Steam Ovens Are A Healthy Choice In Cooking.

Steam ovens are said to be healthier because the steam cooks the foods without the need for extra fat to keep the foods moist. With everyone wanting to eat healthier these days appliance manufacturers have came up with the solution. Steam cooking is also said to retain vitamins better than any other cooking method.

Sizes range from the size of a microwave up to the same size as a wall oven. The wall oven size is installed in the same way as any oven. These ovens are not cheap, they start at $1500 and go all the way up to $8000 for a top of the line Gaggenau 30" steam oven.

Steam ovens use water that is placed in a container that is drawn off by siphoning or simply dumped into the bottom of the oven. The siphoning type is more efficient at conserving the water to cook for longer periods of time. The oven that usss water placed in the bottom not regulated as efficiently.

Having hard water may affect these ovens in the same way a hot water tank does. When the water is heated the calcium and other solids in the water tend to settle and bond to the heating elements in the units.

Some manufacturers, such as Viking, claim that their products are not affected by this. These ovens also stay much cleaner and when cleaning is necessary it's not baked on. Most also have a steam cleaning option.

Cooking times are drastically lower than any other oven type. Steam cooking is not to be confused with pressure cooking. A whole chicken can be cooked in 20 mins, compared to 2 hours for a conventional oven.

Some steam ovens can be used as defrosters and many of these ovens come with programmed cooking guides. If you're not the best cook in the world the guides can help you out.

These ovens aren't just for cooking meats. What can you cook in these ovens? Well pretty much anything. You can cook pasta, breads, vegetables, rice, fish, puddings and anything else you can think of.

There are some down sides to these ovens. Browning is not possible with most of these ovens and the extra step of browning must be done in a separate oven, or done beforehand. Food that comes out of these ovens is pale and whitish, like the food that comes out of a microwave.

Sharp has come up with a solution for this problem though. Their SuperSteam Oven uses superheated steam along with convection heating to help brown and crisp the outsides of food. Not only is this oven capable of cooking with steam and convection but also has the capability of cooking with microwave technology.

The biggest down side to these ovens is the cost. Maybe as their popularity grows the prices may come down, but this is relatively new to oven technology.