Steam Cooking

Steam cooking, pan searing, stir-frying and deep-frying are the four most common techniques of Chinese cooking. Each one produces a different result, even though for the same material. The selection of which cooking method to use is based upon whether it is the one to help bring out the best of the ingredients. While there are many recipes available for Chinese cooking, this book is dedicated to steam cooking.

Steam cooking is healthy because it uses steam instead of oil to cook. The ingredients must be fresh. Otherwise they would not be tasty as there is no flour batter per se to cover up. Steam cooking is a relatively simple method as it can be done either using a wok or while cooking rice. While the choice of materials and the right amount of steamed time are crucial to make a tasty dish, culinary skill requirement is not so demanding. Steam cooking is also energy conserving because for most seafood or light meat dishes, cooking takes less than 10 minutes, compared with at least 30 minutes while using a conventional oven. Best of all, multiple servings can be cooked at the same time by stacking up the steamer baskets and cooked in the same wok!

This book covers the basics of steam cooking, from how to flavour a dish, water level and general rules to determine cooking time for various ingredients. It talks about some finishing techniques that can enhance the flavour of a dish. There are illustrative examples of utensils, common sauces, herbs, seasoning, and pantry items that can be used with steam cooking. There are recipes for meat, fish, vegetable and dim sum dishes. They are easy to follow and illustrated with full-colour photography.