Both bain marie and steaming are indirect methods of cooking but are they interchangable or are there cases where one should or shouldn't be used? It seems that some recipes call for one or the other but no reason is specified for the choice of method other than:
- The benefits of indirect cooking e.g. better temperature control or gentler cooking.
- That's just the way it is done.
I wondered this after reading about how to make silken tofu. Some methods steam it, others heat the milk and slowly let it cool but I found none use a bain marie, though I can't see why not?
I have not found any direct comparison in my searches so any insight would be much appreciated.
Best Answer
They're not really much the same and what they're used for is generally pretty different. I don't consider them interchangeable at all.
Use a bain marie for things that are liquid or will become liquid on heating:
Generally, the food needs to be pretty homogeneous with no big open spaces. If you put broccoli in a bain marie, most of it wouldn't be in contact with the inner bowl so little of the heat would be transferred. Steam, however, will creep in and around all of the branches and cook it evenly.
Steaming is best when you're trying to heat up oddly-shaped things that will retain their shape like vegetables, meats/fish/poultry, rice, cakes, buns, etc.
You also specifically would not want to use the steaming method for something like chocolate as you usually want to avoid introducing water into the chocolate.