Oster 5716 Programmable Digital Food Steamer, Black

My last steamer was purchased during the Stone Age, so I was excited to obtain this new fancy, double-decker steamer from Oster. And yes, the updated technology is nice. I can program the starting time for cooking and cooking duration. Also, the nifty design of the machine allows for almost instant steaming. Finally, I occasionally find a use for two-tiered cooking when preparing a protein along with vegetables.

But there are a few things that you should know before acquiring this device. It is big...really big (even when maximally arranged for storage). Measure up your cabinet or counter space before you get this thing. My wife never uses the double-decker feature, so the size of this thing drives her completely insane. And unlike other reviewers, I found the cleaning of this thing to be a pain. Everything is fine and good if all you cook are vegetables. However, Oster - in their infinite wisdom - put all of these funky grooves on the cooking surface of the...Read more

We needed to replace our aging, very basic steamer. Since we use it a lot, we wanted to get a good one. We looked at various rice steamers with a vegetable tray but the vegetable/food trays were pretty small and seemed to be an afterthought. Some of the food steamers were huge, and this would present a storage challenge. The Oster was promising and we bought it with the hopes it would work well. It has.

Oster makes several steamers that look similar, and there are numerous reviews of the different models here at Amazon. They are overwhelmingly positive. Folks interested in purchasing this item might want to look at the reviews for related models.

This steamer seems to be very well thought out and designed. A translucent window on the front lets you see the water reservoir level and there is a convenient filler hole that lets you add water while it is running. You can steam about 50 minutes before it needs refilling - long enough for rice and most...Read more

I'm a vegetarian, here some uses for it. [1] RICE I used to have a rice cooker but the rice always sticks and sorta "crusts" up. Initially I used this to cook rice. I discovered no matter what rice (even japanese rice) 1c water TO 1 cup rice. This is better than a rice cooker since the rice never burns or sticks on the bottom. You can let stuff sit in here and it never burns. [2] PANCAKES if you are trying to go fat free you can actually steam pancake mix in here, throw in some frozen blueberries or fruit and leave the butter n oil behind. [3] POTATOES whole potatoes taste good like "baked potatoes" [4] MASHED POTATOES get a bag of the Frozen breakfast style potatoes (tiny cubed kind) with onions and peppers... steam for an hour and it turns to mashed potatoes. All the brands of breakfast cubed potatoes have no added oil/fat and are cheap eats. [4] SWEET POTATOES steam up sweet potatoes, take off the skins then mash them into a container, put in the fridge overnight. make a...Read more