Many foods that can be boiled – potatoes, carrots, broccoli and so on – can be steamed instead but is there a good reason to do so?

Food doesn’t cook that much faster in a steamer but it doesn’t need anything like as much water so it certainly uses a little less energy – and the liquid that remains after cooking is far more concentrated, making it an ideal base for gravy and stocks.

Another benefit is that vegetables generally hold on to a lot more of their nutrients when steamed; sitting in boiling water means a great deal of the natural salts and other minerals transfer into the water and are mostly tipped down the sink. Steam them and far more stay in the food item. This is usually noticeable in the flavour (providing you don’t over-cook them!) and means you’re getting more of the goodness from the food.

Fish is an excellent ‘steamer’ food; a delicately cooked piece of Salmon is hard to beat and Cod will retain more flavour (also, because it cooks undisturbed by stirring or bubbles, it generally comes out looking better). Vegetables, definitely. We’d pass up the chance to steam pasta though: for some things, boiling water is still king!

As an aside, one of the reasons water used for boiling food usually needs to be salted is that this brings the water’s salt content up to match that of the food being cooked, preventing so much salt from leaching out into the water. By steaming things, less of the natural salt leaves the food and so we don’t need any add any to the water.