Steaming Vegetables

• Cooking vegetables with steamer gadgets involves learning to recognize the point at which vegetables are fully cooked but still crunchy. As you start to cook vegetables such as broccoli and carrots, their color will richen and intensify. As they continue to cook, they start to lose their color. Perfectly steamed vegetables steam long enough to soften, but not long enough to lose their color. Use a steamer gadget with a glass lid to keep an eye on vegetable color or remove an opaque lid frequently to closely monitor steaming vegetables.

Steaming Filling Doughs

• Some dumplings such as tamales and hum bow heat well in a steamer gadget, which heats them efficiently while also keeping them moist. Because tamales are folded in wrappings such as corn husks or banana leaves, their dough is unlikely to stick to a steamer gadget. However, dumplings such as hum bow are likely to stick to a steamer, so grease your gadget with a light coat of oil before steaming them. Heating times vary for items such as tamales or pasteles, whose ingredients actually cook during the steaming process. To reheat premade dumplings such as store-bought hum bow, steam them until they're just heated through.

Steaming Frozen Foods

• Reheat frozen foods in steamer gadgets by transferring the frozen item directly to the steamer. This method works best with simple ingredients such as frozen spinach or broccoli, or frozen beans, which are unseasoned and simply need to be heated through. You can also steam some frozen foods such as noodle dishes this way if you need to prepare them quickly and didn't remember to defrost them. However, the steaming process may dilute flavors or cause thawed sauces to run off into the steaming water if you steam these items longer than necessary.

Types of Steamer Gadgets

• A steamer gadget can be a perforated pan that fits over a matching pan, or it can be a folding metal basket that adjusts to multiple pan sizes. If you don't have a steamer specifically designed for the purpose, use any heat resistant perforated gadget such as a metal strainer that fits over or inside another pan. Your steamer gadget will steam most efficiently if it also has a reasonably tightly fitting lid that keeps steam from escaping.