Vegetable Steamer

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.