Induction hobs cut out a loss leader for gas: gas stoves. Once you have gas in your home it makes sense to install the main moneymaker: a gas furnace for heating. It's how they upsell.
Induction hobs are great in the fight against global warming.
If the energy you use for heat is generated by gas, it's more efficient to burn it directly, and the emissions produced from manufacturing all the new stoves likely out way the emissions produced over the stoves lifetime.
So, I'd say it's only helpful if you are getting a new stove anyway.
Of course, one also has to consider the leakage of methane that occurs with all the residential natural gas distribution, which is significant. Methane being 25x the greenhouse potential of CO2 means there's a lot of hidden environmental impact.
they don’t glow from heat but they can glow by design: for safety reasons, some have lights that simulate glowing from heat. I guess the choice of image is a little curious, given the primary distinction between induction vs. traditional is, typically, the absence of external heat.
At risk of sounding dangerously stupid, what exactly is the safety concern? Given that induction is cool to the touch, it's not obvious to me how you'd hurt yourself (which is doubtless another major advantage of gas).
They're not cold to the touch once they've been used: the induction process heats the pan, but heat from the pan will transfer back to the glass. If you use an induction cooker for 20 minutes, and then immediately place your hand on the glass, your hand will be burned.
My (Samsung) induction-capable cooktop has resistive heating as a "backup" for cookware that is not induction-compatible. Theoretically this can be disabled using an app, although the app has never worked.
my local library will let you check out a portable induction hob.
The last time i checked, the waiting list was about a month long, which certainly speaks to the interest in the idea.
As long as my rangeware doesn't warp, I'm all for more even heating! It didn't occur to me until very recently that a reason why pans might warp on an induction hob is that they can now heat up fast enough to thermal shock on the way up, not just on the way down (by, e.g., taking the pan you just seared meat off in and dunking it in cold dishwater)
Older stainless steel pans do not work. Stainless is not magnetic. Most newer stainless pans have a layer of iron sandwiched between stainless layers on the bottom of the pan. I have a set of older stainless pans I inherited from my mother and they do not work with my induction burner.
Plus, y’know, there’s always ReStore, Goodwill, Pawn shops, Value Village, and Senior Center thrift shops. Good pots and pans are inexpensive. Matched sets less so, but still excellent value for cost.
Most of the pans you have already bought are likely to work. I think thin copper ones are only ones not likely to work. Most other general cookware at least here support induction as well. Including the cheapish stuff.
Get thicker pans if you're experiencing warping. I had loads of problem with inexpensive but thin tri-ply aluminum/stainless cookware. I switched to big thick cast iron and carbon steel, and 8mm thick aluminum disc base nonstick/stainless and have never had a warping problem since.
"Although induction technology has been around for decades and is established in Europe, it has yet to catch on extensively here. According to Consumer Reports, induction cooktops and ranges are installed in only under 5 percent of homes in the United States."
That's why, for a european like me, an article like this one seems totally extraneous to hacker news front page
Can absolutely recommend the upgrade, these stoves are far superior to PWM style "2000W or off" ones. I can even melt chocolate without a water bath on mine, they can keep temperatures as low as 55°C / 131°F steadily no problem. :D
I just have to be pedantic and say that what you are describing is the very opposite of PWM, which runs at high frequencies (e.g. 30kHz), varying the duty cycle over the tiny slice of time. The only problem with good PWM is audible harmonics, usually only children can hear them.
I disagree. The definition of what is high and what is low frequency depends on what you are comparing.
If you are comparing electric capacitances of electric circuits vs the thermal capacitance of a macroscopic object, 1 Hz might be a high enough frequency for doing pwm.
Also, the 'exact opposite' would simply be a gas hob. Yeah you might not call something that clicks on and off every 10 seconds 'PWM' but it's not that far removed
> I just have to be pedantic and say that what you are describing is the very opposite of PWM, which runs at high frequencies (e.g. 30kHz), varying the duty cycle over the tiny slice of time.
Yes, this is correct. What parent is describing is generally referred to as bang-bang control [1].
Those whines drive me crazy and I’m 34! Do any induction cooktops not have that terrible whine? At least with the duxtop portable induction I had to return it because the whine was so bad.
Which leads to the question : which ones do not have a whine? Does the breville? Or which? It’s not something any reviews I’ve seen talk about
They can work at frequencies and with electronic designs that are far out into the ultrasonic range.
You may want to check out those that apparently can handle non-magnetic cookware; those apparently run on higher frequencies to make up for the weaker magnetic effect.
To be even more pedantic, the grandparent could absolutely be describing PWM - PWM is pulse width modulation - it means that there's a fundamental frequency, and within each cycle the stove is "on" for a period and "off" for the rest. The "on" period length is varied (modulated) based on the power requirement.
What "PWM" doesn't define is the fundamental frequency. It could be 0.1 Hz or 10 MHz. Just because the fundamental frequency is slow doesn't make it not PWM.
It may be that your cookware is no good. For safety reasons all control systems for induction appliances have a feature to automatically turn off when they detect that the generated field is not being received by a large enough target surface, since otherwise it would be a fire risk. Try changing cookware, you may find the issue goes away.
Yes, it won't work without a pan on it. Doesn't work with aluminium. Is relatively cold to the touch despite having just been used to boil a kettle. Says 'Induction Hob' on it.
Don't have one, but used to have cheap counter top thing. I think only pan or similar I can't use is my ceramic dutch oven. Never browned anything in that one either, so it is pretty academical... Just need to check the pans you pick up and you will be fine in general.
As a fellow German I didn't go induction on purpose, because I prefer the ceramic hob cooking experience. "Pans cannot be used" wasn't part of the decision. Having "control nobs" on the front rather than a touch area on the cooking surface was a hard requirement for me though and seems to be getting rarer every year.
I'm actually amazed how much people love induction here, but I guess that's also because it's mostly compared to gas?
What? Ceramic cook tops are crap, they get stained easily, scratched easily, and in the US at least, the way they work to "adjust" the temperature is to cycle on and off every few seconds.
Oh and if any of your pots or pans get warped, they become completely unusable!
Drop anything heavy on it, and the cook top breaks.
I once waited for 20 minutes for a small pot of water to boil on a ceramic cook top.
The old fashion coil burners are better than the stupid glass top ones.
Some glass top stovs work better than others. I won't go back to coils, but I currently have a glass top that bad. However I've has glass tops that were good so I know they exist. But I'll take gas over electric anyday. (I have never used induction so I reserve the right to change that stance)
My ceramic cooktop is basically stain and scratchfree after using it for cooking 4-5 times a week for 8 years. It's incredibly easy to clean as you can literally scratch of everything that doesn't just wipe away.
The temperature does cycle on and off usually based on a thermometer, so it does hold the selected temperature. I don't get why that's a drawback for you? The cooktop will literally be kept to your selected temperature.
Also the induction cooktops I know use the same kind of glass or ceramic plate on top, so you have the same advantages/disadvantages in regards to scratching, cleaning and breaking it.
I have induction with the control nobs to the front in the oven. That does exist, I guess you have to buy it together with the oven.
Induction is greatly superior to electric heating plates, ceramic or even metal, as it is much faster and more energy efficient. Whenever you use it you never want to go back.
Built-in separate cooktops are only the fashion trend right now, there isn’t anything intrinsic in induction that require such controls. This goes hand in hand with the separate built-in oven trend (often with a second oven or a microwave). Kitchen renovation fashion, I guess.
Yea I know it exists, it was just really rare from my limited shopping experience.
I have used induction a couple of times when cooking at my parents house and in a friends kitchen and I happily stay with my ceramic cooktop. Induction is much quicker and more energy efficient, but I just like that I literally control the heat on a fixed size cookfield rather than controlling the strength of the current, where effective heat will depend on the size of the pan.
They aren't as popular in the US because they're considered commercial appliances and it's assumed you are on a business budget if you want to buy one. This means the store carries like 3 models and they cost literally ten times as much as a traditional glass cooktop. $250 vs. $2500.
Appliances tend to have a lot of regulations around them. The chance you could commercially import a bunch of appliances from the EU into the USA legally and without substantial modifications is very low.
There are more commercial versions available but they do tend to compete at the higher end of the market. Induction is a specific choice you have to make here and people who make uncommon choices tend to be in higher budgets.
It will probably change soon though. A lot of laws are being proposed to not add new gas hookups for new construction. Induction will have to become the higher end default for electric ranges.
it is not just the cost of the unit, there are alot of other costs that would go into converting to elec from gas, including running a new outlet, and if you have an older home could require upgrading your entire electrical service.
There is also good to remember that these units at least higher powered are designed for 3-phase 400V that is 3 230V phases. Which I have understood isn't very common or easily available in households in some places around the world.
I haven't seen a stove yet in Germany (residential at least) that can't cope with all the phase inputs tied to the same phase.
They are just 3-phase because the utility demands 10+ kW loads to be 3-phase loads, and they often exceed that slightly.
Check out the install guide on e.g. some IKEA built-in models, specifically regarding the wiring instructions.
And US residential does have 240V single-phase available.
> They aren't as popular in the US because they're considered commercial appliances and it's assumed you are on a business budget if you want to buy one.
No, there are plenty of consumer models. But they aren't as popular because the US has significantly more abundant, domestically produced, and (largely, because of that and not taking climate seriously) cheaper natural gas, and has only recently started in some localities having residential electric-only rules for new construction.
Electric stoves are very common even where natural gas is available, and even more common where it isn't.
The only induction stoves I can find are very high end models. I'm thinking about it, but for the cost I can install gas (including plumbing) and save money.
Even on the high end there is often on model with induction so if you want some other option as well you are stuck.
Induction stoves do indeed seem to be more expensive in the U.S, but they don't seem to be entirely out of budget for the average consumer: IKEA sells a few for around $600-800.
IKEA in Sweden where I live has induction stoves for as cheap as $300, and I would assume that similar prices will become available in the U.S in the future.
It's not like they are drop-in replacements for whatever you've got, either.
I was interested in these about 15 years ago when I bought a house. They want a dedicated circuit with a 240V outlet and 40 or 50 amp breaker. My house has a gas range, so I don't already have a 240V outlet there, and I've only got 100 amp service at the panel - which claims 100 amps is the max it's rated for. I decided it was not worth the hassle.
I've had electric stovs with 100 amp service before, not a problem even if the ac was also on. 40 amp is standard for kitchen stoves so it is very common ,but obviously if you have gas they won't install wires for electric.
I bought a newer home (2016) with a gas range and it doesn’t have the wiring either. We desperately want induction plus a outdoor vented range hood, so we are considering a partial remodel to do it. The idea is to bring in an electrician, replace our 150A panel with a 200A one, bring up wiring for induction into the kitchen, and wrap wiring around the house for a level 2 EV charger (another want, might as well knock it out together if we have to get an electrician in anyways).
My house was built 6 years ago but is already outdated in this respect. Replacing the panel is a pain as it requires shutting of electrical service for the day and an inspection from the city when they switch it back on. At least our meter and outdoor wire to the grid are already 200A…I hope.
A 150A panel should accommodate both your induction stove and EV charger. The stove's 50A rating assumes you are running all burners are running simultaneously, which is rare. You need 200A if you going fully electric (for hot water, HVAC, oven and clothes dryer).
Also most stoves (at least here) seem to allow de-rating by configuring them to self-limit their current draw to accommodate breakers/circuits not sized large enough to handle their full capacity.
Our hot water is gas, but our HVAC (heat pump), dryer is already electric. The oven would be electric also, but it’s rarely used. Anyways, I would let an electrician make the call, but my feeling is that EV level 2 charging and induction would put us over when a 150A panel could handle.
Yeah, heat pump and dryer can push you over, especially if you are in a colder climate. Miele makes a 115V/20A heat pump dryer that you might consider even if you go to 200A.
Just for reference: IKEA has a countertop model that runs on 240V 10A (2kW; 175mm), sold for 39.90 EUR in Germany. Subtracting VAT and converting to USD, that's a hair under 40 USD pre-tax.
I expect that proper adapters from NEMA 240V to Schuko are legal to operate? If so, you'd be cheaper off just importing these (104.867.94).
Yeah, I know I'm comparing against walk-in store products. Still.
I'm in the UK and I've never knowingly been in a home that has an induction cooker or know anyone in my personal life with one. Gas is perhaps 90% of what I experience, with the occasional halogen.
I moved to a UK home with induction. Its not on the gas grid though. Some homes use bottled gas but I think induction is common for that situation. Otherwise I know some apartments with induction. But overall yes, mostly gas hob, although everyone in uk has electric ovens unlike US.
"perils" is just a tad dramatic here. And while there are many advantages to induction over gas (the faster boiling times have me sold alone), there are some disadvantages in my opinion to placing even more reliance on a electrical grid that we learn each day is more fragile than we once thought.
Not just the grid but the fickle nature of power electronics.
Our induction cooktop fried its driver circuitry last year and we were stuck cooking off a camp stove for weeks while waiting for a part from Germany. Old school cooking methods are less high tech and more repairable.
I think today more than ever we can agree that relying on gas may put any country in a far more precarious position. Remember that you can make enough electricity at home if need be, even if at a hefty cost maybe. The same cannot be said for the gas to power your stove and heating for any reasonable cost.
No, I don't think we can agree on that, especially not in America, where a mere 3 short years ago, we had an abundance of natural gas, and prices plummeting to near record lows (adjusted for inflation). The current situation we are in is due to bad policy.
So you do not agree that relying on gas may put any country in a far more precarious situation? It's happening as we speak to countries which did exactly that so your agreement was not actually sought, it was a mere figure of speech. It also doesn't help your argument when you go on to confirm that even countries with large reserves can put themselves in such a precarious situation with no help from the outside.
The truth of the matter is that any country would be in a more secure position relying on resources that are regenerable, can be produced locally, and whose network can cope with a higher measure of decentralization. They make both the grid/network and the country itself more resilient regardless of "policy".
As I said, you can't make your own gas and an outage for the wholly centralized gas distribution system can have dire consequences that would be lessened or even eliminated for setups like rooftop solar and heat-pump.
The price of every type of fossil fuel is a gigantic lie that future generations will pay for. So what if the downpayment is lower, when it’s such a minuscule portion of the loan?
In early 2014 numerous pipes were shut down in the eastern US because supply was not enough to meet demand due to a polar vortex.
Compressor stations break down, suppliers fail to deliver gas, mercaptan might not be available, control systems are subject to cyber attack. My point is simply that any energy delivery system has weaknesses.
It's a great point, and plays into my larger point. We shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket. Having multiple power delivery options is great. Diversification is great. Electrifying everything is going to lead to some unforeseen consequences. When the power goes out, and it's below freezing, people die. But we aren't spending as much securing and solidifying our electrical grid and power delivery as we are onboarding more and more stuff onto it.
As long as gas is used to produce electricity the energy delivery systems are not independent.
In a home the two systems generally serve different purposes so I am not sure the value of having both is as high as you suggest. My gas furnace/hot water heater won’t turn on, for good reason, without electricity. The only thing that works when the power is out is my stove top (not the oven) if I manually ignite it. They would work if I used a generator but that is third supply and it shouldn’t be lost that the output of the generator is electricity. That generator could itself be powered by natural gas but that is not common.
I fitted an AEG induction hob in our kitchen about 3 years ago. It is absolutely amazing. It's so controllable - you can go from "barely hot enough to melt chocolate" to "so hot your pans start discolouring and everything burns" - and back again - in seconds (and everything in-between obviously).
I always thought gas was the best for cooking. But I was wrong - induction is. Gas is great for medium-high power cooking, but it falls apart for lower temps, and it's very hard to get it consistent. The only time I really miss gas is when stir frying - you can't really use woks on induction.
I got a flat bottom wok that I am happy stir frying on my induction cooktop. The flat bottom gets rippin hot and the sides only warm. Have to work within that smaller hot zone but I prefer the wok to skillet for containing the mess.
In our previous house we cooked with gas, we had a fantastic stove with a wok burner. Amazing thing. With our new house we - against my best judgement - went for induction.
It's amazing, way better than our old gas stove. I'll never go back.
Yup - induction heats up quicker, although you have to use a heavy iron wok which sits still. It probably says more about how bad the consumer wok rings are though. If you have a commercial one you'd never switch from gas.
I found those burners too weak for stir-frying. I suspect that unless you have special ventilation, a burner that's hot enough for wok cooking will not be safe for indoor use.
Ours is used outside because that's where the gas bottle has to be kept and because apparently it generates too much carbon monoxide to be safely used inside. And because we have three small children and this thing burns with a foot-high flame like a jet afterburner. It's great fun
I suppose if you have one of those round made-for-wok induction hobs. the flat ones just don't heat the sides of a wok and you can't even use a round bottom work. far from "excellent".
Lodge makes a flat-bottom cast iron wok (the interior cooking surface is completely rounded, however). It's too heavy for my kitchen scale, but according to my bathroom scale it is between 11 and 12 pounds. You'll need two hands to move it around :)
Do you wrangle the wok on the surface (or a frying pan) for a sauté[0]? What I'm really trying to find out is: how durable is the work surface? Does it deal well with pans being slid over it, and on/off it?
I have microscratches on the ceramic surface but nothing horrible. The instructions said explicitly to lift pots and not drag them. I don't baby it and it's fine.
And if you're worried about it just buy a silicone cooktop mat to put between the ceramic and the pan, something you can't do on any other cooking surface.
When frying potato pancakes, we went outside, took a countertop induction plate, and covered the area in old newspapers. I.e., cover the plate/table in newspapers, put the pan on top.
I can only recommend such tactics for messy cooking; it's indeed the real "killer" feature of induction that even gas can't match.
It was on sale at my local grocery store, no idea the name. It is lightweight carbon steel, means it gets hot in a flash and is easy to move around with one hand. I probably paid thirty bucks for it, nothing special.
There is no such thing. A round bottom is a defining feature of a wok. If it doesn’t have a round bottom it isn’t a wok by definition. A round bottom is essential to how a wok is used.
Not sure what you’re trying to say. A wok is a very specific type of cookware for specific uses cases. The round bottom is the entire point of a wok. A flat bottom wok is like a square wheel.
Cannot imagine why op wrote “flat bottomed wok” instead of “A pan similar in shape to a wok, but with a flat bottom, so that it can be used on induction cooktops but still allows for the tossing motion that cooks use to mix ingredients in a wok”
Easy tossing for stir fry is just one feature of a wok. For example, the round bottom causes liquids to pool in the center.
I’m not saying that large flat bottom frying pans with high edges aren’t useful, I have one and it’s probably my most used pan, it’s just not a complete replacement for a wok.
You're being argumentative instead of clarifying what you're trying to say. If you've read the other comments in this thread, then you can see there are things being sold as woks that have a flat bottom on the outside but still have a curved surface on the inside. Do these also offend your notion of what may be referred to as a wok?
Yes, woks are made of thin sheet steel. This allows them to heat up and cool down instantly. If it has a flat outside and round inside then it must have a lot of mass and thus cannot cool down instantly when removed from heat. Again, an essential feature of a wok.
My flat bottom wok is still made from a thin sheet of carbon steel. It heats and cools instantly, performing the essential function of a wok. The bottom has a flat surface inside and out. You're tilting at windmills, mate.
> It heats and cools instantly, performing the essential function of a wok. The bottom has a flat surface inside and out.
It performs one essential function, it needs both a round shape and has to be made of thin sheet steel. You can only have one if you need to place it on a flat induction stove: either it’s thin and flat on the inside, or it’s round on the inside but thick.
Instead of arguing, why don't you educate? You're clearly passionate about this issue. We've covered the importance of thin carbon steel. Why is the round bottom so essential that without it we can't call it a wok?
kenji just released his new book (700 pages) on woks. while OP is correct about the heat deltas, it makes no difference in practice if you have the right technique. if you want to dispute that, you're going to be disputing someone who wrote a book about this over 4 years and made thousands of recipes.
> Why is the round bottom so essential that without it we can't call it a wok?
you need the round bottom to be able to scoop up the food and churn it. Try using a spatula on a flat bottom "wok" and flip the food to churn it - it doesn't work very well.
There's also an edge between the flat bottom and the round sides. This causes food to get "stuck" there under high heat - leading to burning. A wok is round all the way, so the spatula scrapes everywhere evenly, and you leave no burnt bits.
A flat bottom "wok" is just a pan with high edges.
That idiom isn’t really applicable to online discussion forums, at least not unless the user in question has actually been shadowbanned.
The idiom comes for fighting battles with absolutely devastating casualties to capture positions of very low strategic importance. Establishing consensus that woks may only have round bottoms may fulfil the last part, but having people write a few counter-arguments is by no means a devastating loss, it’s just the discussion forum serving its intended purpose.
Yes, and that’s a defining feature of a wok. You can use a flat bottom wok and add a shitload of oil but that kind of changes the dish, and not for the better.
Here's[1] Kenji talking about a "flat-bottomed wok". My Chinese friends cook on a flat bottomed wok and call it a wok. So I'm sorry, but your linguistic rigidity is misplaced.
It's true that most induction cooktops/ranges aren't great for woks, but in principle the induction surface doesn't have to be flat -- it can be a concave shape to match the wok.
In fact these exist -- if you search for "induction wok burners" you can see some pictures. (I only recently became aware of this after watching this video of a chef who uses induction cooking in a small kitchen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNzRrHA9VY)
Perhaps in the future there will be cooktops that include a wok depression on the surface, similar to how some gas stoves today include a built-in wok ring.
Isn't the reason why woks need gas also that the gas creates a smooth heat gradient up the sides of the wok? How far away from the surface of the stove can an induction element heat a pan?
It sounds like the induction element cradles the wok. I don’t know about the thermal gradient thing (seems plausible) but in principle you could make a gradient in the field strength right?
I would have thought that a bigger drawback would be that you can’t get even heat input while tossing the wok, though I’m not sure how essential that is
The coils are light enough that you could have them under spring-pressure and lubricated against the wok, so medium tossing height won't affect heat transfer.
It's just a ~1mm thick planar coil out of "Litz wire", covered by a glass plate in a normal stove top.
See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Induktionskochfeld_S... for what's under the plate. The center silver thing is likely a thermostat/temperature sensor. The electronics may need to be a bit less ignorant to handle a flexible coil, but tracking the tank's resonance isn't even a difficult task; a Royer/Baxandall oscillator could probably be made to work.
You're correct, but times change, and the carbon steel wok over a giant burner isn't very suitable for apartment cooking anyway. There are now works designed for use on induction (with aluminium conduction to achieve a heat gradient), and they work pretty well. Also much healthier for the occupants, not as hot in the kitchen and cheaper to operate.
In countries with 240v/10A sockets a plug in electric wok is fine for home cooking. On 110v/15A it is still better than electric radiative cooking, but not as good as gas.
> There are now works designed for use on induction (with aluminium conduction to achieve a heat gradient), and they work pretty well.
This perspective drives me crazy. OK, so induction cooktops are good for the environment. But flat bottom woks are not woks, and you can’t do wok cooking on an induction cooktop. The only people who think that you can, are people who completely lack an understanding of wok cooking techniques.
Why do you think Alibaba (click the link!) has a thousand induction cookers, including ones with a spherical wok shape? You're saying the Chinese don't know how to stir fry?!
I have lived in various places around Asia for about 30 years, including almost my entire childhood. I have spent a tremendous amount of time and effort learning traditional cooking methods from the places I have lived, and I have never ever seen an induction wok cooker in the wild. Alibaba is filled with all sorts of completely useless inventions that never accomplish anything other than a small amount of buyers regret.
I know for a fact that you are arguing from a position of ignorance here, because it is physically impossible for an induction cooktop to replicate what gas provides a wok, which is hot air, something induction surfaces don’t produce. So I’d recommend that you do at least a small amount of research on the topic before you resort to such low effort (and hilariously inaccurate) ad-homs.
No it’s actually because you cook with the extremely hot jet of air that rises up over the sides! You can get that from induction since it doesn’t heat the air.
I've never understood why we need 4 or 5 burner ranges, possibly with a slight size variations. I really only ever want one high power burner and one simmer burner. A dedicated wok burner sounds like a great addition. Another option would be to abandon the dedicated range entirely, and have a variety of countertop induction units that can be stored away when not in use. I don't think you could sell a home with a kitchen like that but it would be a big win for versatility, especially in small homes.
I think there's both a practical and aesthetic reason.
The practical reason is that people have different sized pots and pans. I don't want to put my small sauce pan on a large burner that will waste the majority of its heating surface. Similarly, I need a large surface to heat a big pan.
The aesthetic is that a lot of cooktops are combination stove/oven and thus have to be big enough for the oven bit. Once you already have that surface area, you might as well fill it up to make it seem more substantial. A stovetop with room for 4/5 burners will look like the manufacturer skimped out if it has only 2 burners.
> I've never understood why we need 4 or 5 burner ranges, possibly with a slight size variations. I really only ever want one high power burner and one simmer burner.
I don't mean this to sound rude, though I know it will, but this is the literal definition of "argument from ignorance."
You don't use more than two burners, so you don't know why a stove needs more than two.
I personally frequently cook with three or all four burners. Further, there are meals where I might use the two small back burners, and meals where I might use the two large front ones.
I guess you could be describing a need for stoves that came with just two burners, for those who couldn't imagine using more. But, seriously, would you have bought a two-burner model if it had been available, knowing that you might have wished for more even one night a year?
IMO, this would be a major advantage of countertop units. Buy two or four or six or eight, store them away in the cabinet when they’re not in use and enjoy the extra counterspace, bring them out when you need them.
It’s not THAT much of an advantage, since the area of unused burners can be already used as extra counter space, since it flat and resilient. Actually that seems like a major advantage over a gas stove, that’s rarely mentioned.
I thought about doing this, but it didn't make any sense for me. The countertop units are inefficient in terms of space compared to regular stovetops. This isn't suprising, due to component sharing, the need for a case, etc. As soon as you regularly use two of them, you might as well have a stovetop.
There are also down considerations of power (wiring and maximum output) and noise (induction units have fans, which are less noticeable in stovetops), safety (accident risk from cables, tilting, etc) and convenience.
It might work if your everyday usage involves zero to one units. Which is certainly possible, if you don't cook much, but even if you are and you're using other heat sources like a rice cooker, oven, grill, microwave, etc.
Not a terrible idea to have one around when you're limited by your normal capacity, or when you want to simmer a stew at a buffet, or your stovetop breaks or you are redoing your kitchen.
Perhaps because you will want to cook 4-5 things at the same time?
Aor of Indian households when preparing a traditional lunch will have 5-6 items (in the south, particularly in a Brahmin household, you will have one sambhar, one rasam, three vegetable currys, rice, and a fried item usually appalam). This entire meal takes three hours or so to prepare from scratch on my stove (a three burner lpg stove).
Two more usable burners will cut this down to about 2 hours
South India consists of fives states and one Union Territory, all with different languages, culture and culinary styles. A meal in a Brahmin household in Hyderabad will be very different to one in Chennai with probably only rice being the common feature. Curry is too generic to be a useful descriptor.
It's hard to make broad generalizations. But having been to all six divisions and having lived in three of them, I feel very confident in saying that a household that cooks three different curries, sambar and rasam for a single meal is very atypical. What GP described sounds closer to a restaurant set course meal and not something a household would cook on a day to day basis.
I helped prepare lunch in a Punjabi household this afternoon, and on the stove there was rice, two subjis, chai and a roti tawa all at the same time. I would consider this a typical (if not modest) lunch routine amongst the many Punjabi households in which I have had lunch.
> and on the stove there was rice, two subjis, chai and a roti tawa all at the same time.
So, they had 5 burners?
Anyways, my comment was more about the number of dishes. Two curries as in your example is fairly typical. Three curries, a sambar and a rasam like the GP said is definitely not. Chai at lunchtime does sound strange to me but then again, I'm not really familiar with Punjabi culinary preferences.
I am pretty amateur at cooking, and I use three burners most of the time that I'm making a proper meal. I'm pretty surprised to hear that this wouldn't be very common for the average cook.
Kenji Lopez-Alt, of Seriouseats and “The Food Lab” fame, is coming out with his new book, “The Wok”, here is his travel rig: https://www.instagram.com/p/CaxbNwdvOTR/. I’ve had a similar wok hob for years, and while fitting the wok to the curvature of the hob is essential, once you’ve got that figured out, it’s an absolute joy to use. Even, fast, powerful heat - nowhere near to a commercial gas hob, but neither is my gas range at home. My next home or kitchen reno will be induction, not even considering gas.
One day I want a kitchen in which I can have every cool appliance -c steam toasters, waffle irons, cheese toast makers, microwave ovens, air fryers, fat fryers, gas hobs, induction hobs....
You’ll never really get wok hei with induction. It’s a mistake to think of a wok as just a differently shaped pan. Proper wok cooking is cooking is actually mechanically different. It’s mostly done with the hot air that rises up the side of the wok. Modernist cuisine has a great cutaway illustration on this.
The food is constantly flipped into the air above the wok where it is heated by the extremely hot air.
Of course very few homes in the western world have gas burners powerful enough for that anyway. I actually practice on a turkey fryer.
> It’s mostly done with the hot air that rises up the side of the wok.
I am not a cook, but I find it difficult to believe that the heat going by the sides of the pan is cooking the food, rather than the heat going through the pan and heating the air above the pan.
This is because where I've seen someone cooking on a wok, the food barely goes past the edge of the pan.
A sufficiently wok-shaped induction stove will induce the same heat as that going through the pan.
Afaik there is a motion of tossing food in a wok where you throw the food past the rim and catch it again. The moment the food passes the rim, a small flame ignites from the high heat and food oils, creating complex flavors. If you go to Asian restaurants with a wok station or to Southeast Asia/south China you can see this in action.
Wok Hei translates to “breath of the wok” for a reason. The food is constantly in the air, which allows it to dry out. The food spends most of its time not even touching the wok so no, you can’t do it on induction.
Here’s a good description from the Michelin guide:
> The food is constantly in the air, which allows it to dry out
Thank you for treating my ignorance!
Since in order to keep it in the air you have to constantly raise the pot from the cooker, and since induction can't work too far, it is clear why it doesn't work.
Correct! Watch someone who is doing it right and you’ll see the wok and food are in near constant motion. It just can’t be done with anything other than fire.
And there’s no way most of us in the west would know this. Not many people outside of the kitchen a Chinese restaurant would ever see someone do it right here. Most of us just treat a wok like a funny shaped pan.
I’ve been trying to learn the technique for a few years and I’m not great at it.
In a home context its irrelevant. You're not doing true wok cooking at home anyway, your piddly little small bore home gas feed won't be providing anywhere near the required intensity.
Yep. All of the “I want wok hei” complaints are nonsense because virtually no indoor burner ever gets that hot. If you cook in a wok often and want the restaurant taste then an outdoor propane burner does the trick for only a few hundred bucks.
> but it falls apart for lower temps, and it's very hard to get it consistent.
There are gas hobs that make it easy; I like my cooktop with FlameSelect exactly for this, it has 9 discrete positions and exact flame size for each position.
It's important to understand that on a gas range or regular electric range, the knob controls power, i.e. the amount of heat you're putting into your cookware per second. And if those two are your only options, then the gas range is much better than an electric range, because you can change the amount of power very quickly, there's no lag.
But with an induction range, or a ceramic glass range, the knob controls temperature, i.e. there's a thermostat somewhere that regulates the power. And this gives you a lot more control, especially at lower temperatures. But it's not unique to induction ranges, any ceramic glass range can do the same, although they have more "lag" than an induction range.
Is that true of ceramic glass ranges? I had one once and I’m fairly sure whoever made that thing couldn’t even spell thermostat let alone add one. Pretty sure the knob was just a potentiometer.
There are electric stoves (contact heating; cast iron plates (european style)) with a thermostat in the center, and my induction plate only has a power dial.
Yeah, gas doesn't have a thermostat usually, but the other types are usually not incompatible and as such there exist both variants.
Right I’m not debating that they exist but I think most of the flat ceramic tops we have here modulate power rather than temp. That is one great thing about induction. You can reduce a sauce without risking a runaway boil if you don’t monitor it closely at the right time.
The knobs on my induction range control power, they go from 1 through 9 to B. Maybe US ranges are different. I was wondering why they're double the price.
Main problem with induction or electric is that once you lift your pan to say toss food, the pan stars to cool. With gas you can still have some fire contact to keep the pan hot. Also you can control which part of the pan is hot if you tilt it at an angle. These are something you won’t miss till it’s gone
If a flat bottom wok works for you you’re not doing wok cooking right. But if you like the results then it’s just a funny shaped pan and nothing wrong with that.
I can't say enough good things about my induction cooktop. It's as responsive as gas, but puts out more power than a home gas stove. Plus, it's incredibly easy to clean. Love it.
I switched from gas to induction during a kitchen remodel about 18 months ago. Took a couple of days to get used to, but it is considerably better than gas. Zero regrets. Faster, more precise, holds temperature better. E.g., I fry an egg on 6. Every time, I can reproduce my ideal fried egg (unless I break the yolk).
When I was shopping for appliances about half of the salespeople tried to talk me into gas, but a few loved induction and boosted my confidence to take the plunge.
Look at consumer reports ratings for induction cooktops, they universally score 98+ points. The best gas cooktops top out below the worst induction cooktops.
Commenting here as I don't think it's really worth a top level.
I feel it really depends on the person. For most Americans, induction is great. It's dead simple, repeatable, etc. But, I hate it!
I cook on cast iron. My wife cooks with a stir fry pan or wok. We went from gas to induction and both of us absolutely hated it. It's so hard to cook if you learned in a natural fire environment.
I hate having gas at all, I just wish there was a way to mimic its behavior.
I cook a lot on carbon steel and love it on induction. Seems to heat more evenly than on gas and heats up faster. Maybe you'd like it - seasons and performs the same as cast iron, but less material. Matfer Bourgeat is the brand I have.
With induction charging you're trying to charge a battery and unfortunately producing heat in the process which is unwanted and entirely a waste.
With induction stoves pretty much all the electricity is converted to heat in the bottom of the pan which is exactly what you want. A minor portion is lost elsewhere in the circuitry but not much in the grand scheme of things.
Efficiency refers to the ration between what you put in towards a goal and how much of it actually turned into that goal. Things that produce rhat with electricity tend to be 100% efficient because any waste usually happens to be heat.
An induction stove certain shouldn't have lower efficiency compared to a regular electric stove so maybe check if it's not a local issue.
it's the cookware. move it around a bit. you can also try using a paper towel in between the hob and pan. (haven't had one catch fire - before you ask :))
Its annoying and I could certainly see this happening as different pans do have different noises, for me I'm not sure I could have found an egg pan without noise on the induction I had until it died.
Cooking with natural gas is thought by some people to be very good, but food YouTuber Adam Ragusea is not a fan of it in the home he recently moved into:
Amateur home cook offering my experience using a portable induction cooktop next to my electric stove top. I'm in the US, so my induction cooktop is an anemic 1800 watt one because it's 120V, instead of the beefier European/Asian models that are 3500W 220V versions.
That out of the way, here are the positives from my perspective:
* induction boils a pot of water dramatically faster
* the pots, in general, heat up much faster and reach cooking temperatures VERY fast (as in, under two minutes)
* the surface itself only heats up as a result of the pan itself back-heating the surface of the cooktop.
* fixed, known heat settings for specific temperatures.
* almost instant pan response to temperature setting changes.
Here are the downsides from my perspective:
* No fine control of the "heat". I have eight temperature settings ranging from 140F to 460F. That's a wide range with only ten steps, so I frequently wish I had more fine control of the settings, especially at the lower end. The steps are 140F, 212F, 260F, 300F, 350F, 400F, 425F, and 460F.
* Fan noise. The unit has a built-in fan that is very noticeable.
* It's much easier to burn sauces, because the heat right at the cooking surface seems to be much hotter because it hasn't radiated throughout the whole pan yet. (Please feel free to just say "git gud" at my poor skills.) I don't really know how to articulate this well, but I find myself adjusting for a certain level of boiling, but being surprised at how hot the bottom of the pan actually is, which leads to a burned sauce.
* Only works with certain pans. Most of my cookware is newer and designed to work with induction stoves, but I have a complete set of expensive stainless cookware that I inherited from my mother, and it doesn't work with the induction burner. Works great with cast iron and enameled cast iron, and I have a nonstick aluminum pan that has an iron plate on the bottom, so it works fine. I also have an all-clad stainless frying pan that is triple-layer, and one of those layers is iron, so it works well also. Any non-magnetic pans will not work (copper, aluminum, and older stainless pans).
I use my induction burner when I am cooking something for a long time outside, when I am boiling pasta or making lighter soups, and for deep frying.
I use my conventional electric stove when I am cooking meat, sauces, or thicker stews.
> I'm in the US, so my induction cooktop is an anemic 1800 watt one because it's 120V, instead of the beefier European/Asian models that are 3500W 220V versions.
If you ever wish to 'upgrade', what you can do is change a plug in your kitchen from the typical NEMA 5-{15,20} to a NEMA 6-{15,20} and then wire it in the panel to 240V, as there are 'commercial' induction cookers available:
Those all have two issues: MUCH higher cost (I got mine for $50) and they still don't offer refined power/temp controls. It's just in large steps. I did find one that uses a reflective thermostat to set the EXACT temperature you want and they said it's accurate to within 1.8 degrees F, but it costs over $1,000 for one burner. My current setup is fine, but if I was going to spend that kind of money on a new stove, it would be for a gas convection oven, not just one stovetop burner.
A quick glance at amazon.co.uk shows high-wattage induction cooktops that are relatively cheap, e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/GIONIEN-Domino-Induction-Hob-Electr... is a dual-burner 3500W model that takes 220V-240V (unclear if it's ok on 208V?) for £109.99 (USD$143). 60 Hz would be a leap of faith, but is probably fine.
Then we're back to having to upgrade an outlet in my house and wire it into the panel, which would cost $400 at least. And the only thing I'm getting for that price is more wattage, but not finer control over the temperature, so I'll stick to my current setup.
Do you only have a single “burner” running off 120V outlet, or multiple?
Considering a custom dual fuel setup. Since I’m limited by a 125AMP panel and we are almost maxed out between an electric heat pump, washer/dryer and maybe an EV.
I have a single "burner" that I got from Amazon for $50. It is a 120V, 1800W version. If I were buying a stove/oven for my house, I'd still buy a gas stovetop with an electric convection oven in a heartbeat. I had one in a previous house and I miss it constantly. It had two very large burners and two smaller burners. I loved the exact control with almost instant response of cooking on a gas stove. I work in the energy industry, so I don't lose much sleep over it.
They make stoves that are gas top with an electric convection oven. I've owned one and I checked just now and they're still available. They're the best of both worlds for our household.
I used an induction stove for 6 weeks and despised it. Maybe the one I used isn’t the same as what others are using but it would turn on and off over and over again and I found the temperature to be completely unpredictable. I hated it
I have experienced cheap induction tops that do that. The better ones don't. Mine you can tell it a temperature and it sticks it there, so I can basically tell it to slowly simmer a curry or stew and it does the simmering for me. I walk away for hours at a time. It's been more than a decade, so when I have to cook on anything else but that induction top, I find that I burn everything from neglect.
This was my experience as well. Very finicky surface that required the pan to be in exactly the right place, and touch controls that were a pain in the ass to use. And we were cooking Chinese food, so no woks. I'll stick with gas, myself.
Induction cooking is good. UI is terrible: touch screen that only allows control over one heat source at a time. Please, please please give me knobs like the ones in gas tops
Not only is the UI terrible (wet hands and touch based interfaces are terrible), but pets may accidentally turn on the induction if they are prone to walking across your kitchen counter.
This should not be a concern (the danger due to pets, not the terrible UI, which is, indeed, terrible): All modern induction cooktops will not actually engage unless they "feel" a metallic mass which reacts to the magnetic field. If there's nothing, or anything else than an induction-compatible pan/pot on top of the hob, it won't do anything and will turn itself off after 30ish seconds.
So unless you leave pans and pots on the hobs when you're not cooking, you're good.
Depends on brand. I have one with 4 distinct controls for each heat source. But when I was changing my stove, this was something I looked for - I've used those that can set only one heat source at the time, and they are infuriating for me too.
As for knobs, I'm willing to bet that there are some induction stoves with knobs.
The better European induction cooktops have an individual touch slider control per "ring". I have some family members with those and that control model makes the touch thing a non-issue. No need to wait while pressing +/- either, you just plonk your finger down roughly where you want to be and slide to fine-tune.
crazy that they would put a touch screen. Ones in Japan are just like little plus/minus arrows (plus button serving as the per-heat-source on button as well). Built-in timer and everything.
The buttons are those little plastic overlays on simple button, so super easy to clean, usable when dirty... and definitely dirt cheap.
American appliance designers should really try just copying good foreign products one of these days. Y'all are in million dollar homes with appliance setups worse than student appartments in many places
Let me know when you can buy one of decent quality in the US with actual physical controls instead of some insane touch system designed by somebody who has apparently never actually been in a kitchen and marketed to people who won't use it but just want a thing that looks cool.
Ugh, my parents have an oven like that. Press the "bake" button and it'll happily tell you you have to press the "on" button first. Infuriating design, and you have to mash your thumb for a good 1-2 seconds before it reads the press, too.
Or our old Samsung washing machine, that wouldn't let you turn it off and on again without listening to the startup and shutdown songs first. (Our newer LG is much better in this regard.)
Are there any like that anywhere? I would think part of the problem is that induction settings are usually in discrete steps so a knob, which is what I assume you mean by physical control, may not be any better than a simple +\- control and would stick up from a seamless cooktop. Also, the highest end ones like Thermadors seem to focus on making the entire cooktop usable which kind of breaks the discrete burner area paradigm that knobs would suggest. Closest I’ve seems is a little puck on Samsung cooktops that you can use to adjust the controls but I would hate worrying about losing it.
I want 200 discrete settings then, so a knob is better. Or at least I think I want that considering how many micro adjustments I make on all stoves I've used before
I don't know what it is about induction that makes a rheostatic-like control unfeasible but the most I've seen is about 20 levels so you might be waiting a while.
Many more are a problem without a knob to speed through the steps.
There's no reason an induction hob can't be run with delta-sigma over it's normal low-resolution PWM to get accurate, high-resolution average power control.
1% power accuracy is easy, 0.1% is a few bucks more per "burner".
The problem I've seen with some induction hobs is that the low power settings are basically 1 second on / 5 seconds off, which is kinda annoying when the liquid goes between boiling violently / not boiling at all. Maybe thicker pots would help smoothing that out, though.
I suspect we will finally see a return to buttons in a couple years. I'm picturing an iPhone with a side ridge of multiple buttons. Like, little mini haptic-feedback touchpads (like the main pads on macbooks....but smaller)
Even in Germany there are very few left with knobs... I think a price comparison listed like 10 models... Miele had/has some... Then there is neff with a "puck" thingy, somewhere in the middle and then some high priced stuff...
[1] actually lists a few more, was looking for something bigger than 60cm (23inch??) wide.
If you select "EU" from the flag drop-down on the top left, you get an English version of the page (seems to be properly translated).
Should be more useful for sharing with a primarily-non-German audience. (The site itself is awesome, though; a very effective parametric price comparison site made by people that actually understand technology and know how important details are. It's owned by the publisher behind "c't", the big European/German non-tabloid computer magazine.)
Those are standalone induction cooktops. It's common to install a cooktop on top of an oven by the same manufacturer. In that category, there are still many devices (from many manufactures, low and high end) with rotating knobs, integrated into the oven component.
well, maybe was common, with a bit of money and a new kitchen I would guess it is more common to separate the two entities and not have the oven on the floor... also very neat for the dishwasher if you have the space :-)
No, I think they are common and will be common for the foreseeable future even for most new construction, but I can't be bothered to find any references, which are unlikely to be publicly available anyway.
That is the sad truth. It is absolutely maddening the control schemes on every induction cooktop I've used. It's like an 80's car dashboard and radio. Nothing is obvious or makes sense--the most simple action like turn up the power is a complex process of multiple presses, different modes, etc.
I consider the induction touch controls one of the few places where the touch controls actually make sense. It makes cleaning the entire range trivial. Which given how messy I tend to cook, I have to do a lot.
Mine doesn't have physical knobs, either. And worse, it has a flashing red indicator light, that blinks when it is plugged in and turned OFF. So maddening, had to wire up an external switch just to keep from getting angry every time I walked past it. Still, it is great for cooking, and worth putting up with these minor annoyances.
I think the problem is that nobody buys hobs with dials anymore. When they have the choice, most people prefer the sleek look and easy cleaning.
And the controls aren't all terrible. We have a cheap electric Ikea hob (non-induction), and the controls are decent. It has digits from 0-9 for each heater, so you can set every heater to the right power with a single touch.
If you spill something it starts beeping, and you have about 10 seconds to wipe the controls with a rag, or it turns off. It's annoying the first time it happens, but it's not a big deal in practice.
I use this hob everyday to cook for 5 people, so it's not like sensor controls are useless.
It also has some advantages, like individual timers for each heater. And the little one can't reach the controls and mess with them.
Indeed, I will never buy a stove without physical knobs. Add to that a stove top that can handle some real usage without breaking up. My circles have had too many reports on cracked induction or ceramic tops. Kettles can get heavy and hands get weak, and especially when you're busy in the kitchen the cooking ware do inevitably bang onto the stove top occasionally.
Warning to anyone thinking about buying one of those portable induction cooktop ("just to see what all the fuss is about"): if it plugs into a standard 120V socket, it's probably not going to boil water any faster than your existing stove! In fact, mine boils even slower than my electric stove. Apparently, the portable ones only go up to around 1800W. If you want to experience the true boil-the-oceans power of induction, you have to get a full range that runs on 240V; those can draw closer to 7000W.
Granted, you can still benefit from the precise temperature setting and the ease of cleaning, but don't expect it to be an apples-to-apples comparison.
120V is only standard in a part of the world. It's much more helpful to talk about power -- where I am 3 kW is limiting on a standard socket, at 230V. What is it for the US (I don't know!)
Note -- electric hobs and ovens are often wired into far far chunkier circuits and the high efficiency of induction is a big boon. It's wonderful to cook on -- all the responsiveness of gas, none of the pm2.5. It's just a shame that per kWh, electricity is a lot more expensive.
This house I just bought (in the US) has a really odd kitchen that includes a gas cooktop combined with an electric double oven. It's wired directly to the breaker box in the basement with a 35-amp fuse.
How often do you broil? I have an electric oven and probably use the broiler about 3 times every two years.
Everyone's cooking styles and needs are different, I guess. It's never been an issue for me. If I leave the oven door ajar, the broiler will stay on and do it's job. An electric oven works far better than gas for baking however which is something we do regularly.
Do you have a source for amp standards? My limited search suggests much of EU have 10A plugs. Also here in AU our standard is also 10A along with our NZ family.
In the US ranges typically come with 50A 240V outlets - and as much as that is, it's actually not enough to run the oven plus all 4 burners at the same time.
A low end range has 16K BTU for the oven, plus 4 10K burners = 56,000 BTU = 16.5kWatt.
But the 50A outlet can only deliver 50 * 240 * 80% = 9,600 watt.
You either got a shit induction cooktop or an amazing electric stove. Maybe both? I have an 1800W portable induction cooktop and while it's not perfect, it's definitely way faster than my electric stove. At least 5x faster at boiling water, I'd say.
Same experience, I grabbed an 1800W induction cook top in January to test the waters for an inevitable range replacement. It has bubbles forming at the bottom of the pot before the normal stove even gets an empty pan hot. Since then it has had a permanent spot in the kitchen, in fact I can't remember the last thing I used the regular stove for...
It also helped me find out that my kitchen counter outlets share the circuit with my fridge. The breaker quickly tripped when I was making toast, boiling water, and the fridge compressor cycled on!
I have 2 of the duxtop’s linked in the article as my only range. Before going to this setup I tested them against my gas range and they were 2 to 3 minutes faster at boiling water.
The issue with the portable ones is the quality differential. You’ve got extremely cheap ones that are more plate warmers than cooking appliances and you e got the control freak that is a piece of future tech. But if you get ones that a caterer would use they tend to do the job.
I'm German and switched to induction from (old) electric after moving to a nicer apartment.
Despite ostensibly knowing about its responsiveness before I still ended up with slightly underdone food for the first week - if you turn off the stove, it will get cold almost immediately, no/little residual heat to make use of.
It also comes with the vaguely flashy feature of letting you run one stove plate with twice the energy by temporarily disabling its neighbor. Since the dial goes up to 9.5 regularly, I call the power boost setting "19" and relish in the knowledge that I'm 8 steps ahead of Spinal Tap.
Now I want a cook top with a burner that goes to 11. My last gas stove had a 'hot' burner. Problem was the scaling doesn't match the other burners.
I have a glass top range now and it sucks. Problem is most of the good induction units in the US are built in cooktops. Good ranges (combined cooktop+oven) are $$$$.
> Problem is most of the good induction units in the US are built in cooktops. Good ranges (combined cooktop+oven) are $$$$.
Build one yourself, that's what I did when I bought my house in the Netherlands somewhere in the 90's. I wanted induction and a hot-air oven but did not want to pay for the privilege. I built a heavy wooden frame sized to fit the oven and the induction cooker, made a drawer for oven utensils in the bottom and a hard-wood ring around the hole for the induction cooker. Wooded sides make of glued floor boards. Once the hardware arrived I could simply drop and slide it in place, wire it up to the connection box I made on the back and plug it in - voila, an induction range with hot-air oven on the somewhat-less-expensive. I sold the house 5 years later and moved to Sweden where I now cook on a wood-burning stove, from the future to the past. I like the past better, it also fits my rather dynamic cooking style - sliding and banging heavy cast-iron pans around is far less precarious on a cast-iron stove.
We are thinking about doing something similar for our kitchen. We currently have a gas range with a over range microwave, but want to replace all that with an induction cook top and a dedicated range hood vented outside (under cabinet or built-in, 700 CFM or so). We lose our microwave and our oven, so we have ti replace those somewhere. I’m liking the microwave oven combos (not the combined microwave convection oven, though that is cool also), which we would have to build a new cabinet for elsewhere, not beneath the cooktop (or maybe a drawer microwave beneath the cook top and the oven…somewhere else?).
I think that's because most homes do not have sufficient electrical power to run everything at once.
For example: 50A for the heat pump, 50A to charge your car, 50A for the range, 30A for the dryer, 30A for the water heater = 210A (all my examples are for 240V) + various lights and other things. Homes in the US are most commonly wired for 100, 150, or 200A.
So they'll run the range at 30A instead, but that means you can't use all the burners at the same time at full power.
If we are actually going to fully electrify the home 200A or more service is going to have to become the starting point. Residential panels > 200A in the US are rare (from what I read most power companies won't even supply such service), and that might need to change.
Natural gas is far cheaper, so I'll stick with that. Even though I love the idea of an easy to clean stovetop. My electric bill is already out of control (California).
You might want to do the math. Induction is quite a lot more efficient at actually heating the food. Even regular electric is more efficient at heating the food than gas.
Have you done that math? The "even if 100% efficient" doesn't sound right to me. Wouldn't that imply gas cooking is 25% efficient?
Admittedly, induction isn't 100% efficient, but it's very efficient! A gas flame heats up everything around it, whereas induction only heats up your cookware. The surface of an induction stove without any cookware is cool to the touch; in other cases, it's warm only due to the heat radiated back from your cookware.
Induction also heats up the power electronics inside the cooker. That's why they need a beefy cooling fan.
I have done the math... Induction is 84% efficient, and gas is 40% efficient. So for most people, gas is still cheaper, unless you live in an area with very cheap hydroelectric.
Gas is 40% efficient at heating food? Where are you getting these numbers? I have no counter information here, but that just doesn't seem intuitively correct at all. With gas, you're creating a fire that is heating up everything around it!
Note that the 84% number is for a prototype model... 77% is for an on-the-market model, and it is beaten in efficiency by conventional electric for cookware matched in size to the heating ring.
Also, while gas is 'just a flame', the heat mostly rises, and right above it is the pan. Noticing that the pan, the hob, and the room feel warm/hot afterwards can be deceptive because the specific heat capacity of metal is 8x lower than that of the water in the food you're cooking, so you'd likely underestimate the efficiency.
I’m in a the SFBAY and paying 30¢/kw all-in after taxes/fees for tier 1 usage, and this is absolutely a concern. Electric costs are out of control due to wildfires and I have no incentive to switch to anything electric right now.
My local utility company is set to introduce a major rate hike for both electric and gas, but the per-unit of energy for gas is still far cheaper. Electric is getting so bad it might make sense to swap out my electric dryer for a gas one, even though it’s perfectly functional.
so long as you applying your open flame to metal is more efficient than a natural gas plant is at converting it to electricity and an induction is and applying that to your cookware. I'd be curious to see the numbers there... but if I were a betting I'd think induction would be better.
I have an induction cooktop form Cooktek, which I originally bought in 2007, which I carry around with me everywhere.
One more thing about how it is great. Since it heats the pan directly instead of the air underneath the pan, you can boil water for pasta without heating up the kitchen. Now, many of you have A/C to keep your kitchen comfortable, but then you are heating up the kitchen with the stove and then cooling it down with the A/C ...
My friends are not convinced. I get responses anywhere from no way to it's ok for me maybe but they really just love the feel of cooking on gas. These are supposedly environmentalists, too.
I did not know that induction cooking is a novelty (or at least worthy of an article) in the US. When you go to an appliance shop in France they would be 90% of the offer (and 9% gas, 1% vitro-electric).
BTW the big photo on the top of the article is not induction but vitro-ceramic (the first version of something that would look at glass and not have flames, but this is not induction, just heating of a tingie under the glass plate)
Having used gaz since childhood for 30 years, the move to induction was fantastic. The only drawback is that you cannot cook with the cookware tilted (to pour some liquid into a small puddle and heat it directly, for instance)
As another commenter said, it was electric but "vitro ceramic", so terrible performance and pretty dangerous. This actually gave gas a "better rap".
Now I honestly only use gas at the moment because I moved in recently enough that I haven't bother to change - but it's getting higher on n my list every day...
As one anecdote, since there’s no flame (vs gas stove) and the surface is happy to heat whatever is on it (vs induction which needs a magnetic metal) — my cousin burned down their family home by setting her book bag on the stove after school one day. It’s unclear how it got turned on but the end result was pretty terrible for them and likely wouldn’t have happened with a different stove.
Right, but you'd notice if there was a flame burning when you set your bag on it, unlike the electric element. This was 20+ years ago though, and I believe they all have the illuminated cooking positions when the burners are active now.
I’ve always wondered how Italians will handle the transition when it inevitably happens, that tilting & just a ton more movement in general over the flame seems super common there
Italians are very good at not changing things if they don’t want to. If they believe something to be the best way, they will continue doing it regardless what the rest of the world thinks.
My guess: cast-iron cookware and induction stovetops designed for them. That gives you pretty much the best of both worlds, with the ability to retain heat while manipulating the pan while still having extremely precise temperature control.
I get what you're talking about but you can actually pick up an induction pan for a bit and shuffle things around and then put it back on the pan.
It's not 100% exactly the same heat distribution but when you pick your pan off of the fire it's also not getting mots of that heat either.
Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong about this (apparently wok cooking "needs the fire"), but like... I dunno, I've done a lot of stir fries and messing around with pots on an induction thing. The "auto-turn-off" thing only happens for me if I really leave it picked up for a couple minutes, otherwise it just re-engages pretty quickly.
The only drawback I see with the shuffling is that I do not want to drag my pan on the induction table itself, something I would do on a gas appliance (because the thing you put the pan on (surrounding the flame) is not fragile).
I do not know actually if this is a real concern but would prefer others to chek instead of me :)
As for the "flame" - I feel that the heating with induction is much faster and consistent than gas.
FWIW, what you call vitro-ceramic is known in the UK as a halogen hob. It comprises a vitro-ceramic surface on top of a halogen bulb; we chose to name the whole thing after different parts!
There are shaped induction systems, most commonly for woks or industrial heating applications. However, as it needs to very closely match the external shape of the cookware, the technical and commercial viability of a generic system would be relatively low, which is why you don't often see them marketed.
Culinary back water would be unfair, but definitely laggards when it comes to innovation, especially if there is some regulation involved, doubly slow if there are entrenched interests. America is quicker to innovate if someone can make a buck.
You can still use electric stoves, just don't use the induction one. Ceramics cooktops uses old-school heating elements, which is less efficient than induction but works on any pots. Some brands even offer hybrid stoves which have both heating elements and induction zones.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 985 ms ] threadInduction hobs cut out a loss leader for gas: gas stoves. Once you have gas in your home it makes sense to install the main moneymaker: a gas furnace for heating. It's how they upsell.
Induction hobs are great in the fight against global warming.
So, I'd say it's only helpful if you are getting a new stove anyway.
Which is great for safety. Yes it gets hot if a pot has been boiling for a while, but it's a far cry from regular resistive ceramic tops.
Just bringing some water to the boil is not enough to make it more than uncomfortably hot. Try touching a resistive heater top after doing that...
The last time i checked, the waiting list was about a month long, which certainly speaks to the interest in the idea.
As long as my rangeware doesn't warp, I'm all for more even heating! It didn't occur to me until very recently that a reason why pans might warp on an induction hob is that they can now heat up fast enough to thermal shock on the way up, not just on the way down (by, e.g., taking the pan you just seared meat off in and dunking it in cold dishwater)
Copper doesn’t work, but cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel all do.
We switched to induction about a decade ago, had to replace one cheap skillet.
* https://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Kitchen-Nonstick-Frying-Pan/dp...
A twelve-piece set of non-stick pots and pans for $130:
* https://www.amazon.com/Induction-Kitchen-Cookware-Sets-Nonst...
Or a ten-piece stainless steal set for $200:
* https://www.amazon.com/Calphalon-Classic-10-Piece-Cookware-S...
Would you consider any of these "expensive"?
That's why, for a european like me, an article like this one seems totally extraneous to hacker news front page
Having read this article I noticed that they aren't all like this.
If you are comparing electric capacitances of electric circuits vs the thermal capacitance of a macroscopic object, 1 Hz might be a high enough frequency for doing pwm.
Yes, this is correct. What parent is describing is generally referred to as bang-bang control [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang–bang_control
Which leads to the question : which ones do not have a whine? Does the breville? Or which? It’s not something any reviews I’ve seen talk about
You may want to check out those that apparently can handle non-magnetic cookware; those apparently run on higher frequencies to make up for the weaker magnetic effect.
What "PWM" doesn't define is the fundamental frequency. It could be 0.1 Hz or 10 MHz. Just because the fundamental frequency is slow doesn't make it not PWM.
If I put it on full power, then it's a continuous blast of energy and it never clicks off. That's great for boiling water but not much else.
If I put it on 70%, it goes on full power for 7 seconds, then stops for 3, then back on for 7 etc etc.
But also few here use gas. It's mostly ceramic hobs
I'm actually amazed how much people love induction here, but I guess that's also because it's mostly compared to gas?
Oh and if any of your pots or pans get warped, they become completely unusable!
Drop anything heavy on it, and the cook top breaks.
I once waited for 20 minutes for a small pot of water to boil on a ceramic cook top.
The old fashion coil burners are better than the stupid glass top ones.
The temperature does cycle on and off usually based on a thermometer, so it does hold the selected temperature. I don't get why that's a drawback for you? The cooktop will literally be kept to your selected temperature.
Also the induction cooktops I know use the same kind of glass or ceramic plate on top, so you have the same advantages/disadvantages in regards to scratching, cleaning and breaking it.
Induction is greatly superior to electric heating plates, ceramic or even metal, as it is much faster and more energy efficient. Whenever you use it you never want to go back.
I have used induction a couple of times when cooking at my parents house and in a friends kitchen and I happily stay with my ceramic cooktop. Induction is much quicker and more energy efficient, but I just like that I literally control the heat on a fixed size cookfield rather than controlling the strength of the current, where effective heat will depend on the size of the pan.
It will probably change soon though. A lot of laws are being proposed to not add new gas hookups for new construction. Induction will have to become the higher end default for electric ranges.
They are just 3-phase because the utility demands 10+ kW loads to be 3-phase loads, and they often exceed that slightly. Check out the install guide on e.g. some IKEA built-in models, specifically regarding the wiring instructions.
And US residential does have 240V single-phase available.
No, there are plenty of consumer models. But they aren't as popular because the US has significantly more abundant, domestically produced, and (largely, because of that and not taking climate seriously) cheaper natural gas, and has only recently started in some localities having residential electric-only rules for new construction.
The only induction stoves I can find are very high end models. I'm thinking about it, but for the cost I can install gas (including plumbing) and save money.
Even on the high end there is often on model with induction so if you want some other option as well you are stuck.
IKEA in Sweden where I live has induction stoves for as cheap as $300, and I would assume that similar prices will become available in the U.S in the future.
I was interested in these about 15 years ago when I bought a house. They want a dedicated circuit with a 240V outlet and 40 or 50 amp breaker. My house has a gas range, so I don't already have a 240V outlet there, and I've only got 100 amp service at the panel - which claims 100 amps is the max it's rated for. I decided it was not worth the hassle.
My house was built 6 years ago but is already outdated in this respect. Replacing the panel is a pain as it requires shutting of electrical service for the day and an inspection from the city when they switch it back on. At least our meter and outdoor wire to the grid are already 200A…I hope.
A 150A panel should accommodate both your induction stove and EV charger. The stove's 50A rating assumes you are running all burners are running simultaneously, which is rare. You need 200A if you going fully electric (for hot water, HVAC, oven and clothes dryer).
I expect that proper adapters from NEMA 240V to Schuko are legal to operate? If so, you'd be cheaper off just importing these (104.867.94).
Yeah, I know I'm comparing against walk-in store products. Still.
Our induction cooktop fried its driver circuitry last year and we were stuck cooking off a camp stove for weeks while waiting for a part from Germany. Old school cooking methods are less high tech and more repairable.
The truth of the matter is that any country would be in a more secure position relying on resources that are regenerable, can be produced locally, and whose network can cope with a higher measure of decentralization. They make both the grid/network and the country itself more resilient regardless of "policy".
As I said, you can't make your own gas and an outage for the wholly centralized gas distribution system can have dire consequences that would be lessened or even eliminated for setups like rooftop solar and heat-pump.
Compressor stations break down, suppliers fail to deliver gas, mercaptan might not be available, control systems are subject to cyber attack. My point is simply that any energy delivery system has weaknesses.
In a home the two systems generally serve different purposes so I am not sure the value of having both is as high as you suggest. My gas furnace/hot water heater won’t turn on, for good reason, without electricity. The only thing that works when the power is out is my stove top (not the oven) if I manually ignite it. They would work if I used a generator but that is third supply and it shouldn’t be lost that the output of the generator is electricity. That generator could itself be powered by natural gas but that is not common.
I always thought gas was the best for cooking. But I was wrong - induction is. Gas is great for medium-high power cooking, but it falls apart for lower temps, and it's very hard to get it consistent. The only time I really miss gas is when stir frying - you can't really use woks on induction.
It's also wipe clean!
sides stay far too cool.
luckily I don't do it that often so just bought one of those butane table top burners for those cases.
It's amazing, way better than our old gas stove. I'll never go back.
but you need a flat bottom for such a "wok" to sit - otherwise a round bottom wok isn't close enough to heat up evenly.
Blame your induction heater or induction wok.
https://www.amazon.com/Lodge-Pro-Logic-Handles-14-inch-Black...
[0] https://youtu.be/CTyV3JExDT8
I can only recommend such tactics for messy cooking; it's indeed the real "killer" feature of induction that even gas can't match.
Edit: pretty sure this is the wok, definitely the correct brand. https://kenhomwoks.com/store/products/ken-hom-excellence-car...
There is no such thing. A round bottom is a defining feature of a wok. If it doesn’t have a round bottom it isn’t a wok by definition. A round bottom is essential to how a wok is used.
I’m not saying that large flat bottom frying pans with high edges aren’t useful, I have one and it’s probably my most used pan, it’s just not a complete replacement for a wok.
This is the wok:
https://kenhomwoks.com/store/products/ken-hom-excellence-car...
It performs one essential function, it needs both a round shape and has to be made of thin sheet steel. You can only have one if you need to place it on a flat induction stove: either it’s thin and flat on the inside, or it’s round on the inside but thick.
> Easy tossing for stir fry is just one feature of a wok. For example, the round bottom causes liquids to pool in the center.
you need the round bottom to be able to scoop up the food and churn it. Try using a spatula on a flat bottom "wok" and flip the food to churn it - it doesn't work very well.
There's also an edge between the flat bottom and the round sides. This causes food to get "stuck" there under high heat - leading to burning. A wok is round all the way, so the spatula scrapes everywhere evenly, and you leave no burnt bits.
A flat bottom "wok" is just a pan with high edges.
The idiom comes for fighting battles with absolutely devastating casualties to capture positions of very low strategic importance. Establishing consensus that woks may only have round bottoms may fulfil the last part, but having people write a few counter-arguments is by no means a devastating loss, it’s just the discussion forum serving its intended purpose.
鑊 (pronounced wok in Cantonese) or 炒锅 or 炒勺 means wok.
> There is no such thing.
Here's[1] Kenji talking about a "flat-bottomed wok". My Chinese friends cook on a flat bottomed wok and call it a wok. So I'm sorry, but your linguistic rigidity is misplaced.
[1] https://youtu.be/u2MJzEuI0vI?t=301
In fact these exist -- if you search for "induction wok burners" you can see some pictures. (I only recently became aware of this after watching this video of a chef who uses induction cooking in a small kitchen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNzRrHA9VY)
Perhaps in the future there will be cooktops that include a wok depression on the surface, similar to how some gas stoves today include a built-in wok ring.
I would have thought that a bigger drawback would be that you can’t get even heat input while tossing the wok, though I’m not sure how essential that is
See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Induktionskochfeld_S... for what's under the plate. The center silver thing is likely a thermostat/temperature sensor. The electronics may need to be a bit less ignorant to handle a flexible coil, but tracking the tank's resonance isn't even a difficult task; a Royer/Baxandall oscillator could probably be made to work.
You're correct, but times change, and the carbon steel wok over a giant burner isn't very suitable for apartment cooking anyway. There are now works designed for use on induction (with aluminium conduction to achieve a heat gradient), and they work pretty well. Also much healthier for the occupants, not as hot in the kitchen and cheaper to operate.
In countries with 240v/10A sockets a plug in electric wok is fine for home cooking. On 110v/15A it is still better than electric radiative cooking, but not as good as gas.
https://m.aliexpress.com/item/1005003076266949.html
This perspective drives me crazy. OK, so induction cooktops are good for the environment. But flat bottom woks are not woks, and you can’t do wok cooking on an induction cooktop. The only people who think that you can, are people who completely lack an understanding of wok cooking techniques.
I know for a fact that you are arguing from a position of ignorance here, because it is physically impossible for an induction cooktop to replicate what gas provides a wok, which is hot air, something induction surfaces don’t produce. So I’d recommend that you do at least a small amount of research on the topic before you resort to such low effort (and hilariously inaccurate) ad-homs.
The practical reason is that people have different sized pots and pans. I don't want to put my small sauce pan on a large burner that will waste the majority of its heating surface. Similarly, I need a large surface to heat a big pan.
The aesthetic is that a lot of cooktops are combination stove/oven and thus have to be big enough for the oven bit. Once you already have that surface area, you might as well fill it up to make it seem more substantial. A stovetop with room for 4/5 burners will look like the manufacturer skimped out if it has only 2 burners.
I don't mean this to sound rude, though I know it will, but this is the literal definition of "argument from ignorance."
You don't use more than two burners, so you don't know why a stove needs more than two.
I personally frequently cook with three or all four burners. Further, there are meals where I might use the two small back burners, and meals where I might use the two large front ones.
I guess you could be describing a need for stoves that came with just two burners, for those who couldn't imagine using more. But, seriously, would you have bought a two-burner model if it had been available, knowing that you might have wished for more even one night a year?
There are also down considerations of power (wiring and maximum output) and noise (induction units have fans, which are less noticeable in stovetops), safety (accident risk from cables, tilting, etc) and convenience.
It might work if your everyday usage involves zero to one units. Which is certainly possible, if you don't cook much, but even if you are and you're using other heat sources like a rice cooker, oven, grill, microwave, etc.
Not a terrible idea to have one around when you're limited by your normal capacity, or when you want to simmer a stew at a buffet, or your stovetop breaks or you are redoing your kitchen.
Aor of Indian households when preparing a traditional lunch will have 5-6 items (in the south, particularly in a Brahmin household, you will have one sambhar, one rasam, three vegetable currys, rice, and a fried item usually appalam). This entire meal takes three hours or so to prepare from scratch on my stove (a three burner lpg stove). Two more usable burners will cut this down to about 2 hours
This is not even remotely typical.
> This is not even remotely typical.
Digress!
What is typical?
It is always good to learn about people's lifestyles....
It's hard to make broad generalizations. But having been to all six divisions and having lived in three of them, I feel very confident in saying that a household that cooks three different curries, sambar and rasam for a single meal is very atypical. What GP described sounds closer to a restaurant set course meal and not something a household would cook on a day to day basis.
So, they had 5 burners?
Anyways, my comment was more about the number of dishes. Two curries as in your example is fairly typical. Three curries, a sambar and a rasam like the GP said is definitely not. Chai at lunchtime does sound strange to me but then again, I'm not really familiar with Punjabi culinary preferences.
I could play hockey in it too!
The food is constantly flipped into the air above the wok where it is heated by the extremely hot air.
Of course very few homes in the western world have gas burners powerful enough for that anyway. I actually practice on a turkey fryer.
I am not a cook, but I find it difficult to believe that the heat going by the sides of the pan is cooking the food, rather than the heat going through the pan and heating the air above the pan.
This is because where I've seen someone cooking on a wok, the food barely goes past the edge of the pan.
A sufficiently wok-shaped induction stove will induce the same heat as that going through the pan.
I can’t find a high enough resolution pic on the internet of the modernist cuisine cutaway to actually read the text but here’s the image:
https://images.app.goo.gl/cZWmqecLWTSdxSeX6
Wok Hei translates to “breath of the wok” for a reason. The food is constantly in the air, which allows it to dry out. The food spends most of its time not even touching the wok so no, you can’t do it on induction.
Here’s a good description from the Michelin guide:
https://guide.michelin.com/en/article/dining-out/what-is-wok...
Thank you for treating my ignorance!
Since in order to keep it in the air you have to constantly raise the pot from the cooker, and since induction can't work too far, it is clear why it doesn't work.
And there’s no way most of us in the west would know this. Not many people outside of the kitchen a Chinese restaurant would ever see someone do it right here. Most of us just treat a wok like a funny shaped pan.
I’ve been trying to learn the technique for a few years and I’m not great at it.
In a home context its irrelevant. You're not doing true wok cooking at home anyway, your piddly little small bore home gas feed won't be providing anywhere near the required intensity.
It's mostly a restaurant thing to have burners that powerful.
There are gas hobs that make it easy; I like my cooktop with FlameSelect exactly for this, it has 9 discrete positions and exact flame size for each position.
But with an induction range, or a ceramic glass range, the knob controls temperature, i.e. there's a thermostat somewhere that regulates the power. And this gives you a lot more control, especially at lower temperatures. But it's not unique to induction ranges, any ceramic glass range can do the same, although they have more "lag" than an induction range.
I found a flat-bottomed induction compatible wok on Amazon when I got my induction cook top. I'm not a master stir fry cook, but it woks for me!
When I was shopping for appliances about half of the salespeople tried to talk me into gas, but a few loved induction and boosted my confidence to take the plunge.
Look at consumer reports ratings for induction cooktops, they universally score 98+ points. The best gas cooktops top out below the worst induction cooktops.
No regrets.
I feel it really depends on the person. For most Americans, induction is great. It's dead simple, repeatable, etc. But, I hate it!
I cook on cast iron. My wife cooks with a stir fry pan or wok. We went from gas to induction and both of us absolutely hated it. It's so hard to cook if you learned in a natural fire environment.
I hate having gas at all, I just wish there was a way to mimic its behavior.
It rocks.
I just removed the stupid efficiency comment. Not worth the agita, and I'm probably mistaken.
With induction stoves pretty much all the electricity is converted to heat in the bottom of the pan which is exactly what you want. A minor portion is lost elsewhere in the circuitry but not much in the grand scheme of things.
Efficiency refers to the ration between what you put in towards a goal and how much of it actually turned into that goal. Things that produce rhat with electricity tend to be 100% efficient because any waste usually happens to be heat.
An induction stove certain shouldn't have lower efficiency compared to a regular electric stove so maybe check if it's not a local issue.
My electrical bill is (a fair bit) higher than with the old electric stove, though. That's interesting.
I still love it, and have no intentions of giving it up.
I like how it cooks, but hate using it.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcAJ3_-Hou8
That out of the way, here are the positives from my perspective: * induction boils a pot of water dramatically faster
* the pots, in general, heat up much faster and reach cooking temperatures VERY fast (as in, under two minutes)
* the surface itself only heats up as a result of the pan itself back-heating the surface of the cooktop.
* fixed, known heat settings for specific temperatures.
* almost instant pan response to temperature setting changes.
Here are the downsides from my perspective: * No fine control of the "heat". I have eight temperature settings ranging from 140F to 460F. That's a wide range with only ten steps, so I frequently wish I had more fine control of the settings, especially at the lower end. The steps are 140F, 212F, 260F, 300F, 350F, 400F, 425F, and 460F.
* Fan noise. The unit has a built-in fan that is very noticeable.
* It's much easier to burn sauces, because the heat right at the cooking surface seems to be much hotter because it hasn't radiated throughout the whole pan yet. (Please feel free to just say "git gud" at my poor skills.) I don't really know how to articulate this well, but I find myself adjusting for a certain level of boiling, but being surprised at how hot the bottom of the pan actually is, which leads to a burned sauce.
* Only works with certain pans. Most of my cookware is newer and designed to work with induction stoves, but I have a complete set of expensive stainless cookware that I inherited from my mother, and it doesn't work with the induction burner. Works great with cast iron and enameled cast iron, and I have a nonstick aluminum pan that has an iron plate on the bottom, so it works fine. I also have an all-clad stainless frying pan that is triple-layer, and one of those layers is iron, so it works well also. Any non-magnetic pans will not work (copper, aluminum, and older stainless pans).
I use my induction burner when I am cooking something for a long time outside, when I am boiling pasta or making lighter soups, and for deep frying.
I use my conventional electric stove when I am cooking meat, sauces, or thicker stews.
If you ever wish to 'upgrade', what you can do is change a plug in your kitchen from the typical NEMA 5-{15,20} to a NEMA 6-{15,20} and then wire it in the panel to 240V, as there are 'commercial' induction cookers available:
* https://eurodib.com/products/commercial-induction-cooker/?cu...
* https://www.amazon.com/Eurodib-IHE3097-P2-Commercial-Inducti...
* https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y7WXQMQ/
Not $50, but still.
Considering a custom dual fuel setup. Since I’m limited by a 125AMP panel and we are almost maxed out between an electric heat pump, washer/dryer and maybe an EV.
We are done with our gas stove top, it is just so much harder to keep clean than an induction stove top. And it boils water a lot faster.
I would never risk that on any other stove type.
So unless you leave pans and pots on the hobs when you're not cooking, you're good.
As for knobs, I'm willing to bet that there are some induction stoves with knobs.
The buttons are those little plastic overlays on simple button, so super easy to clean, usable when dirty... and definitely dirt cheap.
American appliance designers should really try just copying good foreign products one of these days. Y'all are in million dollar homes with appliance setups worse than student appartments in many places
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Or our old Samsung washing machine, that wouldn't let you turn it off and on again without listening to the startup and shutdown songs first. (Our newer LG is much better in this regard.)
There's no reason an induction hob can't be run with delta-sigma over it's normal low-resolution PWM to get accurate, high-resolution average power control. 1% power accuracy is easy, 0.1% is a few bucks more per "burner".
[1] actually lists a few more, was looking for something bigger than 60cm (23inch??) wide.
[1] https://geizhals.de/?cat=hkochf&xf=4220_11~4220_4~4220_5~422...
Should be more useful for sharing with a primarily-non-German audience. (The site itself is awesome, though; a very effective parametric price comparison site made by people that actually understand technology and know how important details are. It's owned by the publisher behind "c't", the big European/German non-tabloid computer magazine.)
https://geizhals.de/?cat=hherdset&xf=1959_Induktion~8421_60~...
I almost bought this after much research but ended up doing a range instead.
It's much easier to find a range with knobs for the cooktop so I won't bother linking to one.
And the controls aren't all terrible. We have a cheap electric Ikea hob (non-induction), and the controls are decent. It has digits from 0-9 for each heater, so you can set every heater to the right power with a single touch.
If you spill something it starts beeping, and you have about 10 seconds to wipe the controls with a rag, or it turns off. It's annoying the first time it happens, but it's not a big deal in practice.
I use this hob everyday to cook for 5 people, so it's not like sensor controls are useless.
It also has some advantages, like individual timers for each heater. And the little one can't reach the controls and mess with them.
[1] https://www.gaggenau.com/global/products-list/cooktops/400-s...?
Granted, you can still benefit from the precise temperature setting and the ease of cleaning, but don't expect it to be an apples-to-apples comparison.
Note -- electric hobs and ovens are often wired into far far chunkier circuits and the high efficiency of induction is a big boon. It's wonderful to cook on -- all the responsiveness of gas, none of the pm2.5. It's just a shame that per kWh, electricity is a lot more expensive.
I'd want an induction cooktop and a gas oven! The gas oven solely so I can do the broil thing and get a good sear from direct flame.
Everyone's cooking styles and needs are different, I guess. It's never been an issue for me. If I leave the oven door ajar, the broiler will stay on and do it's job. An electric oven works far better than gas for baking however which is something we do regularly.
A low end range has 16K BTU for the oven, plus 4 10K burners = 56,000 BTU = 16.5kWatt.
But the 50A outlet can only deliver 50 * 240 * 80% = 9,600 watt.
It also helped me find out that my kitchen counter outlets share the circuit with my fridge. The breaker quickly tripped when I was making toast, boiling water, and the fridge compressor cycled on!
The issue with the portable ones is the quality differential. You’ve got extremely cheap ones that are more plate warmers than cooking appliances and you e got the control freak that is a piece of future tech. But if you get ones that a caterer would use they tend to do the job.
Despite ostensibly knowing about its responsiveness before I still ended up with slightly underdone food for the first week - if you turn off the stove, it will get cold almost immediately, no/little residual heat to make use of.
It also comes with the vaguely flashy feature of letting you run one stove plate with twice the energy by temporarily disabling its neighbor. Since the dial goes up to 9.5 regularly, I call the power boost setting "19" and relish in the knowledge that I'm 8 steps ahead of Spinal Tap.
I have a glass top range now and it sucks. Problem is most of the good induction units in the US are built in cooktops. Good ranges (combined cooktop+oven) are $$$$.
Build one yourself, that's what I did when I bought my house in the Netherlands somewhere in the 90's. I wanted induction and a hot-air oven but did not want to pay for the privilege. I built a heavy wooden frame sized to fit the oven and the induction cooker, made a drawer for oven utensils in the bottom and a hard-wood ring around the hole for the induction cooker. Wooded sides make of glued floor boards. Once the hardware arrived I could simply drop and slide it in place, wire it up to the connection box I made on the back and plug it in - voila, an induction range with hot-air oven on the somewhat-less-expensive. I sold the house 5 years later and moved to Sweden where I now cook on a wood-burning stove, from the future to the past. I like the past better, it also fits my rather dynamic cooking style - sliding and banging heavy cast-iron pans around is far less precarious on a cast-iron stove.
For example: 50A for the heat pump, 50A to charge your car, 50A for the range, 30A for the dryer, 30A for the water heater = 210A (all my examples are for 240V) + various lights and other things. Homes in the US are most commonly wired for 100, 150, or 200A.
So they'll run the range at 30A instead, but that means you can't use all the burners at the same time at full power.
If we are actually going to fully electrify the home 200A or more service is going to have to become the starting point. Residential panels > 200A in the US are rare (from what I read most power companies won't even supply such service), and that might need to change.
Our (five-zone) induction hob uses all three phases, it's connected using a 5-core cable.
See previous discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20798298
Admittedly, induction isn't 100% efficient, but it's very efficient! A gas flame heats up everything around it, whereas induction only heats up your cookware. The surface of an induction stove without any cookware is cool to the touch; in other cases, it's warm only due to the heat radiated back from your cookware.
I have done the math... Induction is 84% efficient, and gas is 40% efficient. So for most people, gas is still cheaper, unless you live in an area with very cheap hydroelectric.
Note that the 84% number is for a prototype model... 77% is for an on-the-market model, and it is beaten in efficiency by conventional electric for cookware matched in size to the heating ring.
Also, while gas is 'just a flame', the heat mostly rises, and right above it is the pan. Noticing that the pan, the hob, and the room feel warm/hot afterwards can be deceptive because the specific heat capacity of metal is 8x lower than that of the water in the food you're cooking, so you'd likely underestimate the efficiency.
On the other hand, if induction cooking lowers the air conditioning bills in the summer, it may pay for itself, compared to gas.
My local utility company is set to introduce a major rate hike for both electric and gas, but the per-unit of energy for gas is still far cheaper. Electric is getting so bad it might make sense to swap out my electric dryer for a gas one, even though it’s perfectly functional.
One more thing about how it is great. Since it heats the pan directly instead of the air underneath the pan, you can boil water for pasta without heating up the kitchen. Now, many of you have A/C to keep your kitchen comfortable, but then you are heating up the kitchen with the stove and then cooling it down with the A/C ...
My friends are not convinced. I get responses anywhere from no way to it's ok for me maybe but they really just love the feel of cooking on gas. These are supposedly environmentalists, too.
BTW the big photo on the top of the article is not induction but vitro-ceramic (the first version of something that would look at glass and not have flames, but this is not induction, just heating of a tingie under the glass plate)
Having used gaz since childhood for 30 years, the move to induction was fantastic. The only drawback is that you cannot cook with the cookware tilted (to pour some liquid into a small puddle and heat it directly, for instance)
Now I honestly only use gas at the moment because I moved in recently enough that I haven't bother to change - but it's getting higher on n my list every day...
How exactly is that dangerous?
It is a nice flat surface in the kitchen, and too many things in my household have been burnt by being placed on it.
They are easier to clean....
It's not 100% exactly the same heat distribution but when you pick your pan off of the fire it's also not getting mots of that heat either.
Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong about this (apparently wok cooking "needs the fire"), but like... I dunno, I've done a lot of stir fries and messing around with pots on an induction thing. The "auto-turn-off" thing only happens for me if I really leave it picked up for a couple minutes, otherwise it just re-engages pretty quickly.
I do not know actually if this is a real concern but would prefer others to chek instead of me :)
As for the "flame" - I feel that the heating with induction is much faster and consistent than gas.
Copper and aluminium capable induction systems exist by varying the frequency. https://na.panasonic.com/us/food-service-systems/commercial-...
Bit harsh to call it a "back water".. Corporate advances in malfeasance often originate there!
Gotta love the pop art too, real inovators
I got a nice collection of copper bottomed pots when my mother bought her induction cooker....