Steamer Longer…

For veggies and frying requirements in the kitchen, I use a Presto Multi-cooker. This is a great little device that is about $50, is super easy to wash and can steam vegetables for dinner in record time but has a design flaw: Presto provides a handy aluminum basket for steaming. You put vegetables and in the basket and add some water before turning on the heat. The problem is that you can only put in a small amount of water before it starts touching the veggies (one really shouldn’t cover the veggies in water for them to steam properly). A quarter inch of water on the bottom of the cooker means you have only about 5 minutes of steam before the water is evaporated — even with the lid on! I wanted to find a way to increase the amount of steaming time that the device could do. Here’s what the basket looked like before the hack:

When I was a kid we had a folding steamer basket that you would place into a pot converting it into a steamer. It had little legs on the bottom to allow for water underneath, but this wouldn’t work because stainless steal will wear away the non-stick coating on the Presto cooker. (That’s why they make the basket out of aluminum, a soft metal).

The cool solution: I remembered using aluminum binding posts/screws to bind together legal documents at the law firm. These come in different lengths, so it was easy to pick one that would work for the steamer. I simply affixed three of these to the bottom of the steaming basket. Adding a bolt to the top of the leg makes for a nice tight connection. I also drilled 3 additional holes next to the legs to allow the bottom of the steam basket to drain. The result is a great improvement to this design which lets me ad much more water and steam vegetables for over 30 minutes if necessary!