Steam Operation; Useful Tips - Artusi ACSO45X Mode D'emploi

STEAM OPERATION

Steam cooking is used most for oriental cuisine but it is certainly very useful for our own.
It is fat and has the advantage of preserving the original flavour of the food.
In this case, the food is not cooked with water but with water vapour.
Steam cooking is different than boiling. In fact, the water vapour works on the inside of the cells, which
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is fundamentally different from the effect of boiling water.
In fact, steam also cooks the food completely but, except for the fat, nothing else comes out of the
food.
The cell walls and tendons gradually soften, the protein coagulates without coming out, the starches
swell and combine and the sugars and minerals remain unchanged.
The same goes for odours, which are reduced to a minimum, or coloured substances.
Only the fat liquefies do to the heat and, for this reason, it is almost never a good idea to steam cook
large cuts of meat or fish. Vitamins are another story because heat generally tends to destroy them;
however, depending on the cooking time, some of them are only slightly altered.
So, the foods that lend themselves to this cooking method are, generally, those with no fat such as, for
example, fish, some types of meat, legumes, potatoes, cereals, eggs, pudding, etc.
It is not good for vegetables with tough fibres or fruits in general.

Useful tips

When using the steam oven, always start with the oven cold. Using steam in a hot oven (immediately
after traditional cooking) is not recommended because the benefits of cooling with steam will be
cancelled out.
For steam cooking try to use the perforated stainless steel tray together with the lower stainless steel
drip tray as much as possible.
The first, resting with its support on the flat grill, allows the steam to fully cook the food while draining
everything released by the food during cooking through the holes.
The second, lower tray, slid under the grill on its guides, will collect the drippings and keep the oven
chamber cleaner.
When done cooking, the support of the perforated tray can be used as a support to keep the hot tray
off of the counter while you remove the food you just cooked.
ATTENTION: you cannot cook with steam and use the grill at the same time. If you press the steam
cooking control while cooking with the grill, there will be an error signal (see the table Error Signals and
Oven Malfunctions)
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