Steaming is an extremely simple cooking method based on the following principle: food is cooked by the heat from the vapour of a boiling liquid.

Steaming is a method used since ancient times. For this purpose, Chinese people used perforated baskets of bamboo placed on a bowl at the bottom of which they boil water. Similarly, in North Africa this technique is widely used for cooking couscous. In the West, the utensils used to cook food with steam are mostly made of metal.