Vegetable Steamer

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.