Winter Vegetable Medley With A Side of Meat Balls
This is a a wonderful colorful medley of purple, white, green, light green, orange. It is composed of crunchy and softer type of vegetables simply steamed, then mixed and dressed together. All the vegetables’ natural tastes keep their strength while complementing each other, and so does their combined textures. The simple dressing does not overly cover their tastes, just acts as a subtle link between them. And the family is in awe! It is so wonderful with a side of meat balls!
Last spring, when my baby was born, a friend brought a beautiful, original take on shepherd pie. This was a very special and probably the best shepherd pie I’ve tasted ! One of the reason was, it was not very unexpected mix of vegetables and with seasoning I had not considered. It was wonderful.
Creating a New Recipe From One I Loved
A Colorful Medley
Now, although I haven’t yet had time to recreate her beautiful pie, I used it as inspiration to make a skillet full of steamed winter vegetables. Its results: a wonderful colorful medley of purple, white, green, light green, orange. Consistency was a mix of crunchy and softer type of vegetables simply steamed, then mixed and dressed together. All the vegetables’ natural tastes keep their strength while complementing each other. And so does their combined textures. The simple dressing does not overly cover their tastes, just acts as a subtle link between them. And the family was in awe! It was so wonderful with a side of meat balls!
You’ll enjoy it!
This is such a wonderful recipe, you can even enjoy it without the meat balls. Are you vegetarian or vegan, or simply enjoys a few animal-protein-free meals? Try! You won’t regret it. Without the meat, I would simply add a side of whole rice ( to cook rice, check my new youtube video and post Steam Your Rice!!)
This is one recipe that you can make rather quickly. It will go even faster if you have the help of little hands to assist in the cutting of all these colorful plants!
A good way to know if a dish will be healthy and nutrient dense is color intensity as well as color diversity. If you heard of the Rainbow Diet by Deanna Minich, PhD, you now suspect that every color of the rainbow in our foods has a health purpose.
If you hear the radio adds these days, you’ll know beet’s juice is heart healthy. Personally, I suspect the whole vegetable is most heart healthy, because beside the color, the fiber is a fantastic prebiotic, i.e. food for your good bacteria. Personally I prefer my beets raw, or as home made probiotic, fermented in salt.
A Very Healthy and Tasty Mix
You know the orange color you have in carrots and turmeric is very eye healthy, leafy green vegetables are full of vitamin C, Bs like folate (B9), potassium magnesium, calcium ( guess what cows naturally eat?) and antioxydants.
Therefore… what would make you refuse a beautiful colored-as-a-rainbow dish? And what if it was also scrumptious because it was cooked with the ideal method, i.e. gentle steam cooking? This is a cooking method that not only preserves but also sweats off food toxins. This method of course is gentle steam cooking, which I practice with the Vitaliseur, a French almost-cook-all steam cooker.
Gentle Steaming is a Different Steaming Method
Why am I such a fan of Gentle Steam Cooking ?
Because gentle steam cooking is a different steaming method.
- It is NOT a pressure cooking method ( I discuss this in my post How Do I Steam Eggs ). Therefore, it does not boil off nutrients that are heat sensitive. Your food remains very nutrient dense and your fibers keep their strength and health benefits!
- It is NOT a universal steam basket that lays in contact with water, which only allows the release of very small amounts of steam.
- The Vitaliseur’s steam basket or sieve is far enough above water to allow the a lot of steam to build up before it reaches the steam basket area, where your foods cook. This allows for more steam to surround your food, and to efficiently cook it.
- The Vitaliseur’s rounded lid first makes space for the steam to freely and abundantly circulate around your food, and penetrate them so they can cook and sweat out toxins like pesticides and other potential pollutants especially present in fats. It also allows the condensation water to stream down the rounded lid and fall on the sides of the cooker before the toxines come back down into the lower tank.
- It is truly efficient and quick, cooking most vegetables between 3 and 7 minutes depending on thickness.
Steaming maintains taste, texture, scent, but to the naked eye, you can already notice how strong the color remains even after cooking (although NOT TOO LONG) the food in the steam cooker.
The Vitaliseur is used differently than other steam cookers
If you look up steam cooking videos or blogs, you will see many people make dishes in a bowl and place it onto the steam basket, together with the seasoning. This is, of course, possible with this steam cooker. However it is not the way I use it most of the time. Why?
Most foods are cooked directly In the steam basket
Because of gentle steam’s amazing capacity to act as a steam room, and detoxify my foods like a steam room would help you get rid of fats and toxins lodged in your body fat, I chose to cook it to sweat out those toxins as much as I can. Three reasons mainly.
Sourcing Food Issue
Firstly, I have a big family and although I’d love to, I can’t afford to eat everything from the best sources . We do eat A LOT of produce and so I try to source as much as possible from local and organic sources, but not everything exists in this category, and not everything is affordable. I yet have to become a homesteader to do that, but this does not happen in 5 minutes, does it?
Preserving Nutrient Density
Secondly, even if I had that luxury, I would want to use a cooking method that is gentle to the food I buy and preserves as much as possible the nutrients it contains. So I don’t waste my money right?
Cleansing : Sweating Out Toxicity
Third reason, gentle steam cooking not only preserves nutrients and detoxifies them ( albeit not 100% and it does not make them organic either…) , it also preserves the natural TASTE, FLAVORS, SCENT, TEXTURE and plant hormones. These are very important components of a healthy, tasty meal, if you don’t want to sink your food into a ton of dressings that is.
What Foods Are Cooked Directly In The Steam Basket?
I will cook produce, i.e. fresh vegetables, fresh legumes and sometimes fruit directly in the steam basket. I also cook chicken (not marinated) , fish, sea food and sometimes meat balls on there too.
Yes! Meat Can Be Steamed !
Who would have thought… What you cook is up to you of course! I also cook presoaked garbanzo beans directly in the steam basket since there is no risk of falling through the holes.
What I Do Cook in a Container:
I use an instant pot basket to cook dried lentils that I previously soak overnight in water. Of course, all grains cook in water in a stainless steel container ( rice, quinoa, millet, couscous, rice, buckwheat, amaranth…) . I also make breads in bread pans, cakes in cake molds, crustless quiches in pyrex bowls! But in these, the pre steaming of ingredients when needed happens before the final cooking in the steam basket.
How Do I Mix Ingredients If I Steam Everything Directly In The Steam Basket ?
Well firstly, chances are you may have to steam your ingredients separately on account of the lack of space in the basket. Yes, of course, you can mix different ingredients together, and their tastes won’t mix. So if you have six different vegetables to cook, you can cook three first, then three others ! Total steaming time: around 10 minutes!
Second, if you dress your food without a container in the steam basket, you probably will lose most of it into the tank. That is why I steam ingredients a short time, then mix them in a large skillet or sauté pan, heated on low fire, let them sit in the dressing together five to ten minutes, then serve. Easy peasy!
Using A Steam Cooker To Make a Healthy Dinner is Fast and Easy!
Steaming a meal is fast an easy: all it takes is knowing a little bit about food and taste combinations, seasoning with herbs and spices. You can start small and go from there. What kind of vegetables do I usually like together, see together, in what type of foods? Replicate! Give yourself a chance! Most vegetables are cooked in 3 to 6 minutes depending on density and thickness ( 1 minute for green leafy vegetables!)
When I don’t have time or imagination, I fall back on very simple and mediterranean seasoning: extra virgin olive oil and salt. Add to that an herb you like like thyme, rosemary or oregano. Besides their great taste, bonus is that they all have some nutritional advantage: anti fungal, anti bacterial, immunity boosting for example.
A little bit of research online or even looking at the ingredient list on your favorite dressing at the store will give you a hint of what kind of herb you will like in your food. Buying the ones you like the most won’t cost you as much as the dressing itself, and all ingredients will bring in nutritional advantages the strore bought dressing may have annihilated in the manufacturing process through adding toxic oils ( chemical processing) or degradation through heat.
You may not want to try meat or fish in there – start small, that’s fine! A skillet works too. You can have something yummy ready in a few minutes.
Want a grain? The steam cooker can accommodate that too, give it 15 more minutes or so.
Bottomline? First, a whole meal can be made in there. Second, let your imagination and your tastebuds guide you, and the recipes you can make up are endless!
Learn more :
- About the steam cooker and where to buy the steam cooker,
- About how to steam vegetables
- How to make a steam meal in 5 steps
More recipes with steamed vegetables?
Winter Vegetables Medley with a Side of Meat Balls
Winter is ending but you may still have cold evenings and a need for some warm, yet colorful meal ! This winter vegetable medley has warm, bright colors, and shows you all the advantages of steam cooking in one meal: the full, intense tastes, the bright attractive colors, the wonderful scents that wake your tastebuds, the crunch under your teeth, combined with a lot of nutrition, tied together with an unexpected dressing.
Ingredients
- 1/4 of a red cabbage, cut in big 1 inch chunks
- 1/2 of a cauliflower, cut small "trees"
- Two zucchini, cut in 1/4 in slices
- THree carrots, cut in 1/2 inch thick slices;
- 5 celery sticks, cut in 1/4 in thick slices
- One onion, sliced.
Vegetable Medley Seasoning
- 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp ground rosemary
- 1/8 cup coconut aminos
- 1 or two tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1.5 tbsp salt
- One bay leaf
- 3 cloves of garlic
For the Meat Balls
- 1 Tbsp sea salt
- a small white onion
- 2 lbs ground meat - we like 1 lb venison and 1 lb ground beef
- 1 tbsp oregano
- Pepper to taste
Instructions
- NB: This VEGETABLE medley is good for 2 meals for a family of 6! You will have leftovers ! As for the amount of beef, it all depends on how much your family eats . You probably will need more meat for the second meal.
- Fill up the tank of your Vitaliseur steam cooker ( 1.5 to 2 inches) with water. Turn on the stove.
- Take a cutting board and proceed to cut all ingredients.
- When the steam cooker is hot and steamy, fill the steam basket with the vegetables that need the same amount of time cooking ( zucchini, cabbage, onion, cauliflower all need 5 minutes, celery needs 4 minutes, carrots need 6 minutes). Please make sure that there are enough holes visible to let the steam go through. FIlling the basket too much may result in needing much longer to cook!
- While steaming the vegetables, take a large skillet and heat it using low fire. Add a bit of water, salt, a bay leaf and 3 cloves of garlic, drizzle some olive oil.
- Once the first round of vegetable has steamed, transfer the first round into the skillet. Proceed to steam the second round, transfer to the skillet and mix, then steam the third round , then transfer and meat ( I need three rounds to steam all my vegetables when I make this meal). Always keep the heat low while vegetables mix together. Then add the oil, coconut aminos and vinegar, rosemary and pepper. to taste. Mix and let sit together 5 minutes, and call people to the table!
- Meat balls:
- While vegetables are steaming, Turn on the grill, on medium-low heat.
Take 2 lbs of ground beef ( or 1 lb venison and 1 lb beef) and mix them together along with the one onion, diced very small, and 2 tsp salt, a good dose of pepper, 1 tbsp oregano. Make ping ping ball sized meat balls.
Grill the meat balls on low heat for about... minutes
Bon appétit!
Notes
NB: This VEGETABLE medley is good for 2 meals for a family of 6! You will have leftovers ! As for the amount of beef, it all depends on how much your family eats . You probably will need more meat for the second meal.
Where do I find ingredients? Use my page Tools and Ingredients I use !
Alternatives:
- Alternative vegetables: instead of zucchini, use broccoli, for green !
- You can also add eggplant for an additional color, it also tastes great in there!
- cook the meat balls in the steam cooker for about 5 to 7 minutes depending on how well done you like them. By steaming them, you avoid ingesting some carcinogens grilled meat is exposed to. Of course everyone likes grilled meat once in a while, no judgment here, we like grilling too. Just writing it out there: you can steam red meat, too!
Steaming red meat also has an advantage; the natural taste of the meat comes off stronger than the grilled taste, you may rediscover some tastes you did not suspect!
