Steaming Christmas pudding

[customerisqueen]

Have just made Christmas pudding. Recipe said to steam for 6 hours and said could be done on a steamer or in water (water needed to be half way up the pudding basin or said would not cook). So steamed all afternoon in a steamer with lid on. Bubbled away all good.

But now I'm stressing because obviously if it a steamer, the water was on bottom of pan well away from the basin. The instructions now don't make sense to me. So question is - have I done it correctly and will the pudding be cooked? (Looks solid/cooked and the hollow at top has level out. Smells cooked!)

(Final instruction is 1 hour steam on Xmas day).

I'm pretty sure your recipe is an either/or, I don't see how you could steam in a steamer AND put the water halfway up the sides, that's kind of impossible in a steamer isn't it? . I've always just done mine in a normal steamer anyway the way you did, you just have to make sure it doesn't go dry at any point as obviously it's in there for so long. If it looks and smells cooked though it almost certainly is cooked though!

They are alternative methods of cooking, agree it's an either/or.

Thank you for the reassurance. That's what I thought but the instructions in the recipe and online confused me.

Eventually, I used to do mine in a rice cooker, it saved all the worry about topping up the pan, and boiling dry, and putting an upside down plate in the bottom - I used plastic pudding basins with clip on lids. Much less faff.