The steamer was formerly a pottery hotpot. Steamed pot chicken was formerly Yanglin chicken. In the early years, in Yanglin, Jianshui and other places in Yunnan, the rare medicinal material Cordyceps sinensis was used to stew young chickens, called "Yanglin Chicken", and the ceramic hot pot for stewing chickens was called "Yanglin Pot". Yanglin pot was produced in Jianshui, and Jianshui pottery has a history of more than a thousand years. In the Qing Dynasty, Pan Jinhuai, a potter, used red, yellow, purple, cyan and white clay to sinter into colored pottery. In 1921, a potter named Xiang Fengchun inherited his family's ancestral craft and created a boiler for cooking. In this way, "Steam Pot Chicken" replaced "Yanglin Chicken".

Steam cookers are now produced in large quantities by Jianshui Arts and Crafts Ceramics Factory in Yunnan Province. People describe Jianshui pottery as "bright as water, bright as a mirror", "body like stone, sound like a chime".

The chicken steamed in the steamer is delicious in original juice, and its juice is a little distilled water, which is clear and transparent, fragrant, fresh, sweet and tender, with mellow taste and less loss of nutrients. Therefore, it is praised as "cultivating healthy qi". In 1947, Bao Hongwei, who first opened the Steamed Pot Chicken Store in Fuzhao Street, Kunming, named the store "Cultivating Healthy Qi Store", which was full of customers.