page_title: Steaming
section_title: Steamed foods
hierarchical_section_title: Steaming / Method / Steamed foods
caption_attribution_description: Chinese steamed egg 蒸三色水蛋 蒸水蛋
context_page_description: 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 have been found dating back about 5,000 years. Steaming is considered a healthy cooking technique that can be used for many kinds of food.
context_section_description: In Japan, glutinous rice is steamed to prepare mochi rice cakes. Traditional Japanese sweets or wagashi making involves steaming rice or wheat dough for making mochigashi and manju.
  In Western cooking, steaming is most often used to cook vegetables—it is rarely used to cook meats. However, steamed clams are prepared by steaming. With Chinese cuisine, vegetables are usually stir fried or blanched and seldom steamed. Seafood and meat dishes are steamed. For example: steamed whole fish, steamed crab, steamed pork spare ribs, steamed ground pork or beef, steamed chicken and steamed goose.
  Rice can be steamed too, although in Chinese cooking this is simply referred to as "cooking" rather than "steaming". In Thailand steaming is the definition of minimalist cooking. Wheat foods are steamed as well. Examples include buns and Chinese steamed cakes.
  Steamed meat dishes (except fish and some dim sum) are less common in Chinese restaurants than in traditional home cooking, because meats usually require longer cooking times to steam than to stir fry. Commercially sold frozen foods (such as dim sum) formerly had instructions to reheat by steaming, until the rise in popularity of home microwave ovens, which have considerably shorter cooking times.
caption: Chinese steamed eggs
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