Natural gas is far cheaper, so I'll stick with that. Even though I love the idea of an easy to clean stovetop. My electric bill is already out of control (California).
The case for induction cooking
51–60 of 647 posts
Re: The case for induction cooking
#52Induction cooking is good. UI is terrible: touch screen that only allows control over one heat source at a time. Please, please please give me knobs like the ones in gas tops
Not only is the UI terrible (wet hands and touch based interfaces are terrible), but pets may accidentally turn on the induction if they are prone to walking across your kitchen counter.
Re: The case for induction cooking
#53Induction cooking is good. UI is terrible: touch screen that only allows control over one heat source at a time. Please, please please give me knobs like the ones in gas tops
Same complaint here. Touch screen that stops working when it gets only slightly wet. I'm forever wiping down that stupid touch screen.
Re: The case for induction cooking
#54I have an induction cooktop form Cooktek, which I originally bought in 2007, which I carry around with me everywhere.
One more thing about how it is great. Since it heats the pan directly instead of the air underneath the pan, you can boil water for pasta without heating up the kitchen. Now, many of you have A/C to keep your kitchen comfortable, but then you are heating up the kitchen with the stove and then cooling it down with the A/C ...
My friends are not convinced. I get responses anywhere from no way to it's ok for me maybe but they really just love the feel of cooking on gas. These are supposedly environmentalists, too.
Re: The case for induction cooking
#55Let me know when you can buy one of decent quality in the US with actual physical controls instead of some insane touch system designed by somebody who has apparently never actually been in a kitchen and marketed to people who won't use it but just want a thing that looks cool.
Ugh, my parents have an oven like that. Press the "bake" button and it'll happily tell you you have to press the "on" button first. Infuriating design, and you have to mash your thumb for a good 1-2 seconds before it reads the press, too.
Or our old Samsung washing machine, that wouldn't let you turn it off and on again without listening to the startup and shutdown songs first. (Our newer LG is much better in this regard.)
Re: The case for induction cooking
#56"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
German here. So few people here have induction because people still think that most pans couldn't be used. But I love it! But also few here use gas. It's mostly ceramic hobs
Don't have one, but used to have cheap counter top thing. I think only pan or similar I can't use is my ceramic dutch oven. Never browned anything in that one either, so it is pretty academical... Just need to check the pans you pick up and you will be fine in general.
Re: The case for induction cooking
#57"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
I do think I could use an upgrade though, my induction hub just clicks on and off PWM style. Not great for a steady heat. Having read this article I noticed that they aren't all like this.
Can absolutely recommend the upgrade, these stoves are far superior to PWM style "2000W or off" ones. I can even melt chocolate without a water bath on mine, they can keep temperatures as low as 55°C / 131°F steadily no problem. :D
Re: The case for induction cooking
#58Warning to anyone thinking about buying one of those portable induction cooktop ("just to see what all the fuss is about"): if it plugs into a standard 120V socket, it's probably not going to boil water any faster than your existing stove! In fact, mine boils even slower than my electric stove. Apparently, the portable ones only go up to around 1800W. If you want to experience the true boil-the-oceans power of induct…
120V is only standard in a part of the world. It's much more helpful to talk about power -- where I am 3 kW is limiting on a standard socket, at 230V. What is it for the US (I don't know!)
Note -- electric hobs and ovens are often wired into far far chunkier circuits and the high efficiency of induction is a big boon. It's wonderful to cook on -- all the responsiveness of gas, none of the pm2.5. It's just a shame that per kWh, electricity is a lot more expensive.
Re: The case for induction cooking
#59I 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 true that most induction cooktops/ranges aren't great for woks, but in principle the induction surface doesn't have to be flat -- it can be a concave shape to match the wok.
In fact these exist -- if you search for "induction wok burners" you can see some pictures. (I only recently became aware of this after watching this video of a chef who uses induction cooking in a small kitchen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNzRrHA9VY)
Perhaps in the future there will be cooktops that include a wok depression on the surface, similar to how some gas stoves today include a built-in wok ring.
Re: The case for induction cooking
#60"perils" is just a tad dramatic here. And while there are many advantages to induction over gas (the faster boiling times have me sold alone), there are some disadvantages in my opinion to placing even more reliance on a electrical grid that we learn each day is more fragile than we once thought.
Gas is also supplied by a set of pipelines. There isn’t a free lunch.