You Don't Need A Steamer To Steam Your Favorite Foods At Home

Steaming is an underrated and underutilized cooking method that you should be doing more at home. Although you may already know that you can steam broccoli in the microwave, others of us might immediately conjure mental images of beige, unseasoned chicken breast and mushy, grey vegetables. But we're here to remind the steam-hesitant that proper steam cooking can make for crisp-tender veggies and juicy meats if you know what you are doing.

But before you go running out to buy a steamer basket, just know you don't need one to steam food at home. Steamers come in all shapes, sizes, and materials, from the bamboo steamers you see at dim sum restaurants to those spaceship-shaped foldable inserts that you can place in any pan of simmering water. However, you can easily make a steamer with supplies you probably have in your kitchen. If you've got a large skillet with high walls and a heat-proof dinner plate or wire rack, then you have all you need to build a DIY steamer.

With boiling water, you can start steaming your food without any special equipment. Using any pan you have with a wide surface area and high walls, add enough water to fill an inch in the pan. After that, you can choose your own adventure depending on the other tools you have on hand.

One of the most basic methods is to use a wide dinner plate, flipped upside down. Take three sheets of aluminum foil, ball them up individually, and place them into the pan to act as "legs" for the plate to rest on. Put the upside-down plate on top of the foil balls, cover the pot with a tight-fitting lid, and bring the water to a boil. At this point, you can place your food on the plate (the side facing up), cover the pot with the lid, and let your food cook.

I have also used a wire rack as a pseudo-food steamer in my kitchen at home. There are circular wire racks that fit into a regular pan, but I just lay my rectangular wire rack over the pan and place the lid on top of that. When the water comes to a boil you can just place whatever you are cooking over the hot water and replace the lid. The one problem with this method is that sometimes the lid does not properly fit if your food is slightly taller. But if that's the case, I like to flip a large metal bowl — or other heatproof material — upside down and use that as the makeshift lid to my makeshift steamer. With these DIY steaming options in your back pocket, you can go on ahead and discover why you should steam your cheeseburger.