Best Way to Cook Vegetables: Vegetable Steamers

This must-have kitchen gadget will help preserve essential nutrients

If you don't have a vegetable steamer in your kitchen, you should! It's one of the handiest of all kitchen gadgets and, perhaps most important of all, it will help you preserve the nutrients in the vegetables you eat.

Don't cook vegetables by boiling them. Not only will you lose a lot of the flavor, but many vitamins are destroyed by the heat and most of the minerals are thrown out with the water.

In addition to cooking vegetables, steamers can be used to:

• Heat leftovers
• Thaw frozen foods
• Cook grains and cereals
• Prepare mixed vegetables

The best news about vegetable steamers: there's almost nothing to clean afterwards!

Shopping tip: A good steamer won't have holes in the bottom of the insert, but instead on the sides and toward the top.

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