Welcome back to culinary college! Today’s lesson is How To Steam Food. I’m glad you are punctual to class because you’ll want every minute of this four and one half hour lecture and laboratory class.
The students at this culinary college in Baltimore aspire to careers as professional chefs, hospitality managers, and entrepreneurs of many different kinds. One particular graduate of the Baltimore culinary college actually became a cooking instructor on the internet! He now helps thousands of people all over the world improve their lifestyles through food.
Today, that graduate is at the front of the class helping to examine the basic cooking method of steaming. Steaming is a moist convective cooking method because heat is imparted to food indirectly through moisture in the form of steam.
In the previous lab class, we explored the differences between boil, simmer and poach. Items are poached at 165F, simmered at about 185F, and boiled at 212F. In my opinion, boiling is not a cooking method, it’s a terrible way to treat your food. The large violent motion of liquid in a full, rolling boil tears up protein products and makes them shrink and toughen.
When you discover the secrets of how to steam food instead of poaching it, then you help retain nutrients and texture of the item. Nutrients can leach from vegetables when they are immersed in poaching liquid. However, the indirect contact of moist heat through steaming means you can retain much of the texture and nutrient quality of foods.
Another advantage of a steaming method is that you can cook items that are assembled or composed. In today’s assignment, we’ll make a stuffed Flounder pinwheel by spreading herbed cheese along with sliced raw shrimp onto a fish filet, roll it into a log and cut in slices. This type of composed item would disintegrate in a poaching liquid. But, suspended above steaming liquid helps it retain its shape.
A disadvantage of steaming is that you may not have the most visually appealing item through moist convection. Those grill marks on a steak, or nice brown color on a sauteed chicken breast come from caramelization of sugars at 320F. Since steam is never hotter than 212F, a steamed item will never be brown. However, you can bet it will be moist and flavorful.
Steaming takes advantage of the highest moist heat without boiling and subjecting your food to violent motion. This type of cooking method is the best to make vegetables even your children will want to eat. The gateway to healthier eating goes through steam.
When you know how to steam food correctly, you’ll be using this basic cooking method more often than in the past. It’s fast, it’s simple, it’s low-fat, it’s flavorful, and you can never burn something that you’re steaming. It’s fool-proof, whether you’re in culinary college or not.
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I would also like to see that experiment done, poaching vs steaming. Maybe I’ll give it a try at school tomorrow (I just started culinary school at Kendall College – wahoo!). I am looking forward to that experiment post and I’ll be back to discuss!
Thanks for the comment, Sarah.
I’m sure you will see a poaching lesson soon. The major difference between poaching and steaming are the contact with liquid and the relative temperature.
Items are partially submerged in liquid that is 165F-180F. Steamed items have indirect contact with the hot moisture and cook at 212F+.
@ Adrian,
You are right that it takes longer to steam a food item then to boil. It seems counter-intuitive at first until you look at the underlying science.
When steaming food, it is first important to steam below “the fog.” The “fog” that you see coming from a bath of boiling water is actually cooler water that has condensed back into fog. Because the water is starting to condense in the air, it is at a much lower temperature then the zone below the fog and above the boiling water.
But even if you steam “below the fog,” tiny droplets of condensation will quickly form a thin but uniform layer of water known as a “film condensate.” This film acts as a heat barrier, dramatically reducing the steam’s ability to transfer heat to the food.
When cooking in boiling water, the product is completely submerged, so no film condensate is formed, thus making boiling water “technically” faster then steaming.
why does it take longer to steam veggies at 212 than it does to poach when the temp is so much higher?
Hey Adrian!
I’m not sure that it does take longer to steam vegetables than poach them. What makes you think this is so? Better yet, how about doing the experiment for us. Take two identical items of similar size, poach one and steam the other. Come back and post the results here.