Volume 50: Cake to Celebrate 50 Issues

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Hello my Insiders!

This journal marks volume number 50 since we began Insiders a little over 2 years ago. Yes, that’s 50 info-packed newsletters full of steam oven cooking education, recipes and ideas! We’re going to celebrate with cake (of course).

As well as the cake, this issue feels like the right time to include a new regular section in our journals, where I’ll highlight things from the Insiders archives. Fifty issues means we’ve covered a lot of topics and info, and it’s really easy to keep looking at the new stuff while forgetting about brilliant older content. I’m as guilty as anyone – I often go to write about something before seeing that I’ve already done so previously! From The Archives will be a great way of making sure all the good stuff gets an outing every so often.

Finally, at this milestone, I hope you’ll allow me a soapbox moment to talk about something that’s related to, but not only about, food content. I’ve spoken about this at length with food blogging peers and other online business people over the past year or so. Generally I try to keep things very food-centric here, but this is an issue that affects every internet user, everywhere, and I do think it needs a mention.

Here it is.

We live in a world where AI has seeped into every corner of content creation, and where writers and creators routinely have our work copied, stolen and fed into AI programs in the name of ‘machine learning’, at alarming rates and without the creator’s consent.

That content we’ve put time, expertise and money into gets spat back out in various formats, frequently incorrectly or with incomplete detail, and guides people away from the original creators and towards automated models like ChatGPT and, increasingly, Google’s AI snippets search feature.

Every time someone reads those AI-generated answers to search queries, they are not visiting the websites which the information has been lifted from, not confirming that their information is sound and correct, and not giving original creators, writers or researchers the benefit of the all-important ‘traffic’ which lets them make an income.

Now, AI is not all bad, in fact it’s really useful in many ways. But the way it’s used in this aspect makes it increasingly hard to make an income as a real human creating original content.

I’m deeply grateful that despite this very real problem, which has a continuing impact on my business (and those of all small content creator businesses), I still get to do this strange and very niche job. The primary reason I’m able to do it is thanks to the support of every one of you who value my work enough to pay for a subscription.

The need for us all as individuals to support the small-scale writers and creators whose work we enjoy is more and more critical. Misinformation is commonplace, and independent, original content harder to find as a consumer, and to sustain a living from as a creator. I, like you, will continue to spend my money directly with the people who make content I find helpful or interesting. Not just because I like it, but so those creators can keep on doing what they do best in the face of these challenges to how we get and consume information.

Right, off my soapbox. All of the above is really to say I’m so glad you’re here, and I hope I can continue delivering the sort of content you enjoy enough to stay around for!

Happy steam oven cooking, here’s to the next 50 Insider journals.

Emily x

New to Cook

Apple Crumb Cake

I wanted to create a cake to celebrate our 50th Insiders journal, and here it is!

Plush, soft and full of cinnamon-scented apples, this cake is simple to mix up and loaded with a satisfyingly high ratio of crumb topping to cake. It’s perhaps not what you’d immediately think of as a celebration cake, but I love it for its versatility. Take it to share at a picnic, pack it into lunchboxes or cut a little slice to have with your morning coffee.

The recipe also contains variations so you can make this gorgeous pillowy sheet cake at different times of year with other seasonal fruits.

From the Archives:

We’re going way back to the beginning of the Insiders journals today, and talking about all the different types of steam ovens, and the terminology used to describe them. This is an especially good read if you’ve just bought, or you’re just about to buy, your oven.

And, because we’re baking cake, perhaps you’ll also enjoy this little foray into gluten free baking in your steam oven, complete with the most amazing gluten free chocolate cake?

A Thing I'm Loving

New kitchen scissors! A good pair of scissors in the kitchen is critical for so many things, especially if you don’t want to dull your knives by cutting open packages or slicing through baking paper.

I cannot tell you how old my last pair of kitchen scissors were, except to say that they came as part of a knife block set acquired when I first moved out of home, oh, more than 20 years ago. Suffice to say they’ve more than done their job over the years and were in need of an upgrade.

I hope my new pair of kitchen scissors will last just as long; so far so good, and they include my must-have feature of being able to open and come apart for fast and easy cleaning. I looked at a lot of different products, including some very pretty and expensive Japanese scissors, but in the end I landed on these OXO Good Grips ones. The price is great, they’re dishwasher safe and they’re very comfortable to use.

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 do my best to answer as many as possible. I can’t always get to every single question, but 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.

From Charley

Q: My steam oven is a KitchenAid, actually side-by-side steam ovens. Temperature range for steam oven cooking ranges from 250 – 450 F. I also have a warming function which provides a range from 140 – 200 F but does not allow me to control the humidity.

I have previously tried making the Sous vide egg bites setting the warming function to 175F but no option to set the steam. After the prescribed 30 minutes my bites were still just liquid leaving me scrambling (pun intended). I switched to steam oven cooking and set to the minimum 250F and watched closely. The finished product seemed quite airy and not at all like the Starbucks egg bites that we love. Thought I would ask for thoughts before trying again, do they need to sit after blending to allow air to release before cooking.

A: There are a couple of things going on here that’ll be affecting the outcome of your egg bites:

Most importantly, given your description of your temperature ranges and functions, I suspect that the oven/s you have are what’s referred to as steam assisted, rather than having full steam capability (100% humidity at 212°F/100°C). What that means in practice is that you can successfully make most combi steam recipes (ones which are cooked or baked at a temp higher than 250°F), but lower temp steaming and sous vide dishes, like the egg bites you tried, are not going to be achievable in the oven. That’s because it doesn’t have the ability to produce humidity (or at least not much of it) at the low temperature ranges.

Specifically, here’s what I think has happened to your egg bites: at the lower (175°F) temperature, the eggs weren’t setting. This is because the heat conduction in a dry (or lower humidity) environment means they didn’t achieve and hold the desired temperature to cook the eggs through. A high humidity environment at the same temperature conducts the heat into the food much faster, hence the eggs are able to set.

Then, when you turned up the temp to 250°F, the eggs set, probably quite fast, but they were airy. That’s because the temperature was well over what’s required to set the eggs, and because eggs are sensitive little things they puff up and change texture once they get into higher temperature ranges.

I hope that makes sense, even if it’s not the guidance you were hoping for in terms of being able to cook those lower temperature dishes!

From Cathy

Q: I’m looking for some advice on combining 2 recipes when one needs to be covered and the other does not.

This is an all-time family favorite rice dish: https://www.southernliving.com/stick-of-butter-rice-8649999

And this is our all-time favorite chicken recipe: Baked Chicken and Rice in the steam oven – Steam & Bake

The steam oven recipe has the most perfect skin on the thighs…all crispy and browned. But the rice recipe needs to be covered. I’d appreciate any suggestions you could offer. All I could come up with is 2 pans. But then the chicken misses out on all the good herb and mushroom flavor. Or maybe the steam oven replaces the foil cover on the rice. What do you think?

A: I’m not completely sure I understand what you’re looking to do here, but I think it’s that you want to make the buttered rice from the first recipe and then add the chicken from the second? Let me know if I’ve got that wrong!

If that’s the case, you can definitely do it, and you don’t need to cover the dish. You can just use the method from my baked chicken and rice, with the ingredients from your Southern Living rice. The key difference will be that the very top bits of the rice are going to become a little crispy, because of the high heat required to bake and crisp the chicken. If you’re ok with that, go right ahead and make it! If you want every grain of rice to be fluffy and soft, I think you’ll need to do the 2-pans arrangement, and cover the rice pan.