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| Boiling | 9% | 39 votes | Total: 443 votes | |
| Steaming | 91% | 404 votes |
Boiling
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Add to FavoritesPersonally I really don't care how I cook my vegetables as long as I am cooking something people are going to enjoy. It's more about the quality of the food you are putting out. Being concerned about your health is great but the problem is people really don't have an understanding of food from a scientific point of view.
I am a chef and have an understanding of food from a chemical point of view. Once you understand the science of food it changes everything. Boiling, steaming it's all the same thing when you break it down.
Boiling your veggies is not exactly the healthiest way to cook your vegetables, but steaming can be just as damaging to your vegetables if you do not do it correctly. Whether you steam or boil you are still using water to cook your vegetables.
The enzymes and nutrients in your vegetables are destroyed when they reach 100 degrees, so either way you are still not getting the most out of your veggies. Steaming can release just as many nutrients as boiling, the water will still absorb just as many vitamins and minerals. Have you ever steamed a green vegetable only to find that your water is green?
Blanching your vegetables is a good way to ensure you keep your vegetables crisp, bright in color, and full of nutrients. Blanching is very different then boiling. Your vegetables are placed in simmering salted water for about a minute. This is a method of flash cooking that barely cooks your vegetables.
Most professional chefs will blanch there raw vegetables even for raw vegetable platters. This method brightens your vegetables dramatically while still keeping them extremely crunchy and you can not even tell they were cooked at all. You can leave them in for more time if you would like them to be a little softer.
Vegetables are always healthier if they are near raw. If you are concerned with your health that much you shouldn't be cooking your vegetables in the first place. You can also saute your vegetables. People think saute and automatically think fat. That is not the case.
You can actually cook healthier with olive oil and a frying pan then you can with boring drab steamers. Using high heat to cook your food very quickly can ensure that you get all the nutrients possible out of your dish. Nothing is boiled away, nothing is steamed away and nothing is left in the pan.
So you see, you retain all of what you put in unless you over cook your vegetables. Many interesting, colorful and flavorful dishes can be prepared this way without ruining you food. Plus you are adding the olive oil which is adding an extra bit of nutrient to your food.
The point is, it is not really the method of cooking. It is the way you cook them, the temperature, how long you have cooked themand overall wholesomeness of what you are cooking that really matters when it comes to vegetables.
Learn more about this author, Edan Write.
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Steaming
My mother, for a very long time, made it a habit to boil our vegetables, and as a young kid I really didn't care. Either way you cook it, by boiling or steaming, it was still going to be nasty to me. But as I got older and started caring more about my body and how it develops, I realized that steaming the vegetables is more healthy and beneficial.
A little known fact is that once the temperature rises to one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the enzymes, minerals, vitamins, and other important ingredients are "killed" and you are left with very little. Whether you realize it or not, these precious ingredients have been known to cure many ailments, from small sicknesses like a cold, to weightier health problems such as arthritis. Also, the antioxidants contained in many common veggies build up the immune system so it is easier to fight off sicknesses and germs. So it is crucial not to underestimate the necessity of these vitamins, mineral and antioxidants.
So to prevent the loss of the valuable nutrients, my family has begun to incorporate a stainless steel colander in our cooking. Usually, it accompanies a stainless steel pot and we put the vegetables in the stainless steel colander. Pouring just one or two tablespoons of water over the frozen vegetables, allows for it to cook better. However, some may mistakenly fill the pot with water all the way past the colander, which then defeats the purpose of steaming the vegetables. So then, we make sure we only fill the pot half-way or even one-forth of the way. Doing so ensures the vegetables will be steamed to perfection without killing the valuable minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and other nutritious substances. The steaming process usually takes only 3 minutes. Once the water in the pot is boiling, turn it off and keep the top on the pot so the steam can cook it the rest of the way.
A mistake I have made all too often is thinking that since I'm steaming the vegetables, nothing will go wrong. Quite to my surprise, the vegetables loose their nutrients when they are steamed too long. Therefore some key points to keep in mind are the colors of the vegetables can be your gauge for deciphering when to stop steaming the veggies. Take for instance broccoli. Broccoli is naturally a dark green vegetable. When eaten raw it is very crunchy. However, if you are to steam the broccoli, don't let the color start to fade away. When the dark green pigmentation begins to the leave the broccoli, which is a sign of the nutrients being killed, so please keep that in mind. (It took a month or so before I got the hang of steaming veggies correctly. Don't get discouraged.)
Learn more about this author, Corban M. Burns.
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