When it comes to commercial cooking equipment, a commercial steamer is a mainstay in the institutional kitchen, in part because steamers are dependable and easy-to-use. With commercial food steamers, you can quickly and efficiently cook menu items like shell fish, rice and vegetables. There are several good reasons to cook with steam. Here are our top three:
No Risk of Scorching or Burning
Steam is often referred to as a gentle method of cooking food. With steam cooking, foods never dry out the way it can with other cooking methods. Sometimes, people unfamiliar with steam cooking imagine that it can leave foods wet or even soggy, but this isn’t the case at all. When using a steamer to cook foods, once the steam has passed its heat to the food, the remaining steam is recaptured and removed from the system.
When cooking with steam, the steam moves quickly throughout the oven and seeks out the coolest parts of food product bringing them quickly up to temperature. With dry heat types of cooking, the heat radiates slowly from the heat source so that the food heats unevenly based on the proximity to the food source, so that foods can be burned or scorched in one part and not fully cooked in others. This won’t happen when cooking with a steamer.
Prepared Foods Are Healthier
Steaming foods, whether it is with a commercial steamer or using a stock pot with a steamer insert, promotes healthier foods in two ways. First, unlike boiling or other cooking processes, steaming doesn’t deplete vegetables of the nutritional contents. Foods will retain a maximum quantity valuable nutrients like vitamin B, riboflavin, lycopene, and beta-carotene. Steaming is also a healthy way to prepare meat because steam cooling helps to lower fat levels in the meat. Additionally, steaming doesn’t require any additional fats be added to the product in the way that baking and frying do. With steaming, you will have a leaner, healthier piece of meat.
Maximizes Production
Another difference between cooking with steam vs. dry heat is that with steam cooking, the flavors and aromas of the foods being prepared are locked into the food itself. During dry heat cooking processes, moisture along with flavors and aromas are released into the air which can result in flavor transfer. To avoid this unwanted transfer of flavor between foods, foods are often cooked in shifts, so that each food type retains unique flavor and you avoid having a meal where all the foods taste the same. When cooking with steam, this issue is eliminated. Because steam cooking locks flavors in foods, the resulting taste of foods is more intense and different foods can be cooked side-by-side in a commercial steamer with no concern of diminished flavor allowing you to optimize equipment usage.
