If your idea of steam cooking is limited to steamed vegetables and fish, think again! There is so much more to steam cooking than super lean, likely hunger-triggering foods that make being healthy seem so sad…

Once upon a time, my brother and I started making our favorite cakes in the steam cooker. We were blown away! My mom started making bread and other cakes that tasted wonderful despite a very low amount of sugar. Progressively, everything we made had to be steamed, and only a few things didn’t actually work in there. We knew steamed fruits tasted wonderful and were cooked in a few minutes. So we decided to take it to the next level. One of the treats we tried in the steam cooker was fruit spreads.

Boiling Jam, Steaming Spread

Making jam in a steam cooker is more challenging in the steam cooker for one reason: to make a jam that preserves a long time, you need to cook it a very long time and steal it so it does not go bad. The process takes a long time. Too long to my taste. Besides, cooking for two long destroys fibers and vitamins. So if I am going to destroy the nutrients in my jam, I don’t mind boiling it.

One good way to eat a jam-like treat was to cook fruit for a short time and make it like you would make apple sauce: add only 10% of sugar to the weight in fruit. I am pretty sure I could even lower the amounts: Since steaming preserves the taste, color (i.e. vitamins ) and fibers of the fruit , sweetening should not be that necessary.

Bonus: the more fibers, the lower the glycemic index of your food!

Rhubarb is in season!

Growing up, one of the favorite fruit sauce to buy was rhubarb. It’s an easy one to find everywhere in France. When I came to the US, I could not find it any more, so I decided to try myself at making it. I was surprised at the difference in color: after all, rhubarb is more red than it is green! My rhubarb spread turned pink! Then I started mixing it with other spring and summer fruits, like berries, or even kiwi!

Steaming Produce vs. Fruit

Rhubarb steams really quickly. It does not require cooking in a bowl, since vegetables do not sweat out too much fluids. Conversely, I steam raspberries directly in a bowl so it does not lose all its color and fluids.

Not all fruits require steaming in a bowl. However berries do, because their texture is very thin and fragile. Steaming apples or fruit with a thicker skin can be done directly in the steam basket without their taste suffering much.

What are the advantage of steaming directly in the basket ?

The fluids that your food lose while cooking contain toxines, such as pesticides. If you cook your food it in a bowl, whatever your produce sweats into that bowl will land in your food. If you steam in the basket directly, toxines will fall through the steam basket holes into the tank below: less toxine overload for you!

The logical conclusion of this is: if you want to avoid pesticides, buy organic and local whenever you can of course. Also buy whatever you need to cook in a bowl organic whenever you can. Your rhubarb ( which, let’s be honest, I never found organic in any American store!) will have the opportunity to sweat out toxins into the tank from the steam basket.

Steamed twice!

Attention Please ! This recipe uses the steam cooker on two occasions.

First, I steam chopped rhubarb for 5 minutes directly on the steam basket.

The second step is to add the steamed rhubarb into a bowl and to cook it 5 more minutes together with raw raspberry and sugar. Only once the two fruits have cooked together 5 minutes in the steamer do I use my immersion blender to blend them into a spread!

Without further ado, here is my favorite fruit spread recipe: Steamed Raspberry Rhubarb Spread !

What I need to make this delicious spread

• The steam cooker of course! Learn more here and make sure to use my 10% discount code “steamedcuisine” for 10% off and NO EUROPEAN Sales Tax at check out ( from the US/Canada)
• A solid immersion blender ! If you need a recommendation check out this one by Kitchen Aid, which is very similar to my own. If I had my own choice today and given how much I use an immersion blender, I would probably purchase this Vitamix one.

Recipe Variations

• My recipe requires 70% rhubarb for 30% berries ( raspberry / strawberry), but it’s also excellent with 80% rhubarb for 20% raspberries.
• You can also try with kiwi, it’s probably my next favorite fruit to go with rhubarb after raspberries!
• Going to the pool yet? Make it into a fruit pop!
• My kids love adding it into their Super Gut Overnight Oats ( coming up!) or skip the sweetener and mixing it with yogurt alongside their home made granola.

Bon Appétit !