Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The case for induction cooking

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 647 posts

Re: The case for induction cooking

#191

Post by Ourgon »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #122
cafemachiavelli wrote: post #49

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 en…

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.

Re: The case for induction cooking

#192

Post by Wowfunhappy »

londons_explore wrote: post #120
upofadown wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When gas is 4x cheaper per kWh, electric isn't going to win cost-wise, even if 100% efficient.

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.

Re: The case for induction cooking

#193

Post by wtallis »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #159
noveltyaccount wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol this is an unusual hill to die on

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.

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?

Re: The case for induction cooking

#194

Post by petercooper »

ginnungagap wrote: post #48
musikele wrote: post #5

"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

It also depends where you are in Europe, in Italy gas is still by far the most common way to cook

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.

Re: The case for induction cooking

#195

Post by henrikschroder »

leoedin wrote: post #10

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,…

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.

Re: The case for induction cooking

#196

Post by ouid »

gruez wrote: post #181
ouid wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric ovens are essentially incapable of broiling, which is one of the most important things that an oven does. All other functions are close to parity, but why would I buy an oven that is functionally without a broiler?

>Electric ovens are essentially incapable of broiling The "high" setting on my broiler gets meat burnt in 1-2 minutes. What more do you need?

Sounds like you maybe you have one of these fancy electric infrared broilers. I did not know these existed for electric ovens. I certainly have never seen one.

Re: The case for induction cooking

#197

Post by code_biologist »

amluto wrote: post #124
code_biologist wrote: post #117

Does anyone know of an induction hob with adjustability that doesn’t suck? My current one has 200-300 watt jumps between power output settings and it seems stupid that I can’t adjust in 5 or 10 watt increments instead!

Breville Control Freak. Also, although it’s current vaporware, the Njori.

Hah, I've seen the Control Freak and it looks cool. At $1,450 it's uh, a little out of my budget.

Re: The case for induction cooking

#198

Post by Aaargh20318 »

wtallis wrote: post #193
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: The case for induction cooking

#199

Post by m3kw9 »

leoedin wrote: post #10

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,…

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
Post reply on HN