Kim Cook

Two cooking techniques are stirring up both home kitchens and restaurant pass lines right now — one dates back 2,000 years, and the other feels like the future just landed on the counter.

Steamy stuff

You’re unlikely to find a kitchen in China or Japan without a stovetop steamer.  The familiar bamboo box version has been around for centuries – legend says that Han Dynasty armies supposedly cooked food with bamboo steamers to hide cooking smoke from enemy camps. 

Modern chefs love using stovetop steam – the baskets, or one of those donabe clay hotpots – and combi-steam ovens. The ovens often cook 20-30% faster than traditional ovens, and reduce the need for fats or oils. The moist heat locks in flavor, nutrients, and moisture. No dry cakes or breads here, yet you can also create deliciously tender veggies, or crispy-skinned salmon. So they make for versatile, healthy tools whether you’re steaming, roasting, or baking.

Culinary pros like Phil Fanning, Ludo Lefebvre and Sven-Hanson Britt are fans of steam ovens. Lefebvre demoed cooking a trayful of squash at his Sherman Oaks, CA home, for his cookbook author friend Athena Calderone, saying as they placed the dish in his Fisher & Paykel oven, “The squash are going to the spa!”

Food writer Emily Rhodes has a bunch of delicious recipes you can try, on her SteamandBake  weblog.

At the Connaughton’s farm in Healdsburg, poised near the front door and the expansive, comfortable living room of the shou sugi ban-clad house, the kitchen’s stocked with Miele appliances. The family uses them daily, of course, but the suite – a combi-steam oven, induction cooktop, etc – is also used for exclusive dining experiences the couple and their team hold at the Farm. 

The no-flame game

I watched a lot of induction cooktop demos in Bologna at September 2025’s Cersaie, the huge tile industry fair. It was very cool to see a chef leaning against a big porcelain slab island, an espresso in hand, leaning casually on the counter. Then seconds after he popped a steel pan on the same spot, the olive oil was sizzling.

At SingleThread, executive sous chef Alex Fuentes (His Instagram bio descriptor: ‘I eat for a living’) chatted enthusiastically with us while he demoed squash blossoms prepared in a pan on his induction cooktop. “It’s fast, precise, and the finished dish is really delicious.”  It was; a flavorful, crispy gem of a bite.

Induction uses electromagnetic energy to heat cookware directly, via a coil under the cooktop. Turn it on, and only the cookware gets hot, so more of the heat is transferred to the food. It’s energy-efficient, and a lot safer, since the surface doesn’t heat up and there are no potentially-dangerous fumes like we’re seeing with gas ranges. Plus, cleanup’s easy; if you slop something, it doesn’t fasten itself to the surface in a charry mess.

Pro chefs like Rick Bayless, Wolfgang Puck and Ming Tsai love induction. Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in Napa has adopted it, as has Alinea in Chicago.

And Le Bernardin’s renowned master chef Eric Ripert is a big fan, too.

“It allows you to have a very flat area. Between the table and the induction, its exactly the same height. So its safe, aesthetically its nice, and its very practical. And it looks very clean and contemporary.”

Steam and induction may look high-tech, but at heart they’re about restraint — gentler heat, cleaner lines, quieter cooking. Less smoke and spectacle, more intention.

For chefs and home cooks alike, the magic isn’t in the machines themselves, but in how they help ingredients speak a little more clearly.