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Hello!
I hope, if you celebrate Christmas, that yours was wonderful. Did you use your steam oven?! Mine has been in overdrive and I even pulled my countertop steam oven out of my studio space so I could have extra oven capacity on Christmas Day! I’m very aware I’m a lucky girl to have that option available.
If your fridge is anything like mine this week, there are a lot of bits and pieces left over from big festive meals. Coupled with the post-Christmas haze many of us experience, where all the days seem to run into one another, this seems a very good time to reinforce one of my favorite topics: reheating using your steam oven.
I could honestly talk about this subject for ages, but it’s not rocket science. So instead of boring you all, I’ve pulled together the main points of leftovers and reheating in today’s Topic of Interest, so you (and I) can do something with all those random bits of food that need using up. Oh, and because you all seem to love a chart as much as I do, I turned it into a printable thing.
And that’s about all for this year, folks. I’m keeping it short and sweet on the newsletter front because I’m supposed to be on a break with my family, but I will be back, excited and refreshed in mid January, ready to expand your steam oven horizons and answer your questions.
Happy steam oven cooking, see you in 2024!
Emily
I will never stop being amazed at how fabulous reheating using a steam oven is. For all the fancy things we can do with our ovens, it really is the difference in your everyday meals that makes owning one worthwhile, and that difference is never more noticeable than with reheating.
The Season Flip
Do you actually want to cook this week, but you feel like you can only do so if you shove some leftovers into whatever you make?
Here are my two favorite things to do with cooked turkey or chicken (hot weather and cold weather editions!). I know some of you are already fans of both recipes, so here’s your reminder to make them again!
Southern Hemisphere
Punchy and sour and salty and crunchy, vibrant and cool, this salad is all the things a roasted turkey dinner is not. I always crave it in the final week of the year after the rich excesses of Christmas eating.
Northern Hemisphere
These little numbers will take care of both turkey and roasted vegetables that are hanging around in your fridge, and with the tastiest results possible! You can actually use any leftover roasted meat here; you can also turn the recipe into one large pot pie if you don’t want to mess about with individual portions (though they are very cute).
Ask Me Anything (AMA)
Here’s your opportunity to ask me anything you like related to combi steam cooking!
I encourage you to submit questions, and will do my best to answer as many as possible. Though I may not be able to get to every single question, I carefully curate ones which are relevant and represent a variety of topics. We all learn from each other, and I often learn new things based on questions from all of you!
If you have an AMA question, please email it to [email protected]. Make sure you include the phrase INSIDERS AMA in the subject line so I can collate and read all your submissions.
This edition’s questions:
From Kara
Q: Do you have a good recipe for gingerbread cooked in a steam oven? I have been using a recipe that tastes great but consistently ‘falls’ in the center of the 9” x 9” pan. If you could help me I would be ecstatic.
A: I assume because you’ve referred to it falling, that you mean gingerbread cake or loaf, rather than gingerbread cookies. In which case I’m sorry to say I don’t have a recipe (yet, but reading your question saw me add it to my ‘to develop’ recipe list!). But I do love gingerbread, and I have baked it using my steam oven before. I made Erin’s excellent and well-researched recipe earlier in the year, there’s lots of great detail there about different ingredients and techniques. I used a deep loaf pan and, from memory, only a low level of steam. The cake rose well and didn’t fall, though to be honest I’m not certain the steam was necessary given how dense and moist the cake is straight from a regular oven.
Here’s my best guess re the fall: I wonder if your batter is quite liquidy (normal for traditional gingerbread cakes)? If that’s true and you want to use your steam oven to bake, try either a loaf pan or, if you want a larger cake, thinner layers in your current 9×9 pan. Thinner layers are far more likely to bake up with an even texture and minimal sinking in the middle. I know that means you have to muck around with either multiple pans or baking in two batches, and I’m sorry! Thin cake batters and different or multiple raising agents can be painful to troubleshoot without a few experiments.
If you have another go and are successful I’d love to know about it! Although now I’ve got that particular ‘bee in my bonnet’, I expect you may see a gingerbread recipe published around here in the not too distant future! 😉