Rich and Strange Aeons

more steaming and other food

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 05:56:29 GMT

Steaming isn't for everything. Tried baby carrots and frozen broccoli, together. The broccoli was thawed, cooked, and eaten before I felt the carrots were sufficiently done, after 14 minutes. Vs. 90 seconds in the microwave sufficing to make carrots soft-crunchy and sweet.

Did potatoes again. Nothing much to report, it's pretty consistent. Dressed in Neufchatel cream cheese, then olive oil when the cheese wasn't melting and spreading well, plus black pepper, dill, and scallions.

Eggs. 6 eggs, put in after the water was boiling. I pulled 2 after 6 minutes for soft eggs, the rest after 9. The soft were a bit mixed: mostly set white and runny yolk, but a bit of runny white and set yolk, too. The contents did scoop out of the shell nicely. Also, I need 3 extra-large eggs for two slices of torn-up bread, 2 felt anemic. We used 2 when I was a kid, maybe my father was buying jumbo eggs, or I had less luxurious tastes.

The 9 minutes eggs were pretty much hard, but with central yolk that was deep gold in color and kind of like jelly in consistency, just what I wanted. And the one I peeled (rather than scooping out of) did peel relatively easily.

I suppose I should do 9 and 12 minute eggs from the same carton to make sure the color difference is due to cooking.

Relatedly: article on egg peelability, that found steaming or boiled (placed in hot water) the best, while boiled (eggs in cold water) fared poorly. I guess this matches: childhood eggs (hot start) didn't have a big peel problem; as an adult I switched to cold start eggs, and eventually also switched to eating by scooping.

So, what to steam? Frozen dim sum: yes. Potatoes: yes. Eggs: sure; not a huge quality different from hot-start eggs, but less splashing, and less time for the smaller amount of water to boil (though maybe more time steaming than boiling, so not sure there's a speed difference.) Vegetables: meh, not sure superior texture is worth the time, or (for leafy greens) picking green bits out of the steamer basket later.

Unrelated to steaming, I'd found a Papa John's coupon and got a pizza. It is not good. Even with my personal killer configuration of extra sauce, Italian sausage, and garlic (also salami this time), it's amazingly bland. The best thing was the garlic sauce that came with it, I'm told for dipping crusts into. That is good, though I used half the sauce on tonight's potatoes.

Unrelated to all that, lemon slices WILL turn moldy when left in a container in the fridge long enough.

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a steamy post

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 04:29:56 GMT

More steaming! I've been cutting up potatoes and putting them in a folding basket steamer in my saucepan. I am surprised by how fast they cook, it's almost as fast as microwaving, and arguably nice. Part of it may be that I was steaming Russets, which fall apart quickly. Tonight's red potatoes I think also mostly cooked quickly, though I'd left it on high heat for 14 minutes so the waster was gone when I went to check. Oops. No major damage done, unless chemistry has happened on the inner surface of the saucepan. It _looks_ good.

I'd also heard recently about steaming eggs, so I've tried that.

1: aim, soft eggs. Put them over cold water, ran for about 6 minutes. 2 of the 3 eggs had cracked a bit. All were partially cooked, though the white was runnier than ideal.

2: I got a boil first, then put in eggs. Advice for soft was 6 minutes; I took 2 out at 6:40, and left the other 2 to get hard boiled. The first were soft, and more cooked, maybe a bit too much so; I'll try just 6 minutes next time. Took the others out at 12 minutes, and put in a water bath for 20+ minutes, though I didn't crack. The peel did not slide right off as advertised, though I suppose it did come off easier than I've gotten used to with hard boiled eggs. (Usually I just don't bother, but crack the egg open and scoop out the insides.)

It's safer to put eggs into a steamer than to slip them into boiling water. OTOH taking them back out is a bit fraught.

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adventures in steaming

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 02:54:16 GMT

Previous place didn't have a steamer. But I'd asked for a pasta colander, and was given a big metal one, with a built-in ring to rest on. So I improvised with that and a big pot. Cooking frozen dim sum took 20 minutes rather than the 10 on the package, but otherwise worked well. Tried broccoli too, and my friend was right, it is a different texture than microwaving. I'm not sure it's worth the time every day for broccoli.

Current place I asked for a colander and a steamer, though noting that they could overlap; I was given a rubber/silicone steamer, in the model of movable overlapping plates; I used to own a metal version of that, didn't use it much. I guess you could use it as a colander.

I first tried it with frozen potstickers, and held over a small pot. It fell into the pot once the silicone softened with heat. I tried covering with a lid, but the central handle of the steamer made that problematic. At any rate, it took like an hour to get them done. :( Also I ran out of water at one point.

Today I used the local big pot instead, with a better covering lid, to make a proper steam bath rather than a leaky steam column. Also went back to siu mai. Worked perfectly, don,e in 20 minutes. Then tried the potstickers again... maybe worked? After 20 minutes, when I cut one open, the filling was hot, good sign. But the texture was pretty soft, not sure if that's a permanent condition. Maybe it is: after eating some, I microwaved two survivors; filling hot again, still soft. Maybe it just doesn't become firm.

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