As a scientist (an immunologist) who leads a research lab on lung inflammation including asthma, the cavalier attitude Times columnists have toward scientific references in their articles is appalling.
RMI is a thinktank with an agenda. Not a research institution. And Brady Seals is not a scientist. Note the lack of PhD. She has an MBA and has never worked in science. Nor did she 'author a study'. She authored a REPORT. Which is not peer-reviewed and not published in a reputable journal.
As an immunologist I assure you that scientific evidence does not indicate that 'increase of asthma is on par with living in a home with a smoker'.
And frankly- just walking outdoors in NYC you're exposed to far higher levels of lung-irritating pollutants than you are cooking stir fry on your stove. But that doesn't fit the agenda the Times is pushing with multiple induction stove articles lately all focused on bogus health effects and the (more legitimate) climate concerns.
That being said, It might not be as bad as living with a smoker (as the NYT asserted) but it is bad for you. The YouTuber Climate Town did an excellent video on gas cooking which exposed some very nasty truths of the gas lobbyists and the negative health effects it has on the population.
Citations are in the description: https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54
would love to see an induction stove with a usable UI. everything I have used is designed by a person that never had to cook for more than 1. the automatic off during the slightest spill, and the impossibility to operate buttons with wet/greasy hands, has to be one of the biggest design mistakes in the history of engineering.
my idea of a great time is to invite this engineer to cook with me a 4 course dinner for 8, where everything is timing crucial, and I get to scream at them like Gordon Ramsey the minute the stove switches off and they lost momentum with the heat but can't operate the button because "wet fingers".
the problem isn't induction and consumers cooking with gas, but that we have a culture operating on "ownership and exploitation" of the environment.
We should not accept any health claims without quantification. "Objectively bad for your health" is not particularly relevant, even if I accept that at face value. For example, in right-hand-drive countries, making left turns is "objectively worse" for your health than making right turns.
And sorry, I watched the first 30 seconds of that YouTube video and don't see any reason why I'd trust it any more than the times article.
there is no such thing as "objectively bad". Risk is always measured in relative amounts vs something else.
The way you would know this to be true is when professional kitchens are defaulting to induction instead of gas. (I think this has started to happen in a few high end places, which is exciting)
I am putting in a new kitchen soon and it will have a gas hob + electric oven because I love cooking and gas is my default. Every electric hob I have ever used has been garbage, and I am not dropping 2 grand to try induction and maybe discover what sound like familiar issues (ha, I am turning myself off now).
Gas always just works. Apply steady heat - perfect cooking experience. Maybe next time.
But people with electric cooking devices can still have high pollutant levels without proper ventilation.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/residential-cooki...
It's slower, less flexible, makes some styles of sauce making impossible, and probably worst of all - invisible.
Has there been some quantum leap in induction cooking I haven't experienced?
They actually said,
“For children who live in a home with a gas stove, the increased risk of asthma is on par with living in a home with a smoker,” she said.
Every kitchen I’ve ever been in with a gas stove has some sort of ventilation. Open window, fan, hood, etc.
Same for the environment. Let’s look at older style electric coil resistant heat elements. Largely inefficient and the power generated how?
This is mostly propaganda. The
Politicians and their media lackeys in the media need to stop trying to micro-manage peoples' lives.
https://jacksonlab.stanford.edu/publication/methane-and-nox-...
It asserts that cooking with gas "has been shown to be catastrophic for the environment." What's the basis for this assertion? They link to another NYT article that cites a study that says, "annual methane emissions from all gas stoves in U.S. homes have a climate impact comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 500,000 cars." [1]
That might sound like a lot until you realize there are 280 million cars in the U.S. In other words, the total impact of all gas stoves in U.S. homes is equal to 0.18% that of cars.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency-c...
The lack of a PhD doesn't make someone "not a scientist". Science is what one does, not what one is.
I have a doctorate from Oxford, but I'm less of a scientist now than I was as an undergraduate student.
yes but someone who has a MBA is definitely NOT a scientist but a salesman.
I know this because it doesn't happen when I'm boiling.
These effects are cumulative, it's not some threshold you cross where the other negatives are no longer relevant because you do something far worse.
It's like people who rationalize eating a pint of ice cream before bed because they had mcdonalds and a beer for lunch already. The appropriate action would be to skip dinner and dessert altogether, but they're doing the opposite due to such wrongheaded thinking.
You should really be thinking "hey, my cooking produces a lot of particulates, I wonder if I can clean up the process elsewhere at least"
If you want to make certain forms of energy "illegal" because of some "lung-irritating pollutants", I mean why not start with the unsustainability and cancer risks of these poly type chemicals, no? Especially ones coming in direct contact with your food, and your water supply (a.k.a Dish Washing?)? Never mind the actual environmental damage of manufacturing chemicals like these?
This is a fallacy. Regulations can be improved even without being perfect and your pet peeve not being addressed in a specific discussion does not make the discussion useless. Gas is harmful, as well as some antiadhesive coatings. Saying we should not do anything about either because the other would still be bad is not particularly smart. It is also the contorted logic that lobby groups use when they know they are on the wrong side of a public health issue.
What are normal people suppose to do without expertise on any subject.
Not against induction cooking but It is very common for these type of reporting that for induction cooking to succeed they must get rid of every single gas stove. And make gas stove cooking as evil. Start a movement, conjure a trend, make hype.
What has changed?
I am getting one when I get a new stove, but then again I do not have reticulated gas here.
My mother had one and it was great
This is unfortunately just how the world is. Epistemology is hard, and there are a ton of people out there who make it harder (Three guesses as to whether the author of this article, or any other crappy prestige-publication journalist, thinks they're lying).
It's a scary and confusing world! At some level you just have to internalize that, build the most accurate model that's worth the overhead, and accept that you'll be wrong a lot.
Yes, really. I personally love the aesthetics of flames on the stove, and this might lead me to choose a gas stove over the alternatives despite minor downsides like being slower to bring water to a boil. On the other hand, the air quality issue seems like a much more significant downside, though I haven’t researched it much. (I haven’t personally ever had the opportunity to choose the type of stove for a place I’ll be living, so it hasn’t come up. Someday.)
Also I can make smores when I don't feel like getting a fire going.
I do have an induction plug in hot plate and for actually cooking its really quite good. It boils water faster than all but my 21k btu burner on just 110v, dumps no heat into the room, cools down when I lower the temp as fast as gas, and did I mention it dumps no heat into the room?
As far as air quality taking anything above boiling temperatures inside is super bad for your lungs no matter how you do it. The NO isn't nearly as bad as the particulates created by searing or frying.
the NYT has always been agenda driven. even for the iraq war they were spreading the WMD bullshit to lead the US into war.
"I have a PhD and I know better" is not a compelling argument.
It's weird that they use their immunologist credentials to specifically attack it being worse than second hand smoke (which doesn't seem particularly controversial) as it seems very commonly accepted that it's bad, which you'd think an immunologist would know. Like if you look up any asthma charity for advice on your child's asthma, they're going to have this in the list of avoidable triggers. Why such venom because a reporter has (though probably hasn't) mildly exaggerated a real threat?
https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resource...
> Anything that burns inside the house will create smoke that can damage your lungs. There are many things you can do to help protect you and your family’s health from air pollution inside your home:
> Use the cleanest burning fuel you can find and afford. Electricity is the cleanest and does not create any household air pollution
I'd previously seen reports on the studies about gas stoves being harmful even when off, and wondered about the credibility.
Why do you think you need a PhD to be a scientist? Many famous scientists, even some distinguished professors, don’t have a PhD. A PhD isn’t even the only type of doctorate!
Examples? I'm really not aware of anyone, so I'm curious.
My dilemma as I catch more and more propaganda: should we support it as it is our side or should we try to expose it as it is not true?
I'd still rather not breathe any harmful agents at all though, when better tech exists.
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!
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.
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 could play hockey in it too!
https://www.amazon.com/Lodge-Pro-Logic-Handles-14-inch-Black...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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)
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.
Copper and aluminium capable induction systems exist by varying the frequency. https://na.panasonic.com/us/food-service-systems/commercial-...
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...
I got a nice collection of copper bottomed pots when my mother bought her induction cooker....
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.
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.)
[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...
https://geizhals.de/?cat=hherdset&xf=1959_Induktion~8421_60~...
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.)
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.
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.
[1] https://www.gaggenau.com/global/products-list/cooktops/400-s...?
That's why, for a european like me, an article like this one seems totally extraneous to hacker news front page
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.
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 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.
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?
Having read this article I noticed that they aren't all like this.
Had a cast-iron pan on “hi” or “powerboost”. It heated up so fast it cracked. It was like a gunshot, scared the bejeezsus outta me. Surprisingly, it did not shatter the oven top.
Advice: don’t buy Samsung. Their products are always garbage. The stove’s convection no longer works. The dishwasher doesn’t clean well and plastic bits have disintegrated. The fridge has an icing-up problem. Every Samsung product is shit. Spend the extra dosh, get something from a better manufacturer.
There’s actually a large learning curve. With a normal stove of any sort, you set a power level. Different stoves have different degrees of responsiveness, differing levels of UI annoyance (knobs at one end; phone apps at the other), and different abilities to work well at low power, but they do fundamentally the same thing. The Control Freak knob does not control power; it controls _tempererature_. To boil pasta, you set it to 240 (F) or so. To carmelize onions, something like 330 will do it, and the onions won’t burn. Want to keep your stew warm? Set it to 160 and ignore it. If you put someone who hasn’t used one before in front of one, they get rather confused until they get the hang of it. If you out someone used to it in front of a normal stove, they’re disappointed.
The idea we had was that we'd use it for Cantonese hot pot, and just put it away in its case for storage the rest of the time.
We were dead wrong. It takes up a lot of counter space in our apartment kitchen, but since we unboxed it it has never moved from the counter for the last 3 years.
It has replaced our hob for 80% of cooking (in general, we only use the hob when we need to cook two things at once), and when it's not in use for other things, we leave a kettle on top of it.
It's also industrially specced so we can actually leave it on forever -- when we have a stew we want to eat tomorrow, sometimes we just leave it at 65°C until we want to eat it the next day.
It's so amazing I wish it came in a 4 hob configuration and we can replace our stovetops completely (GE has something similar, but we've had terrible experiences with GE appliances).
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
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
So unless you leave pans and pots on the hobs when you're not cooking, you're good.
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.
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!
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.
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.
When I was in college, I wanted to be able to make pasta in my dorm room. The dining hall was fine, but it was my first time away from home, and I missed cooking pasta.
The rules said that hotplates weren't allowed in dorms, so I bought a portable induction cooker for $60 off Amazon. It can't be a hotplate if it doesn't get hot! (And I didn't exactly ask permission.)
For $60, it was great. It was small and light and plugged into a normal outlet, but could boil water in about the same time as a normal stove.
If my apartment didn't already come with a gas stove, I could easily forego a standard range in favor of a couple of these portable cookers. I've never used a "real" induction range, but $1,000 seems awfully expensive compared to $60 per burner...
Look on Home Depot or Lowes website. Full cooktop w oven is a totally separate market than gluing four hot plates together. Induction has been a high-end thing for a long time, so there aren’t bargain basement induction ranges. Stuff for sale in the US is competing with mid to high end gas.
Interestingly, only my landline broadband connection blocks them (Aussie Broadband), not my mobile provider (Telstra, Optus)!
EDIT: contacted Aussie since it looks like they've forgotten to unblock it.
EDIT: Not related to blocking - turns out archive.today returns invalid IP when queries by Cloudflare DNS resolvers (which I use): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDNS_Client_Subnet#Controversy...
Archive.today's maintainer decided they didn't want to deal with it, so they intentionally return incorrect DNS results to Cloudflare IPs. Cloudflare's CEO has stated they could just detect and override it, but that would be essentially MITMing DNS, which felt like an overreach: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
There is also probably a statistics abuse here with the "emissions while not in use" is more likely large rare leakage incidents rather than median kinds of events. Keeping in mind that the amount of methane lost to the atmosphere from petroleum production is absolutely enormous, undercounted, and would certainly dwarf any gas leaks from your kitchen.
But this is the kind of "bad for you" thing which appeals to many people that want to do good and are easily sold ideas by others who don't know what they're really talking about but are good at getting attention.
“Probably”
“Don’t know what they’re really talking about”
Do you have evidence for these counter claims?
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...
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.
Usually any discussion about induction stoves seems to wholly revolve around European-centric cuisines, which is why I'm surprised to see this article quote a positive experience from a self-described "Kind of Chinese" restaurant. I genuinely wonder how they manage it and what I'm missing.
I wish there was more granular heat control aka faster on/off switching/temperature modulation, some stoves are really bad which makes frying especially complicated as the heat comes in pulses of seconds.
Btw. for my new apartment I was wondering if there are ways to avoid scratches on the induction glass plate and turns out there are protective silicone mats, which also help against slipping. Anyone tried those yet?
Random Amazon link of what I mean: https://www.amazon.com/Induction-Cooktop-Mat-Fiberglass-Prot...
I gave induction a solid trial run and in the end, it didn’t cut it. The stupid controls design made it even worse.
Also, gas is not dangerous from fumes at all if you have an externally vented hood, which you should have with ANY cooktop, as cooking fumes are worse for health than the byproducts of a blue flame.
Whoever wrote this article doesn’t know what they’re talking about and clearly doesn’t gourmet cook regularly.
Anyone else's may vary, but my experience differed from this:
1 I found induction to produce a very even heat - much more even than a gas stove, where there's a heat spike wherever any individual gas jet hits. Quite noticeable with cast iron on a gas stove.
2. Yes, certainly induction needs specific kinds of cookware. All mine work fine.
3 What "professional" cooking techniques don't work?
4 Agree on controls, but that goes for most modern consumer devices, unfortunately...
5 Saying the author "clearly doesn't gourmet cook regularly" is very elitist and a non-constructive criticism.
I wonder if perhaps your induction was a bad model? Or are you confident it wasn't a halogen stove?
I've experienced the uneven heat (liquid boiling right over the coil, cold next to it), shitty duty-cycle pulsing (no way of getting a proper low flame) and actually insuficient power when e.g. deep frying (it would throttle back when too hot and temperature actually dropped).
And terrible capacitive controls.
I've moved places and my kitchen now vents straight outside, so the choice is clear for me: gas.
I like how it cooks, but hate using it.
I don't believe the claims about burning natural gas being the causal factor here either. I rather think that culprit is aerosolized oil, and houses with gas ranges are simply more likely to cook with oil at temperatures hot enough to aerosolize it. I think this conclusion is reasonable at least because people who like cooking also are more likely to be more comfortable with cooking at higher temperature, and also are more likely to prioritize cooking with gas when considering homes.
The most salient argument against gas is not that it's worse than induction. In fact, I think it's pretty obvious that they are complimentary, and that gas is more universal. Instead, it is that piping natural gas to houses requires maintaining enormous amounts of infrastructure.
I will happily purchase a stove that contains some induction and some gas, and even prioritize the induction whenever I can. But the argument that induction is "better" is made by people who do not spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Induction cooking has existed for a long time. Restaurants have largely not made the switch for a reason.
I am afraid of losing my gas broiler if I go to an induction system. That is very nice to have.
However, I don't get why everyone says gas is harder to clean. Last time I owned a glass cooktop I spent forever cleaning it, and it never looked perfect. Gas cooktops are easy peasy, remove grate, wipe up. Glass cooktop: Get special scrubber, note it doesn't work. Spray on magic glass cooktop spray, wipe clean, no luck. Get out a "glass cooktop" straight edge razor and spend 15+ minutes scrapping it off, slip a bit and now you have a permanent scratch.
Glass cooktops suck.
In terms of speed of changing temperature, gas and induction are pretty identical here, with the exception of those super sweet Chinese gas stove setups with the foot pedal to control the gas flow. Those things are awesome, but it is perfectly possible to hook that same pedal up to an IC that controls the induction element.
Being able to select a target temperature would be awesome for cooking, my induction stove couldn't do that.
> Electric ovens are garbage
What, why? All ovens I have ever seen outside of pizza places are electric. Why should a thing that just needs to get hot at the sides be bad if it gets hot by electricity? That's nonsensical.
> In fact, I think it's pretty obvious that they are complimentary, and that gas is more universal.
Not a fact at all. As I see it, there is simply no positive of gas compared to induction, not a single one. Thus there is nothing complementary about it. You are just used to it - or seen broader, it's simply one more technological area where the US seems to be stuck in the past.
It's curious to me that you would say that, since electric ovens are generally preferred for their more even and consistent heating. For a gas stove to maintain a certain heat, it has to be continuously cycling a gas element that necessarily only burns at one temperature. Also, electric ovens don't impart extra moisture to the cooking cavity.
If you try out induction, you’d realize it’s superior to gas in a lot of ways. The reason it’s not adopted is that induction cooktops are expensive and you have to throw out any nonconductive pans. Your comment about restaurants is more tuned to this than gas being superior - high end restaurants are starting to use induction more bc of the degree of control. Alinea uses induction. Low to mid restaurants are buying the cheapest thing they can, and that’s usually the gas range they inherited.
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.
We’re never going to get anywhere in the case against global warming with BS statements like this…
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...
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency-c...
Induction cooks by themselves are very efficient in converting energy to heat (90% efficiency, according another claim in the article).
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 had an induction hob unit fitted in my kitchen ten years ago (replacing gas) and loved it for the instant controllability (although not the controls themselves, as covered elsewhere here). But last year I had an ICD implanted after an episode of cardiac fibrillation, and was advised by the NHS arrhythmia nurses not to use the hob (or at least to keep an arms length away from active hobs). So because I love cooking I had it replaced with a ceramic unit, which is much less satisfactory. It's made by the same company (NEF) that made the old induction hob and in fact has identical controls and physical footprint. But it's less responsive than induction (or gas) because of the residual heat and harder to clean than induction because the surface gets scorchingly hot which can burn spills on.
So having used gas, induction and ceramic, I'd definitely pick induction as my favourite, except for the one small problem that can stop my ICD sensing imminent sudden cardiac death or (unlikely) reset my ICD which would trigger an annoying warning buzzer inside my chest (but that's a whole different topic)
Just like car enthusiasts would rather drive a 1960s Mustang than a safer, more efficient 2020s Camry or N64 fans would rather play with original hardware on a CRT than an emulator with 60fps, 4k native rendering on a 90" OLED.
The hob is big enough to fit a large pan but only heats a 10cm circle in the middle. (And I have tried it with many induction-safe pots and pans.)
Rather than physical buttons, it has touch sensors that react to moisture. So a few drops of water spilling out of the pot cause it to turn off or stop working.
Some use silicon pads (shown in one image in the article) to prevent inadvertent scratching. I don’t trust those—they can melt at 400+F and you’ll never get that off the stove. I use LoMi cloth (Nomex-like?). They’re not going to melt.
To me, the limits of induction (no lifting, shuttling, shifting) are worth it for precise temperature control, less ambient heat (huge exhaust blower not needed), and the neat and clean look. My wife disliked the “patina” on our gas range. Not a problem any more.
The fact that they don't pollute your home as much, and that installation is cheaper are just extra cherries on top.
If you spill something, on an induction stove you just wipe it with a cloth. It doesn't even burn onto the stove.
What more arguments do you need?
It turns itself off and I cannot turn it back on again. This happens on a daily basis.
Worst product I own.
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 quite like it. I don’t miss gas. I’m not a chef but I do a fair amount of cooking and even an entry-level cooktop will serve most well. Best part for me is easy on and easy off. The surface heats up very quickly and cools down fast enough that I can reuse the cooktop as part of the counter. A major bonus for tight kitchen spaces.
For me I was sold on the speed and my wife honestly liked the fact that it never burned on food, she also liked the safety aspect of the stovetop never being hot, but none of those really matter if the replacement motherboard dies after 3 months on a $4000 range.
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)
Somebody in my family has a cardic pacemaker.
Edit to add: I'm not pro gas cooking, just cannot use induction cooking. It's just not an option accessible to everyone.
Worth being aware. https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...
The largest one I could find is the Max Burton 6600 which claims a 9" induction disk but the middle 3 inches of the disk is not energized.
I suppose for a 15 amp plug there's only so much area it can safely heat.
Maybe built-in ones can be bigger?
In winter, when people don't open their windows the pollution will accumulate.
Induction cooking is not just better because of less pollution at home, it's cheaper than gas cooking and is easy on the power grid, many solar installations can power it directly.
Can’t find them anywhere. Particularly one with a double oven. Going to install the gas line because there are way more options available.
All I can say is I tried a $60 unit, a $75 unit and a $120 unit and they suck. All of them pulse on and off at lower power settings.
Electronic temperature control using induction plus the quick-cool benefit of a stovetop pressure cooker. I love that a hot cooker at full pressure can be moved to the sink and cooled with tap water so it can be safely opened in less than a minute. Can't really do that with an instapot, gotta wait.
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.
It rocks.
I just removed the stupid efficiency comment. Not worth the agita, and I'm probably mistaken.
Yet about half of the electricity in NY is generated with natural gas[1], so most of the "benefits" this article touts, especially pollution, don't really exist. The other half comes from nuclear/hydro combined and renewables accounting for a tad. Same for electric car owners who think they're helping the environment. Nope, you just shifted the problem to where you don't directly see it but they contribute just as much. Probably more with the all of the inefficiencies added up from each steps of going from natural gas->steam->turbine->transmission lines->multiple transformers->charging car battery.
You're right in that from a strict energy perspective, burning gas to cook food is more efficient than converting energy to electricity and then utilizing it to cook food [1], but that only addresses one small part of the downsides of cooking with gas. Among other things, these are the things that come to mind right away:
- Induction has the potential to be emissionless, gas can never achieve that. At its best, gas can be carbon-neutral if it is not fossil-sourced. - Induction has zero local emissions, while gas is not great for indoor air quality. - Induction can't leak lethal gasses into the home where it exists - Induction is much less likely to cause an indoor fire and burn down the home where it's installed
>Same for electric car owners who think they're helping the environment. Nope, you just shifted the problem to where you don't directly see it but they contribute just as much. Probably more with the all of the inefficiencies added up from each steps of going from natural gas+steam+turbine→transmission lines-+multiple transformerscharging car battery.
The concern of direct energy efficiency is still the same as for induction vs gas, but to imply that it would be worse for the environment is abject nonsense. EVs perform better from an environmental perspective in all but the worst grids in the world (basically 100% coal power), and only get better as grids become carbon-free, while ICEs remain awful.
I'll agree that EVs are not the solution to our transportation-energy concerns, though. The solution is bicycles and trains, and transitioning away entirely from the car, which in all its forms is terrible from an energy-efficiency perspective.
[1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency-c...
