what is it when you say u make lasg. and cover it and bake it in the oven is it baked or steamed. I am trying to understand moist heat and dry heat cooking.And not understanding when u have a combination of the two,what it is considered. Also,baking in a bag ...say chicken,is this considered baked or steamed? I also made chicken peices in the oven with some water or even sauce,I dont know what this is considered either.....moist or dry heat or is a combination of the two? thank you for your advice again.
Understanding a cooking method?
- Thread starter mumu
- Start date
The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
CrystalWriter
Cook
I would call lasgna a baked meal. The bake in the bag, by my understanding, is that it does use steam to bake with, rather than the dry heat. So I would call that steaming.
I am sure that someone who has more intelligent that me, will correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my opinion
I am sure that someone who has more intelligent that me, will correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my opinion
Crystalwater, you are correct. Just because you cover something does not necessarily mean it is not baked. Lasagna has its own liquids, but they do not steam or braise the food, and you can cook lasagna with or without covering it.
When you cook meat in the oven with some form of liquid, this is called braising. The liquid (water, broth) helps to cook the food evenly and keep it moist and tender - it is usually done at a low temperature for longer. The "cook in bag" would be in my opinion considered a type of braising.
Steaming is when the food is put above boiling water which comes through holes and cooks the food with the steam but the water doesn't touch the food. This is usually done on the top of the stove with a pot and a steamer insert.
Hope that helps. I am sure there are others who can clarify as well.
When you cook meat in the oven with some form of liquid, this is called braising. The liquid (water, broth) helps to cook the food evenly and keep it moist and tender - it is usually done at a low temperature for longer. The "cook in bag" would be in my opinion considered a type of braising.
Steaming is when the food is put above boiling water which comes through holes and cooks the food with the steam but the water doesn't touch the food. This is usually done on the top of the stove with a pot and a steamer insert.
Hope that helps. I am sure there are others who can clarify as well.
Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
I think this also qualifies as steaming. The potato's internal moisture does the job.
GLC
Head Chef
Steaming is commonly described as using steam as the heat source, the food being only in contact with the steam and heated by the steam, not in contact with boiling water. Some things are worth noting when thinking about steaming versus other methods.
Steam is still limited to 212F, the temperature at which it became steam. In a pressure vessel, it can be hotter (the boiling point rises), but I think it then becomes a separate method.
Food, then, being steamed, cannot become hotter than 212F. This also reminds us that when a wet concoction is placed into a hot oven, it may or may not exceed 212F. For instance, if I put a soup or stew with liquid above the surface of the solids into a 400F oven, it will limit at 212F. If I use less liquid, as in braising, where much of the solid is above the liquid, I might exceed 212F, but in a pot with the lid on, it becomes a steam environment, wet, but much different from a liquid environment, so far as the finish of the meat or other food goes. The temperature of the cooking environment is limited by physics, and that's what we want for braising/pot roasting, where we need longer times to deal with tough but flavorful cuts.
All this makes little difference to a baking potato. The internal temperature of a correctly baked potato is still a bit below 212F, so whether or not I trap steam in a foil blanket or not isn't going to effect the temperature much. The potato is truly baked. No substantial part of the water in the potato becomes steam. If it did you would have a potato that was (1) badly over-cooked, the internal temperature having exceeded 212F, and (2) very dry. A foil wrap does trap some moisture and produces a soft skin, if a soft skin is what you want.
Is rice, cooked in the usual way, steamed (which is what we call it, "steamed rice"), or is it boiled? It's boiled. It absorbs the water. Toward the later stage, it's being steamed. But most of the time, we know the difference. When we use a steamer, it pretty clearly steaming. The food doesn't touch the water and gets all of its effective heat from the steam.
Baking is a dry heat method, and the environment can get hotter than 212F. We take advantage of that. The interior of our bread is limited by its moisture, but the hot air can give us a nice crust. We also inject steam to form a crisper and thicker crust. This sounds wrong, but it's a different principle. The steam actually cools the dough surface (steam limiting at 212F) and allows some further carbohydrate breakdown into sugar that caramelizes to give us the brown crust.
But the most notable thing about almost all methods that are called "steaming" is that the heat is applied to the food by the independently generated steam alone. Otherwise, it's in the realm of pot roasting, which includes the chicken in the bag.
Steam is still limited to 212F, the temperature at which it became steam. In a pressure vessel, it can be hotter (the boiling point rises), but I think it then becomes a separate method.
Food, then, being steamed, cannot become hotter than 212F. This also reminds us that when a wet concoction is placed into a hot oven, it may or may not exceed 212F. For instance, if I put a soup or stew with liquid above the surface of the solids into a 400F oven, it will limit at 212F. If I use less liquid, as in braising, where much of the solid is above the liquid, I might exceed 212F, but in a pot with the lid on, it becomes a steam environment, wet, but much different from a liquid environment, so far as the finish of the meat or other food goes. The temperature of the cooking environment is limited by physics, and that's what we want for braising/pot roasting, where we need longer times to deal with tough but flavorful cuts.
All this makes little difference to a baking potato. The internal temperature of a correctly baked potato is still a bit below 212F, so whether or not I trap steam in a foil blanket or not isn't going to effect the temperature much. The potato is truly baked. No substantial part of the water in the potato becomes steam. If it did you would have a potato that was (1) badly over-cooked, the internal temperature having exceeded 212F, and (2) very dry. A foil wrap does trap some moisture and produces a soft skin, if a soft skin is what you want.
Is rice, cooked in the usual way, steamed (which is what we call it, "steamed rice"), or is it boiled? It's boiled. It absorbs the water. Toward the later stage, it's being steamed. But most of the time, we know the difference. When we use a steamer, it pretty clearly steaming. The food doesn't touch the water and gets all of its effective heat from the steam.
Baking is a dry heat method, and the environment can get hotter than 212F. We take advantage of that. The interior of our bread is limited by its moisture, but the hot air can give us a nice crust. We also inject steam to form a crisper and thicker crust. This sounds wrong, but it's a different principle. The steam actually cools the dough surface (steam limiting at 212F) and allows some further carbohydrate breakdown into sugar that caramelizes to give us the brown crust.
But the most notable thing about almost all methods that are called "steaming" is that the heat is applied to the food by the independently generated steam alone. Otherwise, it's in the realm of pot roasting, which includes the chicken in the bag.
GLC
Head Chef
I would say that the difference is that the chicken in the bag is not being heated by steam generated by a heat source working directly on the water and not directly on the food.
How much difference this makes in some of these methods is probably not important. Like with so-called "steamed rice," it's both boiled and then partly steamed. With chicken in the bag, what liquid ends up in the bag is sweated out of the chicken. Liquid inside the chicken cannot boil to form steam, because 212F interior would be overcooked chicken.
Perhaps the sweated out liquid boils from absorption of enough oven heat and forms steam. In that case, to some degree the chicken undergoes some steaming, like the rice does. But I think that by that point, the chicken is substantially cooked, or at least the essential changes have taken place in the proteins, and it's fundamentally roasted. The weakness in the bag method is that the liquid does sweat and creates an environment inside the bag that cannot exceed 212F. So the chicken cannot brown, except by radiant heating.
What a method is called is not important. What matters is the cook's understanding of the process or the various stages of the process and what it can and cannot do. For instance, the bag is an attempt to make moist chicken. But brining and rubbing butter under the skin and oiling the outside and using high temperature allows the very high oven temperature to brown and crisp the skin and produces correctly moist chicken by not cooking it overly long.
How much difference this makes in some of these methods is probably not important. Like with so-called "steamed rice," it's both boiled and then partly steamed. With chicken in the bag, what liquid ends up in the bag is sweated out of the chicken. Liquid inside the chicken cannot boil to form steam, because 212F interior would be overcooked chicken.
Perhaps the sweated out liquid boils from absorption of enough oven heat and forms steam. In that case, to some degree the chicken undergoes some steaming, like the rice does. But I think that by that point, the chicken is substantially cooked, or at least the essential changes have taken place in the proteins, and it's fundamentally roasted. The weakness in the bag method is that the liquid does sweat and creates an environment inside the bag that cannot exceed 212F. So the chicken cannot brown, except by radiant heating.
What a method is called is not important. What matters is the cook's understanding of the process or the various stages of the process and what it can and cannot do. For instance, the bag is an attempt to make moist chicken. But brining and rubbing butter under the skin and oiling the outside and using high temperature allows the very high oven temperature to brown and crisp the skin and produces correctly moist chicken by not cooking it overly long.
understanding
I have just read where they put a cover over lasg. and they said it will cook faster bec. of the steam. So dont understand on previous comment lasg. doesnt steam or braise with its liquid. A cover holds moisture in so it is steaming?
I have just read where they put a cover over lasg. and they said it will cook faster bec. of the steam. So dont understand on previous comment lasg. doesnt steam or braise with its liquid. A cover holds moisture in so it is steaming?
Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
The cover holds heat in. Anything cooks faster when it's covered because the lid (or foil) holds in the heat.
Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
GLC defined steaming as heat from steam that's separate from the food. e.g. a steamer basket in a pan of boiling water. The heat source heats the water to make steam and the steam then cooks the lasagna. Lasagna cooks mostly from the heat of the oven. Any moisture in the lasagna that heats up and turns to steam is part of the cooking process but not the primary heat source. You cover the lasagna because it will trap the heat and cook faster and keep moisture from escaping and drying out the food.
GLC
Head Chef
Lasagna is not cooked on account of any steam generated. Little steam can form, anyway. The internal temperature of fully cooked lasagna is typically 170F and never more than 190F, too cool for steam to form, except perhaps right at the surface, and that would only be during the uncovered period. Lasagna is normally started covered and finished uncovered.
Let's make clear a distinction here. There is water vapor, the gas phase of water. Obviously, water vapor can be created by a number of different means and certainly doesn't require high temperature. You see water vapor condensing from your breath on a cold morning, and you're not boiling inside. Nor are clouds boiling.
Steam is also water vapor, but steam refers only to water vapor created by boiling water. So steaming requires boiling water and a temperature of at least 212F at sea level pressure.
Water vapor can be formed by evaporation, and it evaporates faster with heat. Because of the physics involved and the fact that when a water molecule changes phase to become vapor, it takes away a parcel of heat, evaporation results in cooling of the liquid. If you contain the vapor in a vessel with the water, it will reach equilibrium, and no more evaporation can take place. And so, since no molecules are changing state and taking heat with them, the temperature can rise. If the vapor is not contained, evaporation and heat loss can continue. You can only do this to a limited extent with common covered pots. They still leak vapor. So a covered vessel will cook more efficiently, but it's nothing to do with steam. And we wait until the end to uncover and brown our lasagna, because we don't want to dry it out earlier from water vapor leaving the food.
So there's a not very clear distinction between steaming and other methods. We could, for instance, put our vegetables in the steamer and heat the water only to 190F. The water would not boil, but hot water vapor would be released and more or less contained, and the vegetables would eventually become cooked by exposure to this hot vapor. But not steamed, because there was never any steam. And there wouldn't be any advantage to this sort of wet heat cooking.
It seems like a silly point, but think of it this way. Why do we steam? Well, aside from things like preserving nutrients lost in boiling, we steam because we can't, without special equipment make water vapor any hotter than steam at 212F. If we want to cook faster than that with the same effect, we could put our steamer inside our pressure cooker, and the steam would become much hotter.
You can cook beans that way. It's tricky with vegetables. With the high temperature steam, they cook very quickly, and it's hard to get the pressure down quickly enough to get them out to stop the cooking. Not worth it, when regular steaming takes so little time.
Let's make clear a distinction here. There is water vapor, the gas phase of water. Obviously, water vapor can be created by a number of different means and certainly doesn't require high temperature. You see water vapor condensing from your breath on a cold morning, and you're not boiling inside. Nor are clouds boiling.
Steam is also water vapor, but steam refers only to water vapor created by boiling water. So steaming requires boiling water and a temperature of at least 212F at sea level pressure.
Water vapor can be formed by evaporation, and it evaporates faster with heat. Because of the physics involved and the fact that when a water molecule changes phase to become vapor, it takes away a parcel of heat, evaporation results in cooling of the liquid. If you contain the vapor in a vessel with the water, it will reach equilibrium, and no more evaporation can take place. And so, since no molecules are changing state and taking heat with them, the temperature can rise. If the vapor is not contained, evaporation and heat loss can continue. You can only do this to a limited extent with common covered pots. They still leak vapor. So a covered vessel will cook more efficiently, but it's nothing to do with steam. And we wait until the end to uncover and brown our lasagna, because we don't want to dry it out earlier from water vapor leaving the food.
So there's a not very clear distinction between steaming and other methods. We could, for instance, put our vegetables in the steamer and heat the water only to 190F. The water would not boil, but hot water vapor would be released and more or less contained, and the vegetables would eventually become cooked by exposure to this hot vapor. But not steamed, because there was never any steam. And there wouldn't be any advantage to this sort of wet heat cooking.
It seems like a silly point, but think of it this way. Why do we steam? Well, aside from things like preserving nutrients lost in boiling, we steam because we can't, without special equipment make water vapor any hotter than steam at 212F. If we want to cook faster than that with the same effect, we could put our steamer inside our pressure cooker, and the steam would become much hotter.
You can cook beans that way. It's tricky with vegetables. With the high temperature steam, they cook very quickly, and it's hard to get the pressure down quickly enough to get them out to stop the cooking. Not worth it, when regular steaming takes so little time.
Last edited:
Chief Longwind Of The North
Certified/Certifiable
I have to change a few of GLC's points. Mostly, I agree. The part that I'm adding is that in a sealed environment, such as a lasagna pan covered tightly with foil, steam is generated when the water is heated. This steam is trapped, creating a moist environment. Teh steam isn't cmopletely vaporized and exists as tiny droplets of water, moving in the air currents within and above the food. Straight, low humidity air is a poor conductor, and so is also not good at transferring energy into food. The moist air is much more efficient at transferring trapped heat energy back into the food, which also speeds the cooking process.
Cooking, is by definition, the process of transferring heat into a food, be it by radiation, or conduction. We also talk about convection. As air touches food, just like everything else that touches the food, if the heat energy of the air is greater than that of the food, their will be a transfer of energy into the food. If the air is dry, and static (non-moving), as the air touching the food is giving up it's energy, it must absorb more energy from it's surrounding air before ti can transfer more. And remember, air is more insulate than conductive. By moving the air in an oven with a small fan, the food is constantly touched with hot, fresh air, transfering heat more evenly and more quickly into the food.
When the same air and processes are involved, but with moist air, the water droplets that touch the food give up their energy much more quickly than does the same temperature dry air. And as the water molecules move around, they also absorb heat energy more quickly from the heat source, to again pass into the food.
And just so everyone knows, steam can reach temperatures much hotter than 212'F. The Catapults on an aircraft carrier used steam in excess of 1200' F. to operate. Steam at that temperature is a true vapor, and can be used under high pressure to cut steel.
For the example of the potato in foil, as the potato is heated, within its foil shell, the water begins to turn to steam before the potato meat has broken down into that cooked stage that we enjoy. That steam creates internal pressure, at least a little bit, and migrates to the outside, wetting the skin of the potato, keeping it soft. So yes, the foil wrapped potato does cook through steam, but also through conduction and convection. The hot air of the oven heats the foil (convection), which then transfers that heat directly to the potato, and all of the water within the potato (conduction), which creates steam. As the steam is not the original source of heat, the potato is considered baked. But steaming, is part of the cooking process, where convective and radiation are the heat sources in a potato that is baked with no foil, or other covering.
And that's why a foil-wrapped potato, whether cooked in an oven, or thrown into the hot embers of a campfire, is considered a steamed potato.
Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
Cooking, is by definition, the process of transferring heat into a food, be it by radiation, or conduction. We also talk about convection. As air touches food, just like everything else that touches the food, if the heat energy of the air is greater than that of the food, their will be a transfer of energy into the food. If the air is dry, and static (non-moving), as the air touching the food is giving up it's energy, it must absorb more energy from it's surrounding air before ti can transfer more. And remember, air is more insulate than conductive. By moving the air in an oven with a small fan, the food is constantly touched with hot, fresh air, transfering heat more evenly and more quickly into the food.
When the same air and processes are involved, but with moist air, the water droplets that touch the food give up their energy much more quickly than does the same temperature dry air. And as the water molecules move around, they also absorb heat energy more quickly from the heat source, to again pass into the food.
And just so everyone knows, steam can reach temperatures much hotter than 212'F. The Catapults on an aircraft carrier used steam in excess of 1200' F. to operate. Steam at that temperature is a true vapor, and can be used under high pressure to cut steel.
For the example of the potato in foil, as the potato is heated, within its foil shell, the water begins to turn to steam before the potato meat has broken down into that cooked stage that we enjoy. That steam creates internal pressure, at least a little bit, and migrates to the outside, wetting the skin of the potato, keeping it soft. So yes, the foil wrapped potato does cook through steam, but also through conduction and convection. The hot air of the oven heats the foil (convection), which then transfers that heat directly to the potato, and all of the water within the potato (conduction), which creates steam. As the steam is not the original source of heat, the potato is considered baked. But steaming, is part of the cooking process, where convective and radiation are the heat sources in a potato that is baked with no foil, or other covering.
And that's why a foil-wrapped potato, whether cooked in an oven, or thrown into the hot embers of a campfire, is considered a steamed potato.
Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
GLC
Head Chef
I don't disagree with that. Lasagna is a somewhat wet concoction, so there is always some water in contact with the pan. And the pan certainly exceeds 212F, so some steam is formed. But the cover cannot hold any significant pressure, so the steam cannot exceed 212F. The air, of course, can get hotter. But I would not call the method "steaming," because the heat is not being applied primarily by steam from water that is not in contact with the food, although during the covered part of the cooking time, there is probably little air in contact with the food because of the dense water vapor atmosphere under the cover.
Since I've never tried to steam a whole potato in the usual way of steaming vegetables, I'll have to try it. The exercise would compare the cooking times. One potato in a steamer insert, set above boiling water. The other wrapped in foil in a hot oven. And a control, a bare potato.
I'm guessing that the steamed potato (the one over boiling water) will take longer. I reason that the foiled potato is in a very hot oven, far hotter than the steamer steam can be. I suppose, to really test, I should wrap one potato as tightly as possible, pressing the foil closely to the skin. And wrap the other loosely. I had better weigh the potatoes, too, to see how much water is lost.
My store sells packages of four almost perfectly matched russet potatoes that will be perfect for this, and I was going to bake some anyway in the next few days.
Braising, the food is in the liquid and covered.
Steaming, the food is out of the liquid and covered.
Steaming, the food is out of the liquid and covered.
understanding
so the heat source of braising say in the oven is baking and the process of braising is the steaming ... guess i am hitting a rock bec. not understanding heat source and process. I am thinking bec. most of the cooking the meat in braising is done by steaming?
so the heat source of braising say in the oven is baking and the process of braising is the steaming ... guess i am hitting a rock bec. not understanding heat source and process. I am thinking bec. most of the cooking the meat in braising is done by steaming?
i didnt write that the right way.(dont see a delete,sorry).i do understand heat source and process its just like with braising i think steaming is the biggest part in cooking the meat here in the braising,so i thought the heat source should be steaming .
