Double steaming, sometimes called double boiling, is a Chinese cooking technique to prepare delicate food such as bird's nest soup and shark fin soup. The food is covered with water and put in a covered ceramic jar and the jar is then steamed for several hours. This technique ensures there is no loss of liquid or moisture (its essences) from the food being cooked, hence it is often used with expensive ingredients like Chinese herbal medicines.
In Cantonese, double steaming is called dun (simplified Chinese: 炖; traditional Chinese: 燉; pinyin: dùn). The meaning of the Chinese character for dun in Cantonese is different from that in Mandarin, because dun means to simmer or stew in Mandarin. This technique is also common in Fujian, a neighbouring province of Guangdong (Canton).
Read more about Double Steaming: Famous Examples
Famous quotes containing the words double and/or steaming:
“One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“her rocking horse was pain
with vomit steaming from her mouth.
Her belly was big with another child,
cancer’s baby, big as a football.
I could not soothe.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)