“Steaming – an outdated method to cook tasteless 80’s food or the definition of trendy and tasty cooking?”

When you hear the word “steam”, you probably think of the 80’s diets. Think again. The method is starting to find its way back into the fine restaurants and even into people’s homes. Tasteology is the name of a new AEG-initiated documentary series uncovering the four steps of how to achieve cooking results that are multisensory, sustainable, nutritional and tasteful all at once. The four-episode series invites viewers on a culinary journey around the world to gain inspiration and knowledge far beyond the usual TV cooking shows. Tasteology will be launched on May 25 and is then available on Youtube.

Heating food might be one of the most central steps of cooking, and there are many ways to do so. Boling and frying is probably the most obvious methods but there are many more ways to bring heat to the process of cooking. Steaming is one of them, and has made a comeback. Today, steaming is very popular among top chefs around the world, and has even spread into people’s homes. However, steaming is not to be confused with the term ‘sous vide’ which has also become very popular among the super trendy and curious foodies who want to brag about vacuum sealing food before cooking it at a low temperature either in hot water or with steam.

“When you sous vide you’re taking away all the air and the method allows you too cook at a low temperature, just like steaming. The interest in installing a sous vide oven at home has increased over the past years and we believe it’s a result of peoples’ increased knowledge of the benefits with the method. It allows you to cook with precision at exact temperatures giving the food a lovely texture and great taste. Also, you only need to use a fifth of spices compared to when cooking in a regular oven, since everything becomes more concentrated when putting the food in vacuum.” says Rose Vanhecke, Product Manager Cooking at AEG.

Using humidity in cooking is a thousand-year-old trick that spreads the heat evenly and makes food juicier and taste better. TV chef Catalina Velez says she love being a naturalist and thinks that everyone wants to get back to the roots - longing to eat real food rich in nutrients. Her passion is finding traditional cooking methods such as steaming and to bring traditional methods into a modern context.

“Steaming, I think it's the best way of cooking because what you do is you keep the ingredient at it's best form, at it's pure form. Because you apply a very low temperature so it gets just cooked and you do it for a long time so you don't break the fibres, you don't lose any of the nutritional value from the food.” says Catalina Velez.

Hervé This, another expert featured in Tasteology, is a gastro-chemist and taught the world how to boil an egg in a dishwasher and also invented the ‘perfect egg’. He believes that the key to cooking is not time, but rather the exact right temperature.