Steamed cooking a healthy way

Author: miriamjoel | Posted: 18.07.2012

In terms of food preparation, as less water in food preparation is a good thing, especially if you focus on more healthy products and the extraction of higher nutritional value of vegetables and meat.

Steam cooking is about preparing food without adding water, as vegetables naturally contain water. This method of cooking has evolved a lot lately on the one hand because people need to eat healthier, but due to development and its introduction on market of special pots made for it.

Adding excess water may cause loss of nutritional quality of food. A steam cooking is not only prepared without water, but without adding oil or fat.

There are many advantages taking into account this way of cooking food, such as high amount of nutrition, vitamins are not lost by steaming and not diluted with water, unsaturated fats are not captured by the food; cooked vegetables are more palatable because they are made in water.

Bottom of a steam cooking pots should have a layer of aluminum or copper. This layer serves to distribute heat evenly all over.

Heat retention, keeping it, is an important fact. The outside layer of a pot made of a stainless steel does not radiate heat, but will hold it (because of the iron from composition), so our advice is to cook at low temperatures.

Note that it is very important fixing well the cap. Meat and vegetables contain large amounts of water to be stored inside the jar and turn into steam. The steam helps to boiling products.

Pots made for steam cooking have a special steam valve that will "whistle" when enough pressure inside is. This means that food is ready.

To cook steamed you have two possibilities:

- To use a set of pots for cooking in steam (normal pot, insert a drill ship bottoms and tops over it) in which you put water, food not entering in contact with water, but being "soaked" in steam

- Or use a special pot (made of several layers of alloy and therefore, more expensive) that put the food directly, without water. It is considered the true "steam cooking", in which food is cooked in steam retrieved from their natural water content.

Other requirements have to be met in order to tell you to steam cooking, like:

- a stainless steel pot with a higher concentration and higher quality - for uniform heat transfer

- bottom of the pot should be very flat for a good transfer of heat.

- cover should close tightly to keep the steam inside the vessel

Stainless steel cooking vessels and steam will help cook food faster and having higher quality in terms of nutrient concentration.



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