Question
YVONNE TETREAULT
Are there any reasons to choose one over the other when it comes to dry heat cooking (roasting) and moist heat cooking (steaming/boiling). Steaming seems to be a quicker method but are flavors different doing it one way or another?
Answer
Roasting in particular is going to start to caramelize the outside of something where it's taking the natural sugars from something, let's just say butternut squash, and you'll start to get a browning that happens on the outside of that, which creates a whole other depth of flavor. It's almost a new mommy flavor that adds to the outside of that, um, butternut squash. Whereas if you are steaming or boiling, again, completely two different techniques there too, the steaming is basically taking the steam up and, um, heating it to, um, you know, you're basically heating it using the, the vapor from the water, which retains a lot of the flavor, um, but doesn't add a lot of the additional flavor to it. In fact, it doesn't add too much additional flavor at all. But boiling, if you were to say, put something like, uh, that, you know, um, I, I can't remember what I said, it was the butternut squash. So the butternut squash, if you put the, um, that into a pot and boil it in water, you're gonna lose a lot of the flavor in, in the nutrients into the water. So, um, you're also gonna end up with a, a much kind of a softer, you know, uh, softer cut on those as well too. So it'll be a little bit mushy in the mouth compared to, um, the other two or steaming. Uh, you can cut it off a lot quicker, you can test it a lot easier than you can in the boiling as well. Um, but just different techniques for different types of things that you're doing. Um, but if you're adding flavor to it, just by just, I mean if you didn't add any kind of spices or salts or anything like that to it, roasting is definitely gonna give you a bit more flavor out of something than steaming and boiling will, steaming will get you the, uh, true flavor of the vegetable. Um, definitely. Um, and boiling is gonna lose a little bit more of those. So, um, hope that helps you. All right.
