Steaming

Traditional Chinese steamer and my way

A Chinese steamer makes a good cheese mould

About 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.

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.

You can use a traditional Chinese steamer to steam food, however, the ones I have found are quite small. I find a colander raised on an Pyrex bowl in a large pan is a better method.