How to use the online timer
Ten minutes of steaming covers firmer vegetables cut into even pieces: carrot batons, broccoli florets, green beans, cauliflower. Leafy things such as spinach or cabbage need two or three minutes at most, while dense chunks of swede or celeriac want considerably longer. Cutting everything to a similar size matters more than the timing itself, because a tray of mixed large and small pieces guarantees some are collapsing while others are still raw in the middle.
Steaming holds on to colour, texture and water-soluble vitamins better than boiling does, since the vegetables never sit in water for those things to leach into. A pan of simmering water with a steamer basket above the waterline and a lid on top is the whole apparatus. If the water touches the basket, it is boiling rather than steaming, and greens in particular go dull and grey.
The fork settles it rather than the clock. A piece should give a little resistance rather than sliding off or turning to pulp, since vegetables cooked past that point lose the bite worth eating them for. Anything that will be finished in a pan, roasted afterwards or tipped into a curry is better pulled a shade underdone, because it carries on cooking wherever it goes next.
Common questions
Is steaming better than boiling?
For colour, texture and water-soluble vitamins, yes, because nothing leaches out into the water. Make sure the water sits below the basket, or you are boiling rather than steaming.
Everything cooks at a different rate. What do I do?
Cut to a similar size, and add the denser pieces first with quicker ones a few minutes later. Leafy greens need two or three minutes at most.
Cookie policy