Past Krissy Downey for Nutrient Network Kitchen

Krissy is a Digital Culinary Product Fellow at Food Network.

One of the most delightfully simple ways to relish vegetables and proteins is by steaming them. It'due south quick, requires very few ingredients and lets the nutrient shine all on its own. Well-nigh steaming recipes call for using a steamer basket or bamboo steamer, but non everyone has those tools on hand. The skilful news is, in that location are other ways to achieve the perfect steam, so read on for everything y'all need to know about how to steam without a steamer.

What Is Steaming?

Steaming is a moist heat cooking method, during which boiling water evaporates into steam. That steam, along with whatsoever you are cooking, is trapped in a pot with a tight-fitting lid, which creates the perfect, hot environment to cook the nutrient. Typically, an inch or so of h2o boils in the bottom of the pan, with a steamer resting higher up, so that the food never touches the h2o. It is one of the more simple ways to cook, letting the true flavors of the food come through. Later steaming, the possibilities are endless. Y'all can finish your veggies and proteins with a pinch of salt and pepper, a flake of sauce like hollandaise or salsa verde, or just a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

What Is a Steamer?

Steamers come up in a few different shapes and sizes. One type is a collapsible metallic steamer basket. They have an nigh accordion shape, flaring out into a bowl in which to place the food you are steaming. Another type of steamer is a steamer pot, which is a two-in-ane set of saucepans that stack on pinnacle of each other. The bottom saucepan, which is for the water, looks like any other saucepan in your cabinet. The top saucepan holds the food and has holes in the lesser to allow the steam to seep into the food. There are also bamboo steamer baskets, which tin be placed inside a saucepan with water to cook anything from fish, to chicken, to dumplings and Chinese steamed cakes.

How to Steam Without a Steamer Handbasket

No steamer sitting around your kitchen? There are enough of other ways to reach the perfect steam. Yous can use items you probably already have to get the job done.

The first hack is ane of our favorites, and it just requires a large pot, a heatproof plate, and some aluminum foil. First, take three sheets of aluminum foil and curl them up into baseball-sized balls. Place them on the bottom of the pot, and pour in virtually an inch of water. Then residuum the plate on top of the foil balls, and add whatsoever food you're trying to steam to the plate. Comprehend the pot with a tight-plumbing equipment lid and steam abroad.

If yous have an elevated wire cooling rack, that can also be used in place of a proper steamer. Utilize information technology exactly how you would a steamer basket: add an inch of h2o to a pot with a tight fitting hat, place the wire cooling rack in the pan, and place the food on superlative of the rack. Then close the chapeau, and steam to your desired doneness.

Another fun and quite piece of cake solution is to use a disposable aluminum pie pan. These are available cheaply at most grocery stores and make for the perfect steamer basket substitute. Simply poke several holes into the bottom of the pan, settle information technology upside downwards into a pot filled with an inch of water, and identify the food on top of the inverted pan. The edges of the pan will create that distance betwixt the water and the food, and the nutrient volition residue comfortably on the apartment surface of the pan.

The final, and possibly easiest, workaround is to steam food in the microwave. This method will work best with vegetables, and all you need is a bowl and some microwave-safe plastic wrap (look for a microwave-safe label on the plastic wrap box earlier using this method). Identify your nutrient in the basin, add a few tablespoons of water, and cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, taking actress care to brand sure the plastic wrap doesn't bear on the food itself. So microwave for iv-6 minutes until fork tender.

Recipes that Celebrate Steaming

Steaming works for a wide diversity of foods, including chicken, vegetables, fish fillets and shellfish. Check out some of our favorite steaming recipes below!

A dynamic, tasty dinner in less than an hour? Say no more than! Ginger, garlic, and scallions work alongside soy sauce and rice wine to turn up the flavors on simply steamed white fish fillets. Plus, the add-on of snowfall peas makes this a consummate and salubrious weeknight dinner.

With about a million means to melt a sweet potato, it tin be hard to know which way to go. Steaming preserves all those wonderful nutrients in sweet potatoes, and it takes way less fourth dimension than cooking them in the oven. You'll exist steaming this good for you dinnertime staple over and over once more.

Weekdays can exist hectic, and busy schedules ofttimes get out room for less-than-healthy dinners on the fly. Repast Prep Steamed Vegetables can be washed on the weekend in just over an hr, and the end effect volition give y'all a refrigerator full of rainbow vegetables to utilize in a pinch all calendar week long.

Red Chile Pork Tamales are a holiday treat ready for a crowd. Braised pork in flavorful sauce plus light and fluffy masa dough steamed in corn husks volition go out an unforgettable odor that is certain to draw in the whole family.

This baby bok choy is a weeknight delight, filled with delicious spice and on the table in merely x minutes.