Steaming Food: A healthy and delicious way to cook | Caraway (2024)

FAQs

Steaming Food: A healthy and delicious way to cook | Caraway? ›

Steaming is a healthy cooking method that preserves the nutritional content of food, especially heat-sensitive vitamins, and minerals.

Steam Cooking with Meat and Poultry

In fact, Harvard Medical School recommends steaming as a cooking method for a healthy diet. Preparing meat at extremely high temperatures can increase disease risk due to the formation of compounds, but so can cooking for long periods using methods that cause nutrient loss.

Steaming food is one of the healthiest ways to cook food. It is a simple method of cooking that has many benefits. Steaming helps retain all the essential nutrients and flavour of the food. Unlike other cooking methods that use oil or fat as the medium of cooking, steaming is a fat-free method of cooking.

This method of cooking preserves the maximum nutrients. However, the disadvantage with steaming is that it is a slow method of cooking.

While baking and frying use heat to penetrate and cook foods thoroughly, these dry cooking environments often deplete food of its natural nutrition. However, steaming will heat food fibers without depleting their natural nutrition. As a result, food retains its natural vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

Use low-fat cooking methods like boiling or steaming.

If you boil or steam food, you avoid the chemicals created by high temperatures and cut out extra fat, which helps you stay at a healthy weight.

People with oily skin tend to benefit from facial steaming the most, so you can probably get away with doing it two or three times per week. If your skin is dry, stick to steaming once per week to avoid over drying. As for those with sensitive skin, you're better off skipping the steam altogether.

Steaming meat

Steam oven cooking is good for various kinds of meats like ham, pork belly, beef brisket, beef shoulder etc. The steam helps the fibres of the meat loose up and get tender, but without shredding apart. Poultry, such as turkey and chicken, is quite lean and steam helps make the meat juicy and moist.

Leafy greens — baby bok choy, spinach and Chinese broccoli — also steam up nicely but take less time. If you want to try something new, steam some radishes or quartered new potatoes.

What mistakes does everyone make when steaming food? ›

Steaming the food for too long

Steaming is an extremely fast cooking method, so oversteaming is a common misstep. Overcooking the slightest can result in a mushy mess you won't want to serve your guests or family.

When exposed to cooking water, the nutrients in veg like vitamin C can be lost. This isn't a problem with steaming! Thanks to the minimal added water, and gentle, indirect heat, your veggies keep more of the good stuff as steaming preserves nutrients, texture and flavour.

Steaming veggies can preserve nutrients, color, shape, and texture, without having to add any unnecessary fats through ingredients like oils or butter. To steam, place food into a steam basket and cover over simmering water. Since food is not directly touching the water, vegetables retain more of their nutrients.

If you are looking for something to heat your food quickly, a microwave may be a better choice for you. However, if you are cooking delicate foods such as vegetables, you may want to use a steam oven as it is better at preserving the foods natural moisture, texture and flavour.

And steaming your food will always be healthier than frying of any kind. But investing in the best air fryer is certainly a healthier way to enjoy those delicious foods that are often cooked in a deep-fat fryer or in lots of oil.

Which is healthier – Steaming or Boiling. As steaming doesn't rob the vegetables of their essential nutrients, it is advisable to steam the vegetables instead of boiling them. However, before you steam the vegetables, make sure you wash them in the right way to remove harmful chemicals from the surface.

That's why steaming is one of the best ways to maximize nutrients. It turns out that's especially true for broccoli. When in doubt, microwave. That's because microwaving uses little to no water, and can heat the vegetable quickly, thus preserving nutrients such as vitamin C that break down when heated.

Carolyn Berry, registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator in Vancouver, says to choose cooking techniques that don't add extra fat and calories. Grilling, roasting, baking, broiling, steaming, press cooking and slow cooking are some of the healthiest ways to cook meat.

The idea that raw vegetables are always more nutritious than cooked vegetables is a common misconception. The truth is that you should try to incorporate both raw and cooked veggies into your diet as much as possible. Cooking certain veggies can break down their cell walls to release more of their nutrients.