The Steamed Veggie Hype

Sure, steaming is a healthy, quick and easy cooking method. But if you bought the line that “steamed veggies are most healthful” I’ve got some lovely news for you: To heighten dining pleasure as well as the medicinal and energetic properties of foods, using diverse cooking techniques is best. Here are two reasons why.

Vive la différence: My friend Georgina once described her routine for fixing dinner. She’d page through her cookbooks and imagine all the wonderful recipes she might make. But then she’d shelf the book and as if by rote, prepare a generic healthy meal of broiled chicken or salmon, rice or quinoa, steamed broccoli or kale and a tossed salad. Boring.

Georgina was also routinely nibbling on snacks because the same old meals, day after day after day, don’t deeply satisfy. This is something we intuitively know. Try mentally comparing a meal you enjoyed with one that you’re weary of. The former is more readily assimilated because it satiates you, sits easier on the tummy and you feel content. Indeed, dining pleasure supports good digestion. And good digestion means better nutrient absorption, which then boosts your overall health and energy. Yes, there’s more to life than steamed broccoli.

Enhance Medicinal and Energetic Properties of Foods: A second reason to opt for variety is that each cooking technique results in subtle differences in a food’s flavor as well as the medicinal energy it imparts to you. Take a moment to imagine a taste test with eight broccoli florets prepared in these eight ways: steamed, parboiled, braised, sautéed, pressure cooked, baked, deep-fried, raw or pickled. Each floret has a different appearance, flavor, texture and thermal property. Each style affords you welcome variety and another reason to look forward to eating your greens.

Yes, it is true that steaming is good for retaining enzymes and heat-soluble vitamins. But one news bite doesn’t tell the whole picture. Steaming does preserve two nutrients (enzymes and heat-soluble vitamins) that may be lost in other techniques; however, the bulk of a food’s important nutrients—its minerals, trace nutrients and fat-soluble vitamins—are not denatured in other cooking styles.

So by all means, when you’re in the mood for steamed broccoli, enjoy steamed broccoli. But also delight in other cooking techniques. Here’s one example: In this Broccoli and Snow Pea Stir-Fry the florets are lightly parboiled to make them tender and more flavorful and to enhance their vibrant color. Then they’re briefly stir-fried. Try broccoli this way and then in your next stir-fry, for the fun of doing it differently, bypass the parboiling and directly sauté some sliced florets for a different texture, color and flavor. Shed food myths and go for diversity.