A food steamer or steam cooker is a small kitchen appliance used to cook or prepare various foods with

steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

heat by means of holding the food in a closed vessel reducing steam escape. This manner of cooking is called

steaming Steaming is a method of cooking using steam. This is often done with a food steamer, a kitchen appliance made specifically to cook food with steam, but food can also be steamed in a wok. In the American Southwest, steam pits used for cooking ha ...

History

Food steamers have been used for millennia. In

Ancient China The history of China spans several millennia across a wide geographical area. Each region now considered part of the Chinese world has experienced periods of unity, fracture, prosperity, and strife. Chinese civilization first emerged in the Y ...

, pottery steamers were used to cook food. Archaeological excavations have uncovered pottery cooking vessels known as ''yan'' steamers: a ''yan'' was composed of two vessels, a ''zeng'' with a perforated floor surmounted on a pot or caldron with a tripod base and a top cover. The earliest ''yan'' steamer dating from about 5000 BC was unearthed in the

Banpo Banpo is a Neolithic archaeological site located in the Yellow River valley, east of present-day Xi'an, China. Discovered in 1953 by Shi Xingbang, the site represents the first phase of the Yangshao culture () and features the remains of sever ...

site. In the lower

Yangzi River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ) is the longest river in Eurasia and the third-longest in the world. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows including Dam Qu River the longest source of the Yangtze, i ...

, ''zeng'' pots first appeared in the

Hemudu culture The Hemudu culture (5500 BC to 3300 BC) was a Neolithic culture that flourished on the Coastline of China, Chinese coast, just south of the Hangzhou Bay in Jiangnan in modern Yuyao, Zhejiang, China. The culture may be divided into early and la ...

(5000–4500 BC) and

Liangzhu culture The Liangzhu () culture or civilization (3300–2300 BC) was the last Chinese Neolithic jade culture in the Yangtze River Delta. The culture was highly stratified, as jade, silk, ivory and lacquer artifacts were found exclusively in elite burial ...

(3200–2000 BC) and were used to steam rice; ''yan'' steamers were also unearthed in several Liangzhu sites, including 3 found at the Chuodun and Luodun sites in southern

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

. In the

Longshan culture The Longshan culture, also sometimes referred to as the Black Pottery Culture, was a late Neolithic culture in the middle and lower Yellow River valley areas of northern China from about 3000 to 1900 BC. The first archaeological find of this cu ...

(3000–2000 BC) site at Tianwang in western

Shandong Shandong is a coastal Provinces of China, province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural ...

, 3 large ''yan'' steamers were discovered.Underhill, Anne P. (2002). ''Craft Production and Social Change in Northern China''. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. pp. 156 & 174. . Steamers.jpg, A modern metal steamer and a

bamboo steamer Bamboo steamers, called ''zhēnglóng'' () in Chinese, are a type of food steamer made of bamboo. They are used commonly in Chinese cuisine, especially dim sum, and usually come in two or more layers. Bamboo steamers have also spread to other Eas ...

Har Gow and Shumai at DK Chinese Restaurtant.jpg, ''

Har gow Har gow ( zh, c=蝦餃, p=xiājiǎo, j=haa1 gaau2, l=shrimp jiao), also anglicized as ha gow, hau kau, or ha kao, is a traditional Cantonese dumpling served as dim sum.Hsiung, Deh-Ta. Simonds, Nina. Lowe, Jason. 005(2005). The food of China: a ...

'' and ''

shumai ''Shumai'' ( zh, s=烧卖, t=燒賣, p=shāomài, cy=sīu-máai, poj=sio-māi) is a type of traditional Chinese dumpling made of ground pork. In Cantonese cuisine, it is usually served as a dim sum snack. In addition to accompanying the Chin ...

'', two common

dim sum Dim sum () is a large range of small Chinese dishes that are traditionally enjoyed in restaurants for brunch. Most modern dim sum dishes are commonly associated with Cantonese cuisine, although dim sum dishes also exist in other Chinese cu ...

dishes cooked in steamers

Advantages

Most steam cookers also feature a juice catchment which allows all nutrients (otherwise lost as steam) to be consumed. When other

cooking techniques This is a list of cooking techniques commonly used in cooking and food preparation. Cooking is the practice of preparing food for ingestion, commonly with the application of differentiated heating. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely ...

are used (e.g., boiling), these nutrients are generally lost, as most are discarded after cooking. Due to their health aspect (cooking without any oil), food steamers are used extensively in health-oriented diets such as ''

cuisine minceur Cuisine minceur (; ) is a style of cooking created by French chef Michel Guérard, which recreated lighter versions of traditional nouvelle cuisine dishes. Contemporary critics acknowledged that the minceur versions by Guérard tasted better and we ...

'', some

raw food diet Raw foodism, also known as rawism or a raw food diet, is the dietary practice of eating only or mostly food that is uncooked and unprocessed. Depending on the philosophy, or type of lifestyle and results desired, raw food diets may include ...

s, the

Okinawa diet The Okinawa diet describes the traditional dietary practices of indigenous people of the Ryukyu Islands (belonging to Japan), which were claimed to have contributed to their relative longevity over a period of study in the 20th century. Relative ...

, a

macrobiotic diet A macrobiotic diet (or macrobiotics) is an unconventional restrictive diet based on ideas about types of food drawn from Zen Buddhism. The diet tries to balance the supposed yin and yang elements of food and cookware. Major principles of macrobi ...

, or the

CRON-diet The CRON-diet (Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition) is a nutrient-rich, reduced calorie diet developed by Roy Walford, Lisa Walford, and Brian M. Delaney. The CRON-diet involves calorie restriction in the hope that the practice will improve ...

. Food steamers release less heat to the kitchen environment, therefore helping keep the kitchen cool during hot summers.

References

{{reflist Ancient inventions Chinese inventions Cooking appliances Cooking vessels Food preparation appliances

History

Advantages

See also

References