In Western cooking, steaming is most often used to cook vegetables - it is rarely used to cook meats. In Chinese cuisine, vegetables are mostly stir fried or blanched and seldom steamed. Seafood and meat dishes are steamed. For example: steamed whole fish, steamed crab, steamed pork spare ribs, steamed ground pork or beef, steamed chicken, steamed goose, etc. Other than meat dishes, rice can be steamed too, although in Chinese this is rarely referred to as "steaming" but rather simply as "cooking." Wheat foods are steamed as well. Examples include buns, Chinese steamed cakes etc. Steamed meat dishes (except fish and some dim sum) are less common in Chinese restaurants than in traditional home cooking because meats usually require longer cooking times to steam than to stir fry. Commercially sold frozen foods (such as dim sum) used to have instructions to reheat by steaming, until the rise in popularity of home microwave ovens which have considerably shorter cooking times.

Ingredients:
One whole snapper, about 800g, cleaned and scaled.
Half a bunch of spring onions, chopped.
One piece of ginger (about 1-2cm in length), finely chopped.
1/2 bunch of fresh coriander, finely chopped.
1/2 cup dark soy sauce
1/³ cup olive oil
Chopped fresh chilli
Steamed Asian greens (bok choy and gai larn)
Jasmine rice to serve.

Directions:
Place fish in a large bamboo steamer set over boiling water for about 15-20 minutes.

Cooking time will vary, depending on the size of the fish.

Check the inside cavity after about 15 minutes and remove from the steamer once the flesh is white and creamy. Place the fish on a long platter.

Sprinkle spring onions over the fish and add ginger and coriander to taste.

Douse the fish in dark soy sauce until it is stained and there is a thin layer of soy sauce at the bottom of the dish. Heat the olive oil in a small pan until it just starts to smoke. Carefully pour over the fish.

The hot oil will gently cook the ginger and greens on the fish and combine with the soy sauce.

Serve with a small side dish of chopped fresh chilli in soy sauce, as well as steamed greens topped with oyster sauce.