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Lesson two in steaming. Welcome back to the channel. It is really great to be able to go into so much detail with you on all these different master classes. The first lesson in steaming was all about these different setups of steaming. I didn't cover all of the setups. There are different ones on top of the three main ones that I talked about. um have a look at that video to go through the details. But there are other ways to steam like in a rice cooker or there are different steaming like baskets that you can use to that you'll find online or in kitchen shops. These two methods here are the sort of makeshift bowl and plate method, which is great for steaming bigger things like whole fish or if you had a whole plate
of steamed meat or protein and tofu or things like that, it works a treat. Also, if you don't have, you know, specialist or what you deem to be more specialist equipment, like your steam baskets, then all you need is a walk, a bowl, a plate, and a lid. Um, and I'm calling this lesson an engulfing steam because whether it's a sort of medium uh temperature or a low temp or low to medium temperature, you all you want to do is create enough steam to cook your ingredients through, but keep the texture of those ingredients as delicate as they can be. steam fish uh needs a relatively sort of medium heat as opposed to like really high pressure steam um because you don't want to overcook it too quickly and bring out the sort of algamin
the sort of proteins but at the same time it needs enough steam to really like cook through to the bone. I'm going to do the whole steamed fish in the walk here directly on this plate. Um, but the other dish I'm going to do, which will take a little bit longer, um, 20 minutes or so, I'm going to do on a very low engulfing steam in this uh, more western uh, steamer uh, which uh, as you can see is a large saucepan with a steamer top uh, and glass lid. Now, steamed egg is like a Cantonese home dish um that uh we often have with, you know, a bit on the side with some rice and some veg and maybe a stir-fried meat dish. Um and the steamed egg texture is that very similar to maybe more like a panakotta, very melt in the mouth texture. Before I
steam anything, I'm going to bring these uh pans uh these walks and pans up to [snorts] heat. Uh and then I'm going to crack my eggs and get this steamed egg ready. Now, uh the sort of home cook method of steaming this egg uh is um quite particular um and the point is that you want to get a really nice smooth uh whisked uh egg with bare minimal seasoning. I'm just going to season it with a bit of salt. Uh, and that's it. Um, because as I said, this dish is very delicate, very simple to make. I should have probably measured that. So, I'm going to measure this just for your uh sort of viewing. So you kind of know what I'm trying to do is go
like 50/50 egg to water or I've got I've gone to this line roughly just under seven flances of eggs. So I'm going to do the same amount of water now to get that as I say kind of panacottesque uh melt in the mouth texture in this dish. 50/50 water to egg. You want to give that a good beat with a little bit of salt. You know, and something like this is great for a side dish, but these videos aren't really for the recipe. They're more here to show you the technique and talk you through the differences of steaming. Right. So, we have got a full recipe uh from Lance and Ian on the channel uh where Lance shows us his way of cooking this steamed egg uh which uh has a few more like cheffy tips here and
there. Um so, check that out on the channel. The key with this is that you want to beat your eggs and water really well so that there's not any sort of white uh egg white still showing with all those bubbles in there. this dish uh would come out all bubbly on the top and I want a smooth finish on this dish. So, um the sort of little trick um or home trick to this or manual like traditional way is just to get as many of those bubbles out as possible. whether it's using your fork or some kitchen paper and just fold it up like so. And then just sort of skim those bubbles off the egg like so. Right. So, I'm going to pour that egg carefully into my uh said bowl. Just pop any other um bubbles that have formed on that pour.
And then you've got a nice smooth finish on the top of that egg. Outside of that, you need this film of oil. And this is the traditional method of cooking this. And you need enough oil in there to kind of cover the top and give it that really like w in Chinese Cantonese wat which is like this sort of melt in the mouth uh finish. this melted mouth feel that needs to cook on an engulfing steam uh with where the steam is really low just covering the whole plate and the top of the egg to be able to cook it through. It needs to be cooked on a low heat for about 20 minutes until it cooks all the way through and kind of jiggles a little bit like a jelly in the middle. This is right down on a low heat. You can see the steam's there.
It's not high enough for ste a heat to be burning me. And that heat is a good amount of heat. I'm just going to pop it up one notch there to create its first bit of steam. And then make sure that it is not too high, that it's like bubbling away vigorously. Low heat. Let it simmer. 20 to 25 minutes. I'm just going to slice a few uh spring onion greens uh for the top of that steamed egg for when it's done. We're going to season both uh the steamed fish and the steamed egg with a bit of light soy sauce. And that's it. Really keeping this um video as simple as possible and like direct to the explanations of the core techniques of steaming. The rest of the spring onion I'm going to slice into nice fine um uh strips or matchicks
uh so that uh I can top the steamed fish uh with this spring onion. Um I've got some already uh in some cold water. So I'll just add those to that cold water. And then to go with the fish, uh, for simplicity, just a bit of ginger, uh, a few ginger slices to go on top of the fish and inside the cavity. Whole fish. Few slices over the top. The rest can go inside. This is a whole seabbass here. Um, very, very easy cooking this. And this is a classic Cantonese um uh sort of dinner. This with a bit of steamed rice and veg on the side is all you need.
Right on this steam, I want it to be um sort of medium heat to be able to instantly seal the fish. Um but uh and sort of cook it through for at least this sort of size. About 10 minutes should do it uh on a medium heat. You might need to push it another one or two minutes on top of that. Very simple engulfing steam methods. You can place this fish on and then bring it up to that medium heat. You'll notice uh if you've got a glass lid, you'll be able to see into the steamed egg as it's cooking. And it's actually on a five out of nine now. So sort of low to medium heat. Um mainly cuz I know what I'm doing. the lower you put the heat the better when you're sort of starting with dishes like this so you don't overcook it. Um but it
will cook from the outside in and the last bit of the egg to really cook will be the center. You can actually see that through the glass lid. Right. So the fish has had its 10 minutes and is perfectly cooked. no sort of the sort of white protein um sitting out of that. That's good. Um to finish this, it, you know, it's nothing really to do with the steaming, but um I'm going to just sizzle some uh spring onion over the top and then drizzle it with a whole load of light soy sauce after that. Classic Cantonese steamed fish. Nice and easy. [snorts] really simple cooking. And as I said, this is all about that sort of, you know, very
initial lesson in steaming um and how to get the best out of the different bits of equipment that you might have uh available. Now you can see the wobble that I'm talking about. Once this steamed egg is ready because of the low heat on that engulfing steam, it's come out nice and smooth. If you want to make the mistake of going really high heat cuz you think it might cook it quicker, it will cook it quicker. But as you saw from steaming it from the that engulfing steam coming from the bottom up round and then around the first part of the egg to cook is the edges. So, what you'll get is a lot of bubbling up of uh the edges of the egg, which tastes good, too, but it's not the classic or the traditional sort of um melt in the
mouth. It won't have that melt in the mouth feel uh that this will have on the lower, more engulfing steam. Um so, similarly to the fish, we're just going to finish this steamed egg dish off with some spring onion and some light soy. except because it's such a delicate dish. It really is very soft, very um easy to sort of break through that egg. No sizzling of oil is required. So, just gently pour that light soy. And you can see that spreading across the top of that very delicate egg dish. two simple steamed dishes in two very different uh bits of equipment. That is lesson two in steaming. Join me tomorrow or the next video uh for lesson three which is a high pressure steam. It's
going to be quick and very easy. We're going to use some bowels for that.
