, so I’ll pass.

I employ four different steaming rigs depending on the food in question:

• The collapsible metal steamer basket, a rapid-response tool that I grab when I’ve absolutely, positively got to get a green vegetable cooked and on the table in five minutes. I also use it to roast chiles over a gas burner.

• A pair of dinner plates in a wide, low pan