The difference between steamers and pressure cookers

Purpose and device

The purpose of the steamer and pressure cooker can be clearly traced in their names: the first cooks for a couple, the second cooks quickly.

It is noteworthy that both can be both gas (in fact, ordinary metal pans for heating on a gas stove) and electric (with a built-in heating element and working from an outlet). But neither one nor the other are intended for frying at all, so lovers of delicious food with a crispy brown crust will not be interested further. Electric steamers and pressure cookers are more convenient to handle, but more expensive to purchase and maintain, since they have a more complex device and consume a lot of electricity.

The steamer contains 2 types of containers: for water, food, as well as a tray for collecting condensate and liquid released during cooking. Multilevel models can have several bowls for products installed one on top of the other.

Boiling water in the lower part of the device forms hot steam, under the influence of which the cooking process is carried out. Thus, the food does not burn and does not decrease in volume.

The steamer is recommended for people on a diet, as well as for everyone who adheres to a healthy diet. The products cooked in it retain the maximum of useful properties, vitamins and minerals. Their taste becomes more intense and pronounced. Due to the absence of oil, food cooked in a steamer contains a minimum of calories and is better absorbed.

The pressure cooker looks very much like a saucepan, but differs from that by the possibility of hermetically closing with a special rim on the lid, which allows you to increase the pressure and temperature inside the container to 117 degrees Celsius, and not the usual 100 degrees, thereby speeding up the cooking process several times.

Products cooked in a pressure cooker retain their natural colour and useful properties due to the absence of oxidation (contact with oxygen is limited). But it will not work to add them during cooking or make a sample with all the desire, since you cannot open the lid. The steamer is devoid of such a drawback, the lid can be removed from it as much as you want, but you can not cook and stew in it, as in a pressure cooker, but only cook for a couple.

What can be cooked in a steamer

The steamer can cook almost everything: meat, fish, vegetables and cereals. It is also useful for sterilizing baby bottles, warming up, defrosting and even preservation. The fish in the steamer turns out to be special: tender and juicy without any stewing in gravies and sauces. Low-fat types are especially tasty. The meat takes longer to cook, but it is steamed perfectly, while maintaining all its nutritional qualities.

Cheesecakes in a steamer come out soft and airy. The dough can be practically not kneaded. It is enough to beat the ingredients with a blender, roll the balls out of the resulting mass and sprinkle with flour. The main thing is not to forget to lubricate the surface of the container with oil.

Buckwheat in a steamer becomes crumbly, large and much more delicious than after ordinary cooking.

Multilevel models are able to cook several dishes at once. At the same time, the products that need more time are located at the bottom. They are stacked in layers: large ones are lower, small ones are higher. If you add seasonings to boiling water, the dishes will get a special taste.

It is undesirable to cook dry foods in a steamer, for example, pasta or beans, since the former risk getting too boiled, and the latter, on the contrary, do not steam properly. In addition, it is impossible to cook certain types of mushrooms and offal (kidneys, liver) that require pre-soaking to remove soluble substances.

Pressure cooker dishes

In a pressure cooker, you can cook soup, stew meat, fish and vegetables, make milk porridge or dessert. The jelly is cooked in it for an hour, not for 3-4, like the toughest meat, and the chicken is cooked in 15 minutes at all! At the same time, frozen foods, as in a steamer, do not need to be thawed beforehand.

Under pressure, products intensely absorb odours, so less seasoning is required. To make a dish from ingredients that require different cooking times, they need to be cut into pieces of the required size. It is necessary to approach this very scrupulously, since the readiness of the product depends more on the correct selected size of the pieces.

What should not be cooked in a pressure cooker is compotes, barley, oatmeal, peas and pasta, during cooking of which strong foam and splashes are formed that can close the pressure valve. Also, the pressure cooker can not be put on fire or plugged into the network without water. And the pressure cooker doesn't like any oil. It is allowed only to sprinkle chopped vegetables with it. The total volume of the contents should not occupy 2/3 of the container, and when preparing swelling products (rice and vegetables), it is not allowed to fill more than half of the volume so that water does not flood the pressure valve.

So, let's summarize the main differences between a steamer and a pressure cooker.

• 1. The steamer cooks only for steam, the pressure cooker – for steam, by cooking and stewing.
• 2. The pressure cooker cooks faster than the steamer.
• 3. The steamer can be multi-level, which allows you to cook different types of products in it at the same time without mixing them.
• 4. Dishes in a pressure cooker are prepared under high pressure and at a temperature of 117 degrees Celsius. The process is carried out strictly on a timer and does not allow you to remove the lid, add products or make a sample. In this regard, the range of dishes that can be cooked in a pressure cooker is limited only to ready-made recipes.

As you can see, both the pressure cooker and the steamer, although they are designed to fulfill a single goal: to cook high-quality delicious and healthy food, they do it each in their own way and are hardly able to replace each other in the kitchen. Which of the assistants to prefer: a fast, but limited in recipes pressure cooker, or a slow, but opening up space for the flight of culinary fantasies, a steamer, you choose.