steaming
With a boiling pot of water with lid on, can I get different steam temperature? This is without the use of a pressure cooker.
I understand the phase change process of water to steam and that steam contains higher energy than boiling water. But is the steam maxed at 100 deg C by boiling a household-pot of water and a lid? Or can I increase the steam's temperature further by applying more heat on the pot? Or will that just increase the production rate of steam?
Clams take about twice to three times as long to cook than mussels. The shells are just so much thicker it takes that long for the heat to get inside. Kinda like trying to cook a 2 inch steak on a grill beside a 1/2 inch steak and expecting them both to be done at the same time.
If you want to have both for a meal then do them in seperate pots and mix after or... pre-cook the clams (not recommended) and add them to the mussels when cooking them, so they'll re-heat (and get rubbery too probably but I know many a restaurant that does this...they have no love for the clam).
Seperate pots is the best way. Enjoy.
To boil vegetables, you add the vegetables to a pot of water, and boil the water for a short duration until the vegetables are sufficiently cooked. One may add salt or other flavorings (such as broth, as you mentioned) to the water prior to boiling.
Steamed vegetables are cooked in a steamer basket, where the vegetables are not in the water, but are instead sitting above the water, and are thus cooked by steam.
Salt must be added to steamed vegetables after they are cooked rather than to the water prior to cooking, since salt does not evaporate.
Steamed vegetables can retain more of their original flavor and nutrients, since they do not leech out into the water during boiling. On the other hand, you cannot add additional flavors to your vegetables during steaming--since flavors cannot soak into the vegetables from the water, either.
Which taste/texture you prefer, of course, can be a matter of personal opinion.
In my experience, boiled vegetables are often mistakenly referred to as steamed vegetables. And often, many restaurants will sell "steamed vegetables" which are really just microwaved frozen vegetables, which may strictly be steamed (it certainly isn't boiled!), but really bears little resemblance to the true steaming process (and has relatively poor flavor, as well).
Best Answer
The heat of steam is limited by the amount of pressure you can build. If you want much hotter steam, you will need some pressured vessel. Having said this a tight-fitting lid will increase the pressure somewhat. We know this increases the pressure as sometimes with a tight light you might have the lid bounce up off the pot. This is due to the pressure overcoming the weight of the lid. This happens even if the lid has a steam vent. Only so much pressure can be released through the steam vent.
Having said all that if I don't think this will be very useful but of course this depends on what you are trying to do.
To answer your question the question you posed in the comments: "So once i have an open pot of boiling water and I then increase the flame, what changes? Is it the steam production rate or am I just wasting energy/gas?" You are almost certainly wasting energy/gas. In almost all circumstances, more steam will be produced as you try to add more heat to the water. This will increase the rate of production of the steam, but unless you have a way to trap the steam and build pressure all you are doing is building up a diffuse cloud of water vapour across all of your kitchen.
If you tell us what is your use case perhaps we could help more?