Steamers

ivyleaf

Mine's a stainless steel one from M & S which cost £9.99. It goes on the hob and the spuds can boil in the bottom bit so saves on gas. I'm really glad i bought it as the veggies taste better!

Lemon_Verbena

I've got a two tier steamer and use it often, I do poached eggs in mine as I don't possess an egg poacher and had no success trying to do it in a pan of hot water, all I ended up with was an eggy mess, so I gave up. I use ramekin dishes which you have to grease with butter or marg really well of they're a buffer to clean afterwards, but the poached eggs are yummy. If its a special weekend breakie I add a dash of double cream and some fine chopped herbs to the top,very yum. Make porridge in it as well, comes out really creamy and no pan to clean out

Chicken I've done in it loads of times in a variety of forms, mostly I marinate it and steam that on the bottom tier and do my veggies on the top, put everything in, turn it on and come back when it pings and serve, really easy.

Our favourite steamer meal though is salmon I use those frozen salmon pieces when we can get them cheap enough, dot it with a little butter and add a 'crust' of herbs such as dill, parsley & tarragon and a scrunch of black pepper and steam little new potatoes and green beans on the top and serve with dill & parsley sauce.

I picked up a couple of cook books and from them have done chinese steamed pork dumplings which DH adored, marmalade and jam sponge puddings and coconut rice pudding, done other things as well, but there the ones we do over and over again. One of the books even has cakes in them but I haven't tried them yet.

To the lady who doesn't like broccoli bits getting stuck in the steamer... I put a piece of baking parchment in the bottom of the tray that the brocolli goes in and put the brocolli on top of that and the bits stay on the parchment. You can make parcels of veg using the parchment as well, no mess and the veg has its own little packet making it easier to get it out of the steamer after cooking.

LV x

webitha

i bought my 3 tier steamer from aldi for about £15, and now i couldnt live without it, all veg and potatoes tastes soooo much nicer.

am interested in how you do poached eggs in your steamer tho lemon

Lemon_Verbena

Hi Webitha,

Butter your ramekin dishes really well, crack your egg in and put the ramekin dishes in your steamer and steam for 6 - 10 minutes depending how hard/soft you like your poached eggs, we usually have ours either on top of toast or on beans on toast.

LV x

PasturesNew

I have a small microwave steamer, £3 at Tesco.

I use it to:
- steam rice
- steam veggies
- steam halved potatoes instead of nuking them as jacket spuds (same end result, better texture)

It does 2-3 portions of rice/veg. I think it can also be used to steam fish, but I've never bought fish so no idea.

mardatha

I've had a really traumatic time trying to COOK THE DINNER so I will read these again later when I am CALMER.
cooking just is NOT my thing....can you tell ?
stuffing cushions on my face to stop SCREAMINGGG .