Healthy Cooking for Weight Loss - Steamer

The first step in healthy cooking for weight loss is to stock the kitchen. Clearly if you do not buy the correct ingredients for a healthy diet you will not be able to do healthy cooking for weight loss. These should include fruits, vegetables, healthy meats, grains, cereals, spices, and flavourers.

My favourite way to cook is with a steamer. I am a man who lives alone and I am very lazy when it comes to preparing food. At present I have a Steamer, which for me is the best cooking invention ever. This is the healthy cooking for weight loss ultimate utility.

The benefits of steam cooking are: 

• The food tastes amazing
• You cannot burn it. This is a huge plus for me, the expert at burning anything.
• The food maintains its moisture, no dry shrivelled vegetables.
• If you have a steamer like me and not pots that you put on the stove, then it is a set up and leave operation. If the water runs out the steamer turns off.
• The food cooks fast, generally around half an hour without any user intervention.
• It cooks all foods and without any defrosting. I put the frozen chicken directly into the steamer and add a couple of minutes to the cooking time.
• The food maintains it nutritional value as it is not leached out by standing in water.
• The cooking time is much faster than boiling so the nutrients are not destroyed by prolonged heating.

I am a little lazy as a 'chef' and just have everything in at once. I have three layers to the steamer. The first layer I have the rice as it takes the longest, it does restrict the amount of steam rising through the system but it catches the drippings from the chicken so that nutrition and taste is not lost. The next layer is the chicken as it takes longer than the vegetables. If you like the vegetables crispy 'al dente' then add them a little later.

The way it works is as follows:

It is known as moist-heat cooking. Steam is water in its gas state. It contains it contains two types of energy. The normal energy due to the temperature and some thing called latent heat, energy required to change from a gas to a liquid. Steam at 100 degrees Celsius has more energy than water at 100 degrees Celsius. Because of this steam cooking is faster than boiling

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