Cooking without soaking
Why Does Steaming Keep the Flavour In?
Boiled food loses its flavour into the water. Steamed food has no water to lose it to.
-
Step 1 of 5
Water pulls dissolvable things out of food.
Vitamins, sugars and salts dissolve. Sitting in hot water they drift out of the food and into the pan, and most of that goes down the sink.
-
Step 2 of 5
Steam touches food without soaking it.
Vapour condenses on the surface and gives up its heat, but there is no standing water to carry anything away.
-
Step 3 of 5
Condensing steam delivers a lot of heat.
Turning vapour back to liquid releases the energy it took to boil, so steam heats food quickly even though it never gets above 100 degrees.
-
Step 4 of 5
Delicate things survive it.
There are no bubbles knocking food about and nothing lifting it around the pan, so fish and dumplings keep their shape.
-
Step 5 of 5
But it cannot brown anything.
The surface stays wet and stuck at 100 degrees, so no crust ever forms. Steaming is a technique for tenderness, never for colour.
Steam burns are worse than boiling-water burns for exactly the reason steam cooks well — condensing releases a lot of extra energy.
The short version
Steam cooks at boiling temperature without standing water, so flavour and vitamins stay in the food instead of dissolving out.
Try it yourself
Boil one handful of broccoli and steam another. Taste the boiling water afterwards — that flavour came out of the food.
Topics