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>> DEREK: Hi everybody, this is Derek at KaTom, here today with Dan Matlack with FSA. Dan
is going to tell us a little bit about cooking with steam and other methods. Dan?
>> DAN: Thank you. There are a lot of different cooking concepts to choose from out there,
but the most effective way to cook most products is going to be steam, for a number of reasons.
In a nutshell, steam is the fastest, yet safest way to cook a product in the kitchen. You
can't overcook unless you leave peas in there for an hour. You'll have a hard time damaging
any product or breaking down any product. When you steam products, they're going to
come out the same vibrant colors as when they went in, they're going to have the same nutritional
value, and you don't break down the texture. And all of this comes into play anywhere you're
eating with your eyes first. You want it to look right, you want it to taste right.
Versus other kinds of cooking - ovens, griddles, broilers, microwaves - they all serve their
purpose, they all lend themselves to particular products very well. But, for a wide breadth
of cooking product, none of them compare to a steamer.
With ovens, convection ovens, you can dry out a product. You can shrink meat down a
lot and not get near the yield you get out of a steamer. Microwaves can obviously cook
the outside a lot faster than you want to while the inside is still frozen. Cooking
on the range top, you're going to boil out a lot of the nutrients, change the product,
and make it mush. You won't have that al dente vegetable that you like.
So, steam gives you the one, I won't say flawless, but the one more hands free, more forgiving
way to cook. The reason that is, steam releases all its heat and energy the second it hits
a product. Where other products like an oven, you can turn an oven on to 425, stick your
hand in there, wave it around, and you're not going to hurt yourself, as long as you
don't touch the sides, even for 30 seconds. If you put your finger over a tea kettle when
it's going off, just in that little clear steam area, it will blister immediately, and
that's at 212. That's because steam releases all its energy, all its BTU, as soon as it
hits a product. That's why it cooks so fast and so efficiently.
>> DEREK: All right, great! Thanks, Dan. You can learn more about cooking with steam in
our Learning Center at KaTom.com.