food steamer it will be seen that the desirable rate of steam generation with the present invention is reached much in advance than that of the prior art appliance which in effect shortens the required cooking time which in these busy times of homemakers is extremely desirable in addition to providing a faster cooking time the present invention provides the user with an easy and accurate way of controlling the steaming time the separable vessel 14 permits the simple correlation of the amount of water to the time it takes to boil off that amount of water in that the time to boil a given amount water is proportional to heater wattage in many prior art devices a shallow basin is used to hold the water to be boiled as a result the amount of water cannot be accurately guaged due to the large cross section of the basin or water container and its low height a prior art food steamer was tested having a shallow basin to correlate cooking time to the amount of water that was previously measured through the use of a graduated measuring cup it was found that the accuracy of that correlation was inconsistent it was observed that after a certain amount water boiled off the top of the heater and it is exposed to air.