Steaming cooks via the heat from steam.
It is a little bit like double-boiling except it does not need a ceramic double boiling jar and the jar is not half-submerged in the water of the bigger pot.The ingredients and the soup is placed in a soup bowl which can be ceramic or enamel. The bowl is then placed in a big pot and steamed.
The pot can be a big wok or a big stock pot. It can also be a special steamer. The water should be brought to the boil first before the soup bowl is placed in.
Cooking with steam is not as common as the other soup making techniques like simmering and quick soup. But it is a good technique for ingredients that are quite delicate and may disintegrate at the slightest boiling and agitation. For instance, fish.
My paternal grandmother loves to cook and she has this "huge" 3-tier food steamer which she would use to steam all sort of yummy food. However she rarely uses it to make soup. Instead, she would use the rice cooker or a big pot or a wok on the stovetop.
It is however possible to cook small petite bowls of soup using 3-tier food steamers.
How do you position the soup bowl inside the bigger pot or wok?
There are some accessories in a chinese kitchen that I have no English names for. One of them is this item below used to prop up bowls or tureens during cooking.
The closest I could think of is a tripod.
It is a metal structure with 3 legs that you place at the bottom of the big pot or rice cooker to act as a pedestal for the soup bowl.
If you do a lot of cooking with steam, a tripod is a more convenient and safer tool than a plate. Chinese grocery shops or supermarkets should stock these.
If you cannot locate this little tripod, use a plate. Invert the plate and place it at the bottom of the wok or pot. Place the soup bowl on top of the plate.
2010 Update!
I found something close to this and it is called a wire plate. Here's a picture of it.
How do you remove the soup bowl from the bigger pot or wok?
Another one of those kitchen accessories that I couldn't find an English name for is what I would like to call the plate grabber.
It is a very convenient way to remove the soup bowl from the piping hot pot. It is also very cheap and can be found in asian grocery shops.
Some soup recipes using steaming
Black chicken soup
An anti-aging chicken soup recipe
Korean ginseng chicken soup
Search for other soup recipes
