How to use a double boiler correctly: cook, lay food

After you have cho­sen a dou­ble boil­er accord­ing to our instruc­tions, the ques­tion of oper­a­tion always aris­es. For exam­ple, how to use a steam­er cor­rect­ly to cook deli­cious and healthy meals? Let’s fig­ure it out.

Choosing a place for a double boiler in the kitchen

The steam­er has its own safe­ty rules, which should be fol­lowed in order to avoid injuries and oth­er unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tions. They are quite sim­ple, but will save you from burns or dam­age to prop­er­ty. Based on them, we will choose a suit­able loca­tion for the device. So, how to use the steam­er cor­rect­ly:

1. The steam­er is installed on a flat hard sur­face.
2. The steam­er must not be placed on the stove, near the stove or a wash­stand. Exces­sive heat and splash­es can cause irrepara­ble dam­age to the item.
3. Posi­tion the cord of the steam­er so that nei­ther you nor your child can acci­den­tal­ly hit it and knock over the appli­ance.
4. Do not turn on the steam­er with­out water in the tray. Despite the fact that many Philips mod­els are equipped with a pro­tec­tion against turn­ing on with­out water, we do not rec­om­mend check­ing this again.
5. Do not place the steam­er close to the edge of the coun­ter­top. In this posi­tion, the device may fall and fail soon­er than you would like.
6. The steam­er should not be locat­ed near wall cab­i­nets or walls. The out­go­ing hot steam may well cause the veneer to delam­i­nate and the wall­pa­per or tile to peel off.
7. Do not touch the steam­er with your hands dur­ing its oper­a­tion, so as not to get a ther­mal burn.
8. Care­ful­ly lift the lid of the steam­er so as not to burn your­self.

Proper loading of the steamer

To prop­er­ly load the steam­er, you must always start from the bot­tom. Then you are guar­an­teed not to make a mis­take and your dish­es will be cooked prop­er­ly.

1. First fill the tray with bot­tled or fil­tered water. Tap water con­tains many impu­ri­ties that can form scale on the heat­ing ele­ment. It, of course, can be puri­fied by boil­ing and freez­ing, but it is bet­ter to imme­di­ate­ly take the water that has been puri­fied.
2. It is nec­es­sary to fill in above the min­i­mum and below the max­i­mum lev­els. As a rule, the max­i­mum load of water is enough for 45 min­utes of oper­a­tion of the device. This time is enough to cook most dish­es. In some Tefal mod­els, there is an addi­tion­al top­ping up of water at any time, which some­what sim­pli­fies the cook­ing process. And some Philips steam­ers give you a sig­nal to add water.
3. The next step is to install a tray to col­lect con­den­sate from food and excess mois­ture. In Philips house­hold appli­ances, a mesh is attached to the tray exact­ly in the mid­dle. Aro­mat­ic herbs or spices can be put here to fumi­gate and add a spicy fla­vor to cooked dish­es.
4. At the last stage, lay the prod­ucts, set the timer and turn on the dou­ble boil­er. At the end of cook­ing, a sig­nal will sound and the steam­er will turn itself off. Mod­els from well-known brands such as Tefal, Scar­lett, Braun and Philips have an addi­tion­al option to keep warm for 20 min­utes.

Now you know how to use a dou­ble boil­er in the­o­ry. To test this in prac­tice, let’s get acquaint­ed with the rules for lay­ing out raw veg­eta­bles, meat and oth­er prod­ucts that you will cook.

Product Bookmarking Rules

Its pre­de­ces­sor, the man­tysh­nit­sa, is very sim­i­lar to a dou­ble boil­er, but in it all the prod­ucts were cooked at the same time, despite their loca­tion. In an elec­tri­cal appli­ance, the speed of cook­ing food depends on the lev­el of the book­mark: the high­er the con­tain­er is, the longer the prod­uct will cook in it.

On aver­age, the cook­ing time increas­es by 5 min­utes with each lev­el high­er.

That is, eggs on the third lev­el will be cooked for 20 min­utes instead of 10 on the bot­tom. If you need to cook sev­er­al dish­es at the same time with dif­fer­ent time inter­vals, place those that cook the fastest at the top lev­el.

Cook­ing time also depends on the hor­i­zon­tal lay­out in the con­tain­er. Food at the edges will cook faster than those placed in the cen­ter. There­fore, large pieces of meat or veg­eta­bles should be laid out clos­er to the walls of the dou­ble boil­er.

Anoth­er impor­tant point is prod­uct com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. So that dumplings with cot­tage cheese do not smell like meat, and apple char­lotte does not smell like fish, you need to cor­rect­ly lay out the prod­ucts by lev­els. Con­vec­tion in a dou­ble boil­er goes from top to bot­tom. There­fore, prod­ucts with a spe­cif­ic aro­ma should be placed on the low­er lev­el, and odor­less, for exam­ple, eggs, on top. If, on the con­trary, you want the pota­toes to be soaked in meat juice, then put them under a con­tain­er with chick­en or pork.

Product Restrictions

Like any house­hold appli­ance for cook­ing in the kitchen, the dou­ble boil­er has its own list of prod­ucts that are not rec­om­mend­ed to be put into it. By anal­o­gy, just as it is impos­si­ble to cook com­pote in a fry­ing pan, and milk rice por­ridge will burn in an enam­el pan, so a dou­ble boil­er will not be able to prop­er­ly cook pas­ta, mush­rooms and legumes. As well as oth­er prod­ucts that require a large vol­ume of water to bring to con­di­tion.

If you still decide to exper­i­ment with pas­ta, you will end up with a sticky sticky lump that will be of lit­tle edi­ble and have an unpre­sentable appear­ance. Mush­rooms and legumes will need to con­stant­ly add water for 3–4 hours. Yes, and at the same time they will be rigid and will not boil.

When cook­ing food in this house­hold appli­ance, do not salt it. It is bet­ter to do it direct­ly on the plate. If you still do not want to cook fresh food, then you will need to use a lit­tle more salt than usu­al. Since dur­ing con­vec­tion of steam, along with con­den­sate, part of it will go into the pan to col­lect excess mois­ture.

Food delights

Prob­a­bly the most intrigu­ing thing is to find out what a dou­ble boil­er is capa­ble of com­pared to the same man­tle that we men­tioned ear­li­er. In addi­tion to stan­dard dumplings, man­ti, steam cut­lets and meat, an elec­tric appli­ance can cook:

1. Por­ridge for a cou­ple. For this, a spe­cial con­tain­er is includ­ed in the kit.
2. Pota­toes and oth­er veg­eta­bles. For exam­ple, corn or broc­coli.
3. Omelets. The egg mix­ture must be poured into a bowl for cere­als, greased with oil.
4. Meat and fish in foil.
5. Bis­cuits. The dough must be poured into a con­tain­er for cere­als, lined with foil. Don’t for­get to cov­er the top with foil to pre­vent con­den­sa­tion.

You will def­i­nite­ly find oth­er recipes for good­ies in the instruc­tion man­u­al or on the Inter­net.

Many peo­ple com­pare this device with a mul­ti­cook­er, which is bet­ter than a mul­ti­cook­er or a dou­ble boil­er, read in this arti­cle.

We hope that now you have no unre­solved ques­tions about how to use the steam­er. Of course, each mod­el has its own nuances in oper­a­tion, although the prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion for all dou­ble boil­ers will be the same.