Vegetable Steamer

Comparing multiple vegetable steamer styles is a great way to see what you need to consider when buying one, and what the different choices can offer you.

Steaming food is a great way to keep your meals low fat, full of nutrients, and delicious. A lot of nutritionists tell people to try and get as many different colors on their plate as they can, as a way to get a varied and balanced diet. When you steam vegetables your food will have a more brilliant color, which is how you’ll be able to easily see your food is still full of nutrients. A lot of other ways you cook actually leech out the nutrients from your food.

This method also avoids adding things like cooking oil, keeping your veggies low fat, and you can add a few simple spices to keep your food extra delicious. In fact some steamers come with what is often referred to as a flavor scenter screen, which is used for herbs to make sure your veggies have a unique delicious flavor to them.

There is a vegetable steamer for every sized meal. There are ones with large 6-Quart baskets, and ones with one, two, or four baskets. Having multiple baskets allows you to cook lots of different foods at once, while keeping them separate. Having one large basket allows you to cook a lot of what you’re looking at once without having to separate it out.

Most of these products are clear, which lets you check on the food without opening them up and releasing the steam, ruining the cook cycle. A good feature for a vegetable steamer is the timer. This varies a lot from product to product, but some of them will let you set a timer of up to twelve hours. Other really nice features on nicer products include water level indicators so you can see when you need to add more water easily, easy access for adding water while food is cooking, cool touch exteriors so you don’t burn your hands, and some even have LCD screens these days.

A vegetable steamer is a great way to cook a nutritious, delicious, low fat meal without a lot of fussing in the kitchen.

When you get a new kitchen appliance you start trying to figure out more and more things you can cook in it right away. There are an endless numbers of veggies and combinations that can be made in your vegetable steamer.

Before you get started, it’s important to note a few tips. First of all, these veggies all have different cooking times and you’ll want to pay careful attention to that. If you’re going to be making a number of different things at once, you’re really going to want to make sure you have an appliance with multiple tiers. This makes it easy to add different foods with different cooking times without risking the things you’ve already got going. Also make sure that when you cut up foods, you cut the pieces at about the same size. You want all of your new potatoes to be about the same size so they’re done at the same time, and don’t end up with over and undercooked foods.

There are a lot green vegetables that can be thrown into your electric vegetable steamer. The nice thing about green veggies is that it’s a bit easier to see when they’re done judging by the color. You’ll notice them brightening up as they cook and once they reach their peak you’ll be able to see that they’re ready to come out. Once they start darkening up they’re going to continue getting softer until they get mushy, so you’ll want to pull them out before that happens. This is really something that will be easier for you to recognize the more often you cook.

Some ideas for green veggies that will be easy to make with your new vegetable steamer are asparagus, broccoli, green beans, peas, sliced zucchini, artichokes, green peppers cut into strips, bok choy, and brussel sprouts. Brussel sprouts in particular are a great one to make this way. If you’ve always thought that you didn’t like this great food you really need to give it a second chance-you’ve probably only ever had them overcooked! When cooked just right they should have a nice, subtle, nutty flavor that goes great with onions, garlic, and mustard flavors.

You’ve probably heard that the best and easiest way to get all of the nutrients you need in your diet is to eat lots of different colored foods! If you look at your plate and it’s all white or green you need to get some variety going on there. For better nutrition make prettier meals. Using your vegetable steamer is a fast and easy way to make this happen. Some great veggies with great colors are red peppers cut into strips, new potatoes, eggplant cut into strips, corn, sliced yellow squash, cubed butternut squash, carrots, cauliflower, and all the varieties of mushrooms.

By mixing up these veggies (and cooking them on different tiers so you get the times right) you can make some really exciting low calorie, high nutrition, meals. Add in just a few herbs, like rosemary or oregano, and a couple cloves of garlic, and you’ve got a fast and simple meal fresh out of the vegetable steamer that is packed with flavor.

There’s no doubt about it, cooking with a vegetable steamer is undoubtedly healthier. But what can you make with it that’s going to taste any good? This article is full of healthy ideas and tips for great meals you can easily prepare yourself.

First of all, what makes this such a healthy way to prepare your food? Well, first of all, this method doesn’t leech all of the nutrients out of your food, as many other preparation methods do. The steam from the boiling water cooks through your food and leaves it’s nutrients in tact for you to enjoy. Another great benefit is that you won’t be adding any oils to your cooking. While oils are essential to your diet, only in very small amounts. When you cook with oils you are adding a lot of unnecessary calories to your food. So, to cut calories and maximize nutrition, cooking with a vegetable steamer is the healthy way to go.

But without any oils are steamed vegetables going to be any good? There are lots of ways to add flavor and excitement to your steamed food! The first tip here is to cook different flavored vegetables to mix things up. For instance, adding bok choy, onions, or red pepper strips can add a good dose of flavor. Adding cloves of garlic is another great way to add punches of flavor, and garlic has a lot of health benefits all of it’s own. A lot of today’s electric vegetable steamers have flavor screens built into them. You can put herbs into these to more evenly steam flavor into your food. Good ones to try are rosemary, thyme, Italian seasoning mixes, and smoked paprika.

What do you do with this food once you’ve steamed it? Well, you can just eat it right there and call it done! Another great thing to do is layer them into wraps. You just pull out a wrap, put a spread on it, and layer in some of your favorite foods. For a spread you can use mayonnaise, but that’s not going to be healthy as something like hummus. There are a lot of flavored hummus options out there, like red pepper or olive, to take your flavor up a notch, too. If you don’t like this you can also try pesto. Then you can add in some lettuce, tomatoes, and anything else you might want! Great ideas for steaming are asparagus, carrots, eggplant, zucchini, and red pepper strips.

As you can see there are a lot of healthy ideas for cooking with a vegetable steamer and getting a lot of flavor in your food. You need to make eating healthy fun and easy so that you can stick with it on a daily basis, and using modern electric appliances can really make that possible.

These healthy side dishes using a vegetable steamer are both low calorie and nutritious. Of course vegetables are healthy! But by cooking them with a steamer instead of frying them up in lots of oils, you’re avoiding all the added fat and calories, and steaming keeps a lot of the nutrients in the food versus lots of other cooking methods, which basically leech a lot of the nutrients out of your food.

There’s a lot you can do, easily, with a steamer. If you plan on eating only one steamed item per meal, than getting one with a single big basket is a good way to go, but if you’re going to eat smaller amounts of multiples, you’ll want to get one with multiple baskets. This matters because different veggies have different cooking times. Make sure you keep that in mind with any of these vegetable ideas.

Also, some appliances have flavor screens, where you can put herbs, to help flavor your vegetables. Keep this in mind when looking at your options, too.

Side Dishes with a Vegetable Steamer

Zucchini is a great and easy idea. Thinly slice it for the best results, and mix it up with some yellow squash.

Steaming asparagus is one of the best ways to eat it. Make sure you look at the stalks you are putting in and that they are approximately the same thickness, because thicker ones will take an extra two to three minutes to really cool. Consider adding some thinly sliced garlic cloves into the steamer with this, as garlic tastes great with asparagus.

Cauliflower and broccoli are great ones mixed together and have similar enough cooking times that as long as the stalks are the same size, should be good to make together. In terms of spices, a little rosemary can go a long way with broccoli.

Carrots can be great on their own, but it’s also a popular thing to mix in with the cauliflower and broccoli, or most other vegetables.

Green beans steam beautifully, and taste better this way than most other cooking methods. They have a lighter, more summer, taste this way. This is another one where some sliced garlic put in can really make them stand out, but they taste just fine completely plain.

If you haven’t liked brussels sprouts in the past, consider trying them cooked in a vegetable steamer! They taste lighter this way, and a lot of the things people don’t like about them are fixed with this cooking method.

These simple tips for using a vegetable steamer will help you cook simple meals that are delicious, nutritious, and don’t take up a lot of your time.

Cutting your foods all about the same size for even cooking is a great tip. If your foods are all different sizes some pieces will be overdone (limp and mushy) and others will be undercooked (hard and off tasting). For even cooking and great tasting food try and approximately cut your food all the same size.

On that same note, if you’re cooking multiple types of vegetables at once, either use a vegetable steamer with multiple baskets so you can set different cooking times, or cook your items separately (which can be frustrating). You can add the ingredients with shorter time later in the cycle, but this will let steam out and effect the cooking process, so it’s not the best idea. If you’re going to be steaming different types of vegetables at the same time often (which is a great thing to do for your diet and to make meals taste great!) you should probably get a steamer that has multiple baskets.

If you’re cooking something you haven’t cooked before stay nearby so that you can make sure the cooking time is correct and you don’t overcook your food. Most steamers have clear baskets so you can see your food and easily see how it’s doing.

In that same vein, watch the color of the food change to estimate when your food is done. For green veggies, when they’ve reached their brightest color, they’re usually done–but when they start darkening, they’re usually starting to overcook so take them out (feel them to make sure they really feel done) and get them away from the heat quickly.

Hopefully these tips for using a vegetable steamer have you inspired to get cooking and making some simple meals quickly.