The Principle of Steaming Veggies with Olive Oil and Umami
This is a fantastic and incredibly easy everyday cooking principle. It’s works with most vegetables that you’d want to steam, but I tend to use it for leafy greens or things like long beans, asparagus or broccoli.
It’s not necessary, but I pretty much always add a few drops of light soya sauce in addition to sea salt to the water in order to give it that umami depth that will help convert any person to a full on veggie lover.
The olive oil somehow just helps make it all even more delicious and makes a light sauce together with the cooking water. Do not discard this! It’s the base for sauce that makes it all come together in the end.
Miso is another great addition though this should be added once the cooking process is complete and the temperature has dropped below 60°C so the gut-friendly microbes survive (if you use pasteurised miso paste this of course doesn’t matter).
Here are the steps:
Add about 1/2 - 1 inch of water in a wide pan with tall sides (sauté pan or wok) followed by a good drizzle of olive oil or knob of butter, a good pinch of sea salt and a touch of soy sauce if that’s the umami ingredient you are using. The quantity of oil depends of course on the quantity of greens you are cooking, but if we say about a tbsp of olive oil per large handful of greens that should be a good rule of thumb.
Once it bubbling you add your veg and put the lid on.
Keep checking frequently and turn over the veggies in the cooking liquid.
Once the veg is cooked (it should still have a good bite), remove it from the liquid with a slotted spoon or tongs and transfer to whatever you’re serving it on.
Now taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning. If you are using miso paste add this to the cooking liquid and stir in. To make things extra delicious a really good trick is to add a little mayo to the sauce as well. Once you are happy with it, chuck the green back in and use the tongs or spoon to turn them around until they are thoroughly coated.
As an alternative to the miso and mayo trick you can thicken the sauce a bit with some potato or corn flour dissolved into a little water added to the cooking liquid which is then brought to a boil.