Sometimes you use your Big Green Egg to grill or smoke and other times to bake, stew or for a slow cooking session. But how about steaming your food on your EGG? For this healthy way of cooking you truly don’t need a steam oven or steam cooker and it’s actually very simple. Which of these three healthy recipes will you try first?
Eat healthy
Steaming is considered a very healthy way of preparing food. And it is! It’s a cooking technique where your ingredients evenly cook in the vapour of boiling water, and which is known for the fact that an enormous amount of nutrients are retained. Vegetables remain deliciously crunchy, fish stays very juicy and the colour and taste of your ingredients stays nice and pure. So even if you don’t care about the health aspect of steaming, it’s a great way to prepare food.
Extra tasty flavour boost
If you’re not yet familiar with steaming food, you may wonder which ingredients you can in fact steam. Easy! Basically, everything you can cook can also be steamed. This includes vegetables, fish, crustaceans and shellfish, but also couscous and rice. You can even steam poultry and meat. Do opt for tender meat as it requires a short preparation time. And afterwards give it an extra tasty boost by grilling it briefly on your EGG. Replace the water with broth or wine to give your ingredients extra flavour and aroma. Experiment!
Steaming without a steam cooker
Steaming is also a very easy way of preparing food. It is a simple cooking technique where it doesn’t make a huge difference whether or not you cook the ingredients for a minute longer. Just as with most cooking techniques, make sure that your products are of the same size and thickness so that they can cook evenly. How about extra equipment like a special oven or a steam cooker? No need! Because you can just use your Big Green Egg for this. Your EGG is your own steam oven.
Steaming food on your EGG
Your EGG is truly ideal for steaming ingredients. The steam doesn’t get a chance to escape because of the lid. When steaming, the temperature in the Big Green Egg shouldn’t get too high. It must however be high enough for the liquid to boil, but not be too hot. Therefore, fill the Big Green Egg to about 10 cm under the fire ring with charcoal.
Put 3 starters in a triangle, approximately 12-15 cm apart and light them. Leave the lid open until the centre of the charcoal is glowing but still black on the side. Aim for a temperature of about 100-110° C.
If you have the 5 Piece EGGspander Kit place the rack of the 2-Piece Multi Level Rack of the EGGspander Kit with the ring upwards in the Big Green Egg and place the accompanying small grate in the lower holder (low-level ‘Cowboy Style’ grill setting), right above the glowing charcoal. Place a Drip Pan on this. Then bring your EGG to the correct temperature with the lid closed. While your Drip Pan is heating, bring some water to the boil. If you do not heat up the Drip Pan, the temperature of the water will cool down too much if you add it later. Don’t have an EGGspander Kit (yet)? Then place the convEGGtor to place your Drip Pan on.
Is your EGG at the right temperature? Then pour the boiling water into the Drip Pan and place the grid in your EGG, along with the ingredients you want to steam. Close the lid and steam the ingredients until done!
Want to see for yourself how easy and delicious it is to steam on your EGG? Give these three recipes a try!
