To anyone considering switching to an induction hob and hearing anecdotal stories of how some people don’t think they are “as hot” or “slower” than gas. I guarantee these are all related to the pans being used. It is of upmost importance that you get a really good set of pans “designed” for induction.
We have found “tri-ply” stainless steel pans work really well, better than on gas. Cast iron is also brilliant, I inherited loads of them. We have aluminium none stick frying pans with solid stainless steel bases, they work well.
Aluminium pans without a solid steel base are absolutely crap on induction - even the ones that say they work. Avoid them.
If you have any pans with a slightly curved base they won’t work. And you will have to get a Wok with a flat bottom designed specifically for induction.
Make sure you read reviews before you purchase any new pans, and if you are changing your hob to an induction one be prepared for replacing your pans - budget to spend more on them than the hob even.
We are absolutely converted to induction, love it and will never go back. Planning to one day get rid of the gas boiler too.
I recently bought a Polyscience/Breville Control Freak, and I’m increasingly convinced this is the future. It heats dramatically faster than a supposedly high end gas stove I compared it to despite being a lowly 1.6kW or so device. (Gas stoves are stupendously inefficient. That 15kBTU/hr stove may well deliver 15kBTU/hr to the air but not to your pan.). It heats quite evenly. And best of all, it has closed loop temperature control. Want to sauté some onions? Just do it and watch the onions — there is no longer a need to fiddle with a knob to keep the pan at the right temperature.
I wish this type of functionality was more widely available. There is absolutely no need for devices like this to be expensive.
Wow, that Polyscience/Breville Control Freak looks great - if anyone knows of a mid-level/affordable induction cooktop that preforms similarly I'd love to know if one exists.
Currently I have two induction cooktops (counter top models, not built-in hobs) - one from Ikea and one Nuwave brand. The Ikea one looks pretty good, but it lacks precision. Looks like the Ikea one is no longer available in the US, but here it is on their AU website:
The temperature settings go from 20 to 70 degree F increments. In particular, the jump from 210F to 280F really sucks. But it's great for boiling water, cooking pasta, etc.
The Nuwave induction cooktop I have allows 10 degree F increments, which is great for accurate precision. But it doesn't look very good in my opinion.
I'm also in the process of remodeling my kitchen and have a built-in Bertazzoni cooktop, which I've yet to unbox or install. I choose that because my wife wanted physical knobs instead of digital buttons and I agree that that does provide a nicer UI. I'm optimistic the knobs will provide precision temperature control.
Overall, I love cooking with induction - for control and clean air inside the house. However, one other issue I've struggled with is uneven temperature. Originally I thought cast iron would perform well, but it's not great with induction. I recently got some pretty decent stainless steel pots/pans from Tramontina, which are affordably priced compared Allclad, and those heat much more evenly. I also hope that when I install my built-in induction cooktop it will heat more evenly, perhaps with more magnetic rings.
I have a one-pan induction cooktop that I got at Best Buy for $50 that I use whenever I need more precise temperature control than I can get from my gas range (e.g., when I make candy or meringue).
I bet the Breville cooktop is much better than mine, but you don't need to spend anywhere near that amount to get something decent.
Yep, I have a $50 one that I use for boiling maple sap outdoors in the spring, but also indoors whenever it's useful to be able to set up a cook surface somewhere other than the kitchen. It doesn't have the super-precise control of the Breville, but it's still a great tool.
I'm not sure what you're looking at, but my wife and I have a mix of cast iron and some stainless steel that has been great and I don't think we paid more than $50 for any one piece.
Ahh that makes sense! For what it's worth, the cooktop we're using was $200. It is a bit rubbish: coil whine and the temp control is pretty coarse, but serviceable. I haven't looked, but I'd guess there's a sensible middle ground somewhere in between!
The Profile can supposedly do the closed-loop trick if you pair it with Heston Cue pans. The manual makes this sound like a real PITA, and do you really want a pan with batteries and bluetooth? The Control Freak is compatible with any sufficiently flat magnetic cookware. Do you really want to be limited to a choice of a whopping three compatible pans? The world is full of excellent pots and pans at varying price points, and these are not compatible with the Cue system. This includes, for example:
Essentially disposable nonstick pans (pay a small premium for induction compatibility).
Enameled cast iron Dutch ovens.
Very high end nitride-coated pans from Hestan, compatible with any induction stove except Hestan Cue.
Plain old cast iron.
Magnetic steel comals.
Carbon steel seasonable pans, paella pans, etc.
A flat-bottom wok.
All of those work on induction stoves, and all work on a device like the Control Freak. Just put them on and set a temperature.
On the other hand, the GE range has an app and buttons. Where’s the knob?
Where does the induction stove measure the temperature? I'm assuming there's a thermometer near the surface of the stove, which I guess is close enough to the food to get good results.
The thing with gas for me at least isn't that the heat is better or anything like that but that I feel like I can control the application of the heat better. You can move the pan around heat-surface (or an isotherm, technically) in 3D whereas with induction (I imagine it's better if you spend enough) for the same price it seems harder to get that feel.
I thought that when I first switched to induction. Then I realised that induction responds instantly to any changes you set in temperature so you don’t need to move the pan about in 3D space, just leave the pan on the stove and drop the heat right down.
I’m now back on gas after a house move and I miss induction so much.
> I realised that induction responds instantly to any changes
Hmm... My electric hob seems to control temperature by the amount of time the heating elements are active (+presumably a thermostat). There's a red light when the heating elements are active (or hot but switched off), and a definite click sound when the heating elements come on. You can see the heat immediately turn on when you change to a higher temp, and when you change to a lower temp it seems to just leave the application of heat off longer (I guess allowing elements to cool down to whatever the thermostat says they should be).
Sure all inductions jobs will use duty cycling (pulse width modulation if we’re getting technical). But that doesn’t determine responsiveness.
With a resistive hob (ceramic hob is the industry name) you’re relying on a large lump of stone (hence the name ceramic hob) to be a heat store and even out the elements lumpy power output. Problem with this approach is that it takes forever for the stone to heat up and cool down, so the hob is slow to respond.
With an induction hob, your heating pan directly with a electromagnetic field, the only thermal mass in the entire system is the pan. The hob can instantly change its power output, because its not relying on a stone to store energy, and thus has zero thermal mass.
So induction hob react at the speed of your pan, you have lightweight pan, then the pan temperature will change almost instantly. You got a heavy cast iron pan, then the pan will take a little longer to shed the extra heat.
FYI: If the hob glows when heating, it’s not induction. It’s a ceramic hob. Ceramic hobs are crap and give induction hobs a really bad name because the look the same when off. You can only tell if an induction hob is, if there’s a pan on top. They’re incapable of creating heat without a pan on top.
>inductions jobs will use duty cycling (pulse width modulation if we’re getting technical). But that doesn’t determine responsiveness.
It absolutely does when the pulses are on the order of ten seconds long, as in many electric ranges. But yes, the thermal mass of the heated coil/cooktop are also a major factor.
No it doesn’t, because change the ring setting will interrupt the current duty cycle, and terminates it early if it needed. A control system that didn’t do that would be more complicated than one that did, because it would require the control system to persist internal state across duty cycles.
Sure, in the limited sense of immediacy of response to change in control input. But in the more general sense of also considering accuracy/consistency of response to a control input, not so much. If you have a low thermal mass pan on a middling heat setting on a hob with excessively wide pwm like that, you can tell when the hob is on and when it's off just by how much the contents are sizzling any given second. The pan temperature is not stable because the pulses are too wide.
I’ve personally never encountered such a poorly designed induction hob. Induction hob require proper electronic control systems to operate, it would be weird to design such a system to operate with a wide PWM, it’s costs nothing for the system to operate at 1Hz or higher.
In ceramic hobs, they usually don’t have proper power control systems. They normally rely on a set of thermal switches to disconnect the main heating element when the ceramic element gets hot enough. The entire control system is analog and relies physical phenomena like wax expansion etc. Phenomena that is well know to be unresponsive, but very cheap.
My induction hob does similar on low power settings (at the lowest it's something like 1 second on to 4 seconds off). On higher power settings it's not noticable. I suspect the main reason for this is it's often harder (and more expensive) to design power electronics to operate over a wide PWM duty cycle efficiently, so the low-speed cycling is a way to provide the low settings without a significant cost increase.
Induction hubs are electric but not all electric hub are induction. I’m not certain what you have there, sounds a little like halogen zones though those are old and uncommon.
Induction doesn’t work by producing heat. It works by using electro magnets to excite the metal pots causing them to heat. This makes induction much more efficient than conventional electric (more efficient than gas too) but also fast to react to adjustments in heat settings because you’re not relying on conduction.
Yeah, no idea either, I rent my current place so it's just whatever the landlord put in years ago and there's only a brand name but no model number on the hob itself.
EDIT: from the link, a ceramic hob matches most closely
Yeah ceramic hobs are one of the, if not the, worst types of hob you have. I feel for your pain there because my first house had them and I found them to be borderline unusable.
My wife and I have a $200 two burner induction cooktop (Duxtop) and it definitely leaves a bit to be desired. You can tell it tries to keep temperature as conditions change, but it definitely struggles, and the adjustment is pretty coarse. I imagine $1500 Breville one someone else mentioned here is a different experience!
I bought a cheap (£200) 4 plate induction hob around 10 years and it worked really well most of the time (it only struggled if you tried to have all 4 plates on high temperatures so you’d have to think ahead a little if doing a roast). But if 1 to 3 plates running concurrently it was really reliable. So you don’t need to buy top end to get something useable.
100% - the ability to visually check the flame is crucial. Especially when you're cooking a lot of things quickly at different temperatures. Without that visual cue, you're just guessing every time. Induction is amazing, but harder to work with. There might be a good idea in making stoves that visually show the temperature of what's in the pot versus how much heat is being fed into it. That would maybe convince me to switch off gas.
A flame doesn’t tell you the temperature of what’s in the pot or pan either. You’ve trained yourself to intuitively understand your gas cooktop, you can do the same with an induction stove presenting you a heating number too. I don’t find induction any worse, it just took a while to relearn and internalize differences.
On our induction top, you set the temperature you want per eye. Instead of remembering that eggs need a flame about *this* big, you learn that eggs need about 320°F. It took some getting the hang of, but I wouldn't describe it as guesswork.
That's just a habit. Instead of visually checking the flame, you just visually read the large 4 digit LED where you set this in steps of 10 degrees Celsius, or whatever. They (mine) already do measure what's in the pot. Or how would you explain that it goes within 2 to 3 seconds from 90°C and just a few pearls to boiling bubbles if you set it to 100°C when there are 2 litres of water in it?
They are more easy to work with, IMO. Just get a good one.
The flame doesn't tell you squat, but if you insist then you can get induction cooktops with a fake flame effect to help you to continue to believe this nonsense. I use this one, it looks pretty cool.
My favorite way to show people how my induction stove works is to put some cold water in a kettle, pop it on a "burner", then turn it to "power boost". You can instantly see tiny bubbles forming on the bottom, and 20 seconds later it's at a rolling boil so intense you fear it may explode. I have no idea how anyone can say induction is slower than gas. And on the other end, low will slowly melt chocolate or heat a hollandaise without needing to steam a mixing bowl.
All the induction stoves I've tried, here in the EU, are great at boiling one pot of water. They suck at everything else.
E.g. want to boil two pots of water in parallel? No can do - after warming up seemingly forever you will have one pot boiling for 5 seconds, then stopping and letting the other pot boil for five seconds, and so on.
I want to love induction - no gas pipes, so much easier to clean, so much better for air quality - but the regular stuff you can buy in stores just isn't there yet. Just the fact that they use a plug which can carry at most 3kW should be enough proof that you cannot use them for serious cooking.
Holy smokes, if you folks across the pond plug your stoves into 3kw, you indeed should never use that for cooking. The plug behind my stove can carry 12, about 10 continuous.
Now, about your issue with parallel cooking: you indeed can not send Max Power to two pots if they are on the same rail. However, even the cheapest ranges I've ever seen have 4 burners, two rails. Which means you _could_ boil two pots of water, as long as you use the correct two burners. You learn pretty quickly which burners share a rail. I'd imagine the really nice ones have a transformer per burner so it's never an issue.
And as long as you're not trying to send boil-in-20-seconds kind of power, you can use all the burners without noticing anything.
Thats not the norm, we have at least 2 phases to our stovetop, and Iv'e never encountered any kind of power limit, even when using the "boost" mode on several pans at the same time.
We used to live in an apartment with single phase, there we had to somewhat limit the induction top to about 5,5kW and once again I practically never enocuntered it maxing out.
"To anybody concerned about anecdotal evidence, here's my anecdotal evidence."
Snideness aside, the fact that you have to concern yourself with what pans you buy for an induction stove is enough reason for many to not buy one. You can no longer buy any pan at a store, you must do your research first.
Throw out my current pans and buy even more expensive ones? You're not exactly selling me the induction here.
They’re not necessarily more expensive and you won’t necessarily have to throw anything away they just need to be made with enough ferrous metal that it will work. A simple magnet test will tell you. In fact of all the cookware I have one of my more expensive pots doesn’t work on induction which seemed really odd to me.
I'm thinking of replacing my crappy glass top stove with an induction one. I did a test with a borrowed portable induction burner. Out of six pots and pans, five of them worked with it. My gut feeling is induction has become common enough in rest of the world that most commodity cookwear will work with it.
FWIW, I don't doubt you and don't necessarily feel the need to be convinced here. The GP however posited exactly these things though - so your response is probably better suited for their comment.
Even cheaper if you buy from a thrift store and put in some elbow grease. If you're an especially tool- and skill-rich hacker, then arc/stick welding with cast iron welding sticks can repair even lost causes. Of course, it isn't "cheap" by then, but any excuse to scratch that hacker/maker itch is fine by me.
I'm not really sure what welding has to do with any of this.
A cast iron pan at Wal-Mart is roughly the same price as a non-stick skillet and will outlast it by decades. Even if you don't want the Wal-Mart brand, you can buy Lodge, which is respected enough even by cast iron fanatics, and is cheaper even than mid range non stick or aluminum/steel skillets.
> I'm not really sure what welding has to do with any of this.
If one is willing to perform possible repairs, they can prevent tossing out the original embedded energy cost of manufacturing and delivering the original cast iron product (and many other items), which if one is so inclined, makes choosing the non-gas stove option and re-gearing for it (assuming they have say, only ceramic cookware) for ecological reasons as one decision factor an even more energy-thrifty choice.
We throw away an astonishing amount of goods that in past generations would be repaired, because we heavily externalize the costs of doing so, since we're such a poor civilization in Banks' The Culture sense. Like externalizing the pipeline leak costs of supporting the gas infrastructure that sits behind the gas stove.
Well the gas feeling slower to bringing things to a boil is to be expected; induction is much much much quicker at boiling things (~10 mins on gas vs ~2-3 mins using induction).
I was resoundingly in the 'induction hobs are crap' camp until this NYE when we found ourselves staying away in the countryside in a place with a basic plug-in induction hob. I sighed and presumed my Absolutely Necessary morning tea would take until the heat death of the universe to boil, but nup, it was done in significantly less time than it takes me at home, when using gas.
If a crappy plug-in hob can boil water that quickly, it can cook that quickly too.
Next move I'm getting that sorted out - no more gas! (Mind you, companies are beginning trials here in the UK mixing Hydrogen with the gas supply, so there's a part of me that still wonders at the future benefit/end to end efficiency).
> there's a part of me that still wonders at the future benefit/end to end efficiency
The future is in completely abandoning residential gas infrastructure, which will have immense benefits in allowing us to stop maintaining and expanding millions and millions of miles of leaky underground pipes. No amount of tweaking the mixture will change the fact that electricity is broadly useful for everything, and that gas is only useful for a small number of things that are quickly being overtaken by electricity.
Hell, if we had devices that could instantly summon sufficient quantities of water from thin air, I'd get rid of my water hookup, too, even though water lines aren't nearly as bad for the atmosphere as gas lines are.
> The future is in completely abandoning residential gas infrastructure...
Gas tankless water heaters are still sometimes a cost-efficient per-therm choice if you are already plumbed for gas [1] [2].
I've yet to find a calculator that figures the TCO (including costs that are externalized today, like pipe losses to the environment) between tankless water heaters using natural gas, propane, resistive electric, induction electric, and heat pump versions of those types, though. There are many different situations, so what is overall systemically efficient in one situation will not be suitable for another.
It would come as little surprise to most HN readers that I have a number of very expensive resistive air heaters that we call computers laying around for my work, so in my particular situation, a heat pump water heater works extremely well. However, I'm still unsure of the TCO after all the maintenance and repair is accounted for over the decades I will own the heat pump as it is undeniably more complex than more common water heaters. So I will give a nod to resistive water heaters as a likely good TCO choice in most situations after all costs are said and done [3].
Heat pump water heating works with surprisingly low temperatures. For example, if your basement naturally approaches 45-50 degrees from the walls, that's plenty to keep a 50-80 gallon tank heated without drawing heat from the rest of the house in the winter. During the other seasons, any incidental cooling is of course a benefit.
Of course, but I'm more thinking about near to mid term, where a heck of a lot of domestic heating and cooking infrastructure has been built upon the assumption of gas, so is an incumbent sunk cost.
All new builds and renovations should be encouraged to deploy full-electric.
- ed: Sorry, I should've specified - I meant 'in the UK' for the large amount of existing gas infrastructure.
But… Why did you think induction hobs were slow? It's almost their whole point that they're fast! Now, admittedly I'm speaking as someone who has never used a gas cooktop, and accustomed to coil-plate or glass-ceramic cooktops (gas hobs are very rare around here), and I guess anything is fast compared to a coil-plate, but still.
Personally, I hate cooking on induction. My parent have it and it never worked for me. I need to see/hear the gas to be able to control the heat properly.
Once they shut off the gas lines due to the energy transition, I’m going to run a gas pipe from the kitchen to my basement and just buy it in canisters.
> Once they shut off the gas lines due to the energy transition,
This won't happen. What will happen instead is that the gas to cook your omelette in the morning will cost three times more than going to a restaurant would and you'll make your own decision about shutting down your gas lines.
Uh, no. You can make Methane from CO2 and electricity with something like 70% efficiency. So while gas will become a lot more expensive, it won't become too expensive to use it for cooking. You don't need all that much gas for cooking.
You need to factor in the fact that in many areas natural gas is literally a waste byproduct of the oil extraction process, which is why it’s cheap enough for us to cook with. It’s not just that we would need to make methane at 70% efficiency, it’s that we’d be transitioning from something that’s artificially cheap to something that must be made special purpose just for cooking right as alternatives are getting cheaper. And then there’s the distribution network. That’s not free to maintain, and in a world where better electric options are available municipalities are going to want to stop paying for it.
This is the same thing I say to petrol heads about gas. Sure, there might be some left for enthusiasts. But enthusiasts alone will not be able to afford the massive economies of scale that make that consumption anything close to affordable.
I argue that the price for fuel essentially doesn't matter because you don't need all that much. Electricity costs a couple of cents per kWh, so it's very unlikely that synthetic Methane will cost more than a few dozen cents per kWh. So you can run a stove for an hour a day for one or two bucks or so. I guess that's several times more than you pay for natural gas, but a lot cheaper than going to a restaurant.
> so it's very unlikely that synthetic Methane will cost more than a few dozen cents per kWh
No, it’ll cost much more than that. You’re ignoring the factored in cost of storing and distributing gas. This is something that’s only affordable because of economies of scale (and government support) because it was the only practical option for heating and hot water for a while. As electricity gets cheaper and people switch over to heat pumps and electric hot water heaters, the cost of that distribution network is going to fall on fewer people, driving up their cost.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that the gas bill for synthetic methane just for cooking was as high as your current gas bill for heating and cooking. Once economies of scale go away, things get costly fast.
> So you can run a stove for an hour a day for one or two bucks or so. I guess that's several times more than you pay for natural gas, but a lot cheaper than going to a restaurant.
Sure. But the competitor to a natural gas stove isn’t eating out, it’s electricity. Especially as gas gets more expensive and induction ranges become the norm.
I think it’s more likely that we’ll see carbon taxes make it prohibitively expensive than the cost of production itself. In Canada, we’ve got a tax going up to $170/ton by 2030. If most homes go fully electric, I bet that goes up even further.
Or you can get an induction wok burner with a curved base, which are just phenomenal… i bought a de detreich but there are a number of brands that do them. It’s way hotter than my previous gas wok ring, and also doesn’t produce so much smell because the gas itself is not rising around the pan and carrying vapours away.
That’s cool! I have an induction stove (it’s fantastic) but no woks. I’ll probably just end up getting a flat bottom one myself but it’s really cool that those curved induction burners exist (just googled it) - I’d never heard of them until now.
I believe they sell induction hobs that project blue light 'flames' to reflect the heat strength as a visual aid. Not sure if any do the audio as well.
A wok has 2 important features: it has a round bottom and it’s thin. The thin sheet steel allows it to heat up and cool down quickly. Maybe you can make a thick-bottomed pan that has a rounded bottom on the inside. And maybe you can pump enough energy in it to make it heat up quickly, but you can’t suck the energy back out. If it’s that massive it will not cool down quickly.
The materials used for induction woks have very low heat capacity, but are very good at conducting heat. They get instantaneously hot, and instantaneously cold, with just the press of a button in your stove.
This is pretty much the case for all good induction kitchen-ware, since this is one of the main ways of cooking that induction allows that no other kitchen powersupply has.
I can’t access that page from Europe, it gives me a “to our valued customers: fuck you!” page.
If it’s heavy cast iron, it’s not a wok but a wadjan. Does it have 2 handles as well ? A wadjan is an Indonesian wok-like pan, but unlike a wok a wadjan retains heat due to it being heavy cast iron. A wok should be thin sheet steel so it heats up and cools down very quickly.
Wadjans are very good for things that have to stew/simmer, which is common in Indonesian cuisine. It has different uses than a Chinese wok.
I have seen wadjan but I did not know the name, the one I have is sorta a cross between the two. No flat bottom inside the pan but it has handles like the wadjan (probably due to the weight).
Yeah, it isnt quite like a carbon steel wok but most people in North America wont have a a wok burner to hold the round bottom so they need the flat part.
You also definitely cant cook in them quite like a wok since as you say the cast iron holds so much heat. I usually just get it real hot on the burner for 5 or 6 minutes and then stir fry something. You have to take the food out when it is ready though because moving so much iron off the burner doesn't cool it down as quick.
Can you clarify, are you certain you're talking about induction? Inductive cooktops are a relatively recent trend, if you grew up with an electric range there's a good chance it was a resistive cooktop, not an inductive cooktop. Resistive cooktops are pretty notoriously unsatisfying.
> Can you clarify, are you certain you're talking about induction? Inductive cooktops are a relatively recent trend
Not that recent, at least not here in Europe. I know the difference, they had a resistive cooktop maybe 15 years ago or so, that was even worse, took forever to respond.
There are several problems with induction. While not inherent to induction, the controls tend to be crap. For some reason most induction cooktops have touch controls, which are an absolute disaster. At my parents previous place they had one where you had to first select the burner, and then use +/- touch buttons to change the temperature. You couldn’t quickly change anything. And of course the touch controls never worked if you had wet hands (and why would you have wet hands when cooking, right ?) Although indiction plates with knobs apparently do exist, I haven’t seen any yet.
A problem that is inherent is the complete lack of feedback: you can’t see a flame, you can’t hear it, meaning you can’t adjust the temperature by feel. Another inherent problem is that it limits the type of cookware you can use on it, only flat bottomed steel pans.
Basically, they are very impractical devices and not fit for purpose in any way.
You're welcome to your own personal preference, but concluding that "they are very impractical devices and not fit for purpose in any way" is so clearly hyperbolic that it deflates your entire position.
I mean, they are probably okay if all you use it for is boil a pot of pasta or heat some soup. If you actually like cooking they are pretty much useless. It’s like working with one hand tied behind your back.
>It's one thing to have a preference, and another thing altogether to lie about the things you don't like to bolster your preference.
step back for a moment and realize that you're calling another human a bullshitter and a liar about their preference in cooking equipment. They're explaining their anecdotal position on the matter -- not teaching a college course.
I'm a big cook, i'm always in any cooking related thread on HN -- I never see the crowd rile up as much as when induction hobs are ever mentioned. It's strange to me that induction hobs create so much conflict and illicit so much passion from both sides of the aisle..
But they werent actually saying anything about their own preference, they were claiming that people who like induction don't like cooking, and that induction is worthless for people who like cooking. That is a claim that is provably false, and therefore by definition is a lie.
True, a flat bottom means it isn’t a “classic” Wok but we find them just as usable.
I think there are probably still UX problems to be solved with Induction, the visual feedback on gas is better. We fortunately have knobs on ours (I hate the touch buttons on some).
Not from the country-wide natural gas network, as they contain propane instead of methane. They will keep selling those as you can’t exactly take a induction hob camping.
Propane requires a slight modification to a gas hob (basically, different sized nozzles) but those came with my hob and it’s trivial to replace them.
I have an induction cooktop and my cast iron pans have been terrible. Cast iron has lousy heat conduction and induction stoves do not have even distribution. They negate a lot of the benefits of induction, which is the ability to put a massive amount of heat into the pan very quickly.
High carbon steel pans (the kind used by kitchen services) have been brilliant. Every time I've seen an induction cooktop in use in a commercial service (for example, at my work place cafeteria at the "rice meal" station) they use high carbon steel pans.
The biggest problem: no cooking during power outages, which happen around 2-3x a year.
Surprised to hear you have had a bad experience. We use stainless still pans for all the normal sized pans. It’s large pots/casserole dishes/Dutch ovens we have in cast iron and they work really well. We also have an cast iron skillet that is great, gets very hot very quickly.
You do need to be careful using carbon steel on induction, at least until you get the hang of it: the instant heat makes warpage easy to encounter, especially if the coil is undersized relative to the pan (US portable hobs have tiny diameter coils).
> I have an induction cooktop and my cast iron pans have been terrible. Cast iron has lousy heat conduction and induction stoves do not have even distribution.
That’s interesting, can you compare the heat distribution problem to resistive? I have a gas range now, but when I had resistive I would preheat my cast iron in the oven for nice uniform heat distribution
High carbon steel has less carbon than cast iron. Cast iron contains substantial amounts of Ledeburite, while steel contains none or at most negligible Ledeburite inclusions.
They’re not quite the same, cast iron generally has a higher carbon composition range and a different phase distribution. Cast iron has a much lower thermal conductivity
I thought this was true (it makes some sense), but the data seems to show the opposite. This source has cast iron at 52 W/m-K, and 1% carbon steel at 43 W/m-K (0.5% carbon steel is at 54 W/m-K). Now, this obviously depends a lot on the processing and heat treatment of each material. But at the very least, the difference is not massive.
I guess most of the reputation of cast iron comes from the chunky shapes of the pans, and that the higher end stainless cookware is often cladding around copper core
Completely agree. Switched to induction cooktop 9 months ago. Aside from the health benefits (a nice bonus), we also find the cooking experience to be far superior over a gas cooktop.
The issue with induction isn’t speed, not even close. The issue relative to has is the evenness of the heat distribution over a large surface area.
Gas isn’t even remotely worth the downsides but there’s a number of dishes I can make that are easier and higher quality to do on gas, like if I’m trying to sear a large pan full of meat.
You just need an induction hob that has large induction surface (or even +-the whole surface), not usual circles of varying sizes, in case you have oversized pans.
From physics point of view the way you raise temperature of pan has 0 effect on what's happening in the pan.
I’ve considered that should be perfectly possible in theory but in practice it seems pretty rare to see an induction stove with a coil larger than an 8” diameter which simply won’t really effectively work for a 12” frypan. By comparison it’s relatively easy to find a low to mid end gas burner that can evenly heat a 12” frypan or a wok or what have you. I think part of the reason why is the appliance being bottlenecked by its standardized electrical power source, but I also think it’s just a matter of manufacturers prioritizing cost and customers not understanding the issue.
The only real solutions to this issue I could find are smaller and thicker pans, and the use of things like ovens and barbecues.
> From physics point of view the way you raise temperature of pan has 0 effect on what's happening in the pan.
in a spherical cow sense, yeah, heat is heat. but the distribution of that heat is going to depend a lot on the implementation, and can make a big difference for searing meats or making delicate sauces.
radiant glasstops are really good at even heating, but only if the bottom of your pan is exactly the same size as the burner. the edge of the bottom ends up a little cooler, because energy is radiated out from the unheated sides, but not dramatically so.
I've found gas ranges to be pretty terrible for even heating. you get a hot ring where the most intense part of each flame touches the bottom, but a significantly cooler center. only the most expensive gas ranges come close to the evenness of a pedestrian glasstop. main benefit of these is you can effectively change the size of the burner, so nice if you have a lot of odd-sized pans.
I haven't had a chance to try an induction range myself, but I've read a lot of ymmv type posts on the internet. the gist seems to be that the tech itself is very good, but the outcome depends on the (electical) conductivity of the pan itself. which makes sense to me, at least in a handwavy sort of way. I wouldn't expect every pan to heat itself perfectly evenly in response to a uniform magnetic field.
I have an induction and the heat has been far more even and controllable than it has on gas. Maybe it has to do with the quality of the burner or of the pans?
I love induction. I did however struggle with my carbon steel pan. It just wouldn't season properly. I followed the instructions from the manufacturer, online guides. You name it. The thing would start shedding its coat after a while. It was a mess.
Then we moved to a house with an old electric stove. The pans turned to pure magic. More non-stick than our teflon pans.
Then we moved again to a place with an induction stove and bam: the pans are shit again.
It is obviously me, of course. Heat is heat. But something about induction makes me unable to use carbon steel.
My issue is not the pans, it's using duty cycle to control the amount of energy added. I can't effectively pan fry anything without using cast iron or enough(read: too much) oil to retain some heat mass, because either it gets too hot and past the smoke point of the oil or too low and the food will cool off between heating cycles. The other slight annoyance is coil whine.
Absolutely unmatched for boiling water, and I'm very happy using it with a cast iron dutch oven for slow cooking and soups or stews.
Sounds like you have a glass top electric coil stove, not induction. Induction has a very stable fast heat, cooks like gas. Glass top electric are the one that turn on for 10 seconds off for 30, never the right temp.
I replaced a glass top stove with an induction one last year, couldn't be happier. I can actually fry eggs now.
Low quality ones generally have that problem due to using PWM to control the temperature. I've used cheaper and more expensive ones, and the more expensive ones have much more fine control of temperature, and not just a toggle between on and off.
Yes the stainless steel tri ply pans on an electric stove are pretty awesome. I haven’t really cooked on a gas stove to compare though. Some people think stainless steel pans are worse/cheaper than non stick, but that is not the case. Chefs use stainless steel all the time and prefer it. But the secret is learning to deglaze the pan to free anything stuck to the bottom of the pan in order to make cleaning magnitudes easier.
Stuff that isn't reactive can be well cleaned using ammonia vapor (which will break down grease and burned on grease and so on). Just put it in a bag or other container with some ammonia (no need to submerge, it's the vapor that does the work) and let it sit for a while.
Flat bottom wok doesn’t really work. You lose the heat going up the sides. I bought one of those butane table top burners just for wok use. Induction is great for everything else.
Due to a recent-ish move, I have gone from ~20 years with a gas cooker to induction (with about 6 months of halogen in-between). Induction is pretty good. It lacks the visceral feedback of "how hard am I driving this specific ring/cooking spot right now" that a gas flame has. But, it probably offers more precision.
If you’re willing to use a cast iron wok, Lodge makes one with a flat bottom on the outside but curved on the inside. You have to make some major technique concessions, but it will work on induction, and if you use a butane torch while flipping food you can almost get a wok hei going.
This has sort of been my experience with induction beyond woks too, it often requires technique and equipment concessions. Great for boiling water and sautéing though. The tops also have durability/longevity issues when compared to gas and that isn’t usually acknowledged.
That looks fascinating, I would love to know the physics of that ring and how it works. I had always assumed you needed a whole solid ferrous ring touching the glass plate whereas this is only touching in three places. It must then be electrically conducting from the ring to the Wok to induct the eddy current as those three points wouldn’t be enough to conduct heat.
Alternatively maybe it’s just relying on inducting directly to the Wok bottom but the surface area touching the glass plate is very small so I can’t see it working well.
Induction works with magnets. The electromagnets in the stove induct energy into the pan and that's what heats up.
The ring does three things (probably). Keeps the wok supported, transfers heat to the pan, and tricks the sensors in the stove into thinking there's a flat pan on it.
You would need to get a special flat bottom
Wok designed for induction. I believe there are also some induction woks that come with a special plate or ring you place them on to make them work and still have a curved bottom, I have no experience of them.
A good point. Alot of depends on the style of cooking you do, and how heat is used in that cooking style. I personally dont even have a wok, so the idea would never occur to me.
You mean the (non-existent) health effects of non-ionizing radiation exposure?
The damage feels like heat at lower frequencies (sitting in front of a fire oh no!) and a sizzle at higher frequencies (sitting in the sun oh no!). Induction stovetops emit orders of magnitude less than a fire and nothing at higher frequencies. Essentially: they get hot.
The best advice I can give: if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Well, at least sitting in the sun can definitely cause health issues :)
I think the article is precisely about studying more closely something that was thought to be safe (by the author at least), keeping an open mind never hurts :)
It's not like I would switch back to gas even if induction radiation was found to be causing some kind of health issue anyway, just like I'm still using my phone, because it's convenient (or going at the beach even if it's sunny because I like it ^^)
Keeping an open mind never hurts, but being willfully blind to a hundred years of studies does. There is no proposed mechanism for these health effects. It is literally "be scared of the boogeyman because you don't know better".
Well induction has no measurable negative health effects whereas gas is so bad for you that it leads to a I think in the realm of a quarter increase in childhood asthma? In terms of negative health effects there’s combustion and then there’s everything else.
EMFs (such as from induction cooktops) absolutely have an impact on health. A study I cited in another comment indicates that a compliant induction cooktop emits 16x the amount on non-ionizing radiation that’s considered safe.
When we got a nice induction stove we spend years showing off to friends how it could boil a pot of water in about 15 seconds. But the thing we like most about it is how easy it is to clean. :)
Slightly curved _undersides_ works really well on induction in my opinion. Since its contactless its better than the old cast-iron stovetops at least for rounded pans. :)
We have found “tri-ply” stainless steel pans work really well, better than on gas. Cast iron is also brilliant, I inherited loads of them. We have aluminium none stick frying pans with solid stainless steel bases, they work well.
Aluminium pans without a solid steel base are absolutely crap on induction - even the ones that say they work. Avoid them.
If you have any pans with a slightly curved base they won’t work. And you will have to get a Wok with a flat bottom designed specifically for induction.
Make sure you read reviews before you purchase any new pans, and if you are changing your hob to an induction one be prepared for replacing your pans - budget to spend more on them than the hob even.
We are absolutely converted to induction, love it and will never go back. Planning to one day get rid of the gas boiler too.