An oven is a kitchen essential, regardless of how you like to prep your delicious meals. But, you may be confused about choosing between a steam oven and a microwave oven. So, in this article, we’re going to make a comparison of Steam Oven Vs. Microwave Oven.
What is a Steam Oven?
When you want to introduce your contemporary kitchen to a new level of cooking, the steam oven is your right pick. Although it looks like any other standard oven, it uses hot steam to cook rather than hot air. As a result, this full-sized oven comes to your rescue whether you want to bake up a storm or entertain your crowd.
What is a Microwave Oven?
In this 21st century, a microwave is the most common and essential kitchen appliance, right? It plays the most versatile role, from melting chocolates to roasting your whole chicken. Microwave ovens are mainly used for reheating and cooking food with electromagnetic radiation. Thus, you can toast your almonds or bake apple pie with a caramelized topping.
Steam Oven vs Microwave Oven
Performance
When it comes to performance, a microwave oven performs faster than a steam oven while cooking and reheating. Unlike your microwave oven, a steam oven releases steam evenly to heat your leftover rice or chicken. However, as it brings the moisture back into your cold and dried food, it requires more time.
So, in terms of faster performance, you can rely on a microwave oven for softening cream cheese or baking fruit cakes. On the other hand, steam ovens are more suitable for efficient performance, like roasting juicy chicken with a crispy crust or reheating leftover brown rice to regain freshness and moisture.
Taste
Whether it’s lemon garlic salmon or the softest carrot cake, the steam oven will always be your game changer. As it cooks dishes with hot steam, there’s no chance of losing your dishes’ moisture and natural oil. Thus, it makes your banana bread or bagels more flavorful. Also, hot airflow evaporates the water of microwaved food and dries them out. Hence, if you enjoy munching on the crispy chicken wings, it can come to the rescue.
Types of Food
When it comes to cooking with steam, you can boil eggs and steam dumplings with a steam oven for your in-house party. Apart from steaming, you can also cook rice, poach fish, and bake fluffy souffle with even heat distribution.
In contrast, a microwave oven cooks food with heated air to make your chocolate cookies or peanut brittle more crunchy. Besides, it grills your chicken or salmon with crispy skin. However, the microwave oven is one of the basic household appliances to defrost your frozen meat or reheat your coffee.
Budget
Unlike microwave ovens, a steam oven comes with a more complex mechanism that includes a water tank and a built-in boiler. Because of this, it costs higher than the microwave oven. But, you can get some cheaper options in small sizes and low efficiency. However, you can easily find a microwave oven with efficient performance and large capacity in this similar budget range.
Our Takeaway
Overall, if you want to expand your culinary aspiration with tasty dishes, a steam oven can be the right choice even though it costs high. On the contrary, in case you want an affordable oven for your daily basic kitchen use, nothing can beat the microwave oven.
