Steaming food is one of the healthiest ways to cook food as it doesn’t add any extra ingredients like fats or oils. For this reason, Lékué is an excellent way to create tasty and well-cooked food.
Lékué and food steamers are definitely worth a try for a healthy diet rich in natural nutrients, vitamins and minerals and for those looking to steam a lot of vegetables in one go. When it comes to smaller quantities, Lékué also has smaller formats.
What is Lekué?
A steamer is one of the most useful and practical kitchen appliances. It is designed to cook food in the heat of steam. Most of the Lékué accessories fit in or on top of a saucepan filled with hot water, or in the microwave. After this, the perforated base of the insert allows steam to surround and heat the food.
Although using a food steamer sounds simple, it requires patience and a few hours of cooking before mastering this healthy technique. Lékué is usually the best option for daily needs when it comes to cooking. We can cook many foods without having to worry about nutrient requirements.
Various foods can be cooked in a steamer, such as vegetables, poultry, seafood, rice, meatballs, or other meats, grains, and legumes. In some cases, specific steamers also have egg holders to cook eggs from soft to hard. To cook the food that we want in the steamer, all we need is water, then we will set the cooking time and wait until it is ready.
Advantage
Currently, in some forms of cooking, such as frying, sautéing, grilling, boiling, microwaving, steaming is considered a method to help preserve flavor and nutrition in the dish. For this reason, Lékué is preferred and chosen by so many people.
Less fat
Frying is one of the worst ways to cook. Fried food increases the saturated fat content, increases cholesterol and increases weight. Stir-frying also produces a lot of saturated fat and cholesterol, which is not good for cardiovascular health.
Meanwhile, a food steamer doesn’t use fat to prepare food, which limits cholesterol. Notably, this simple way of cooking also removes a significant amount of fat from the meat, making it less caloric. Steaming food is considered the healthiest cooking method as it does not lose the vitamins and minerals in the food. It does not dry out food and, at the same time, does not require any additives or artificial flavors during cooking. You can cook food in a steamer without adding oil, salt, sugar, or soy sauce.
Preserve vitamins and minerals
Food provides protein, fat, fiber, vitamins, and many essential nutrients for the body. However, if processed incorrectly, the protein will become denatured.
The best way to cook vegetables is to steam. By steaming, food is not directly affected by liquids or fire, so more nutrients are retained for the food. Lékué ensures that vitamins B, C, minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and zinc are retained.
Keeps the flavor and color of the dishes
By steaming with steam, the food will keep its shape and color intact.
The types of shrimp, fish or other shellfish when steamed also give natural sweetness, fresh and not hardened, dehydrated as fried.
simple preparation
For steamed dishes, cooks don’t have to prepare a lot of pots and pans or cooking oil. We only need to set the time for the food steamer, and then take out the food and put it on the plate.
To keep steamed dishes from being monotonous and lacking in flavor, cooks need to be flexible when combining spices. For example, when heating shrimp, ginger, onion and aromatic leaves should be added to eat with fish sauce. Food steamers make cooking quick and easy. In general, food steamers have different levels, which means that various foods can be cooked. Therefore, steaming food saves time and energy as it can cook different types of food at the same time.
Also, little supervision is needed compared to other ways of cooking. It requires almost no monitoring of the food or worrying about burning or overcooking the food. Especially since most food steamers have a timer.
Contraindications
Food steamers have great advantages, but like other cooking methods, they also have their disadvantages.
slower cooking time
Steaming food generally takes longer than cooking it in the pot or oven. Specifically, this happens because food steamers generally don’t use very high heat. Therefore, it takes much longer to use a food steamer instead of other cooking methods. Unless it is placed in the microwave; that in this case the cooking is faster.
Also, since food steamers may not use high enough heat, it can be nearly impossible or extremely slow to cook beef or pork. Therefore, when it comes to cooking meat, most use food steamers only for poultry or fish.
steam heat
While using a food steamer naturally, we may be exposed to the heat of the steam. Basically, the heat from steam is water that is above its boiling point. Which is more than 100 degrees centigrade.
When we open a container of Lékué, the heat can easily escape. Therefore, we must be very careful when we finish steaming the food so as not to burn ourselves.
unattractive image
If we like our food, especially meat, to be lightly browned or nicely seared on one side, we may not like steaming. Since food steamers only use water for cooking, while the result may be delicious food, it may not look very appealing.
Aside from meat not browning, vegetables can also give off an unpleasant-looking residue. Therefore, there are often complaints about the appearance of food after steaming.
