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What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

latimes.com

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Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#501

Post by cmclaughlin »

dekhn wrote: post #478
outworlder wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With electric, the pot/pan is resting on a heated surface that gradually cools down and can really ruin whatever's cooking. Sounds like you need to try an induction cooktop?

I've only had one experience with induction- probably 15 years ago now. It was a place we stayed in hawaii (like pre-airbnb) and there was a sign saying if you even looked at it wrong it would scratch the surface (necessitating a full replacement). Are they really strong now or do you still have to worry about scratching? Some googling suggests that you still need to be careful with cast iron.

Cracking the glass of a induction cooktop is still a problem. So I recommend carbon steel over cast iron for this purpose. They’re similar in that they both need to be seasoned. But carbon steel is much lighter and it’s smooth unlike most modern cast iron cookware.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#502

Post by frosted-flakes »

cmclaughlin wrote: post #500
frosted-flakes wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North American electrical infrastructure is natively 240v, split phase (two 120v hots, with a centre-tapped neutral). All houses have 240v power, and all stoves and ovens are already 240v at 40 or 50 amps. If there's a need for 240v power at a particular location (such as a high powered window AC unit), it's generally quite easy to switch a standard 120v circuit to 240v and replace the outlets on the circuit with the…

Getting a bit off topic here, but I’d like to learn more about this… In most cases wouldn’t you need to run a thicker wire to replace a 120v outlet with 240v?

No, only if you increase the amperage of the circuit breaker. Doubling the voltage just doubles the power you can deliver over the same wire. To keep it the same, you can actually use a thinner wire. That's part of the reason long-distance transmission lines are at many thousands of volts.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#503

Post by bsder »

pao wrote: post #288

Seems like a lot of the interest in these bans is coming from new research like this [Stanford study]( https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-gas/ ) showing gas stoves emit more methane than previously thought. They say all residential stoves in the US emit GHG equivalent to 500,000 cars. There are 276 million cars in the US. So, this problem is about 1/500 of the car problem. If you eliminated all s…

> Seems like a lot of the interest in these bans is coming from new research like this [Stanford study](https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-gas/) showing gas stoves emit more methane than previously thought.

Actually, most of the interest I see is in the indoor air quality impact rather than in the global environmental impact.

Gas stoves emitting particulates wasn't a big deal back when houses were drafty as hell. However, now that everything is sealed up for insulation, indoor air quality is a much bigger deal.

And gas stoves are terrible for indoor air quality.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#504

Post by throwaway743 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #472
throwaway743 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a chef, but I cook nearly every meal, whether home or at my SO's. A gas stove is a world of difference compared to cooking with an electric one. One major pain point is that the number settings on electric barely provide insight as to what level of heat you're cooking with, and there seems to be a lack of consistency between one electric stove to another. Whereas with gas, you can just eye the flames and know wha…

> Whereas with gas, you can just eye the flames and know what you're dealing with without resorting to the knob settings, regardless of which stove you're using. Not the case. Our son cooks on some cheap-ass gas stove with burners about 2-3" in diameter. I cook on a Viking. There's nothing about the flames on either stove that will give you any idea how many BTU's are reaching the food. You have to learn to correlate…

> I cook on a Viking.

Wouldn't know what that's like. I cook on what you call "el cheapos". Was speaking to those models, as they're pretty ubiquitous among most apartments.

> You have to learn to correlate the flame appearance with cooking results.

Dude, that's essentially what I meant. Sorry for not detailing that one should look for color, size, etc of flame, and how one's brain interprets what works and what doesn't.

And no I have not used an induction stove, but am curious.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#505

Post by syntheweave »

83afnpg wrote: post #471
ricardobeat wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction burners are extremely efficient (>80%) vs something like 40% for gas burners, so the induction would come ahead in your example (1400W vs 1100W). The cooktops you can buy here in Europe are limited to 3.7kW, and you can bridge two burners for up to 7.4kW. I rarely use one burner beyond ~70% power, anything above gets scorching hot (= burns everything) when using a good iron/steel pan. I heard the US has the…

They might be 80% efficient, but I think around 40% of California electricity comes from natural gas. It’s kind of silly to convert from gas to electricity to heat in terms of efficiency.

I checked this recently. California is still in the 30-40% range for gas/fossil fuels usage on average, but it has achieved a 100% renewables grid for a 15 minute period this year, and it wasn't a fluke or engineered stunt, but one more in a series of record-breaking milestones which have seen the grid periodically blast through the 90% range. So the trend looks good for electric conversion.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#506

Post by pixl97 »

realreality wrote: post #476
pkulak wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d say it’s like asking Vim users whether they should all move to VS Code. If Vim was actively contributing to climate change and fouling the air of everyone around me, I'd switch tomorrow. VS Code has Vim bindings, I'm sure. I'll be okay. We're long past the point where everybody keeps being able to do their first favorite thing at all times, _and_ we somehow also solve this huge problem we've gotten ourselves in…

VS Code obviously contributes more to climate change than Vim.

Yet Vim vs Emacs arguments contribute to a lot of hot air...

Zingggg

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#507

Post by wolverine876 »

Maursault wrote: post #284
wolverine876 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the same thing as blaming Climate Change on road vehicles when most of Climate Change is caused by energy, shipping, construction, concrete manufacture, glass making, etc. Do you have data on how much each of those sectors contributes? IIRC, road transportation contributes a relatively large amount.

Thanks for the homework, but no thanks. You do it. Off the top of my head, consumer vehicles globally contribute 5-6% of Climate Change-causing emissions. If you'd care to look, you'll see this pales in comparison to the major contributors, electricity generation, agriculture, deforestation, oil drilling, etc. If we could overnight stop the major contributors, such as industrial processes, your ice car just wouldn't…

If you make the claims, the homework is yours. Otherwise, the claims could say anything.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#508

Post by emtel »

throwaway743 wrote: post #465
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #275

A large reason electric (restive and induction) are seen as inferior to gas is that portable units are limited to 120v/15a (few are 20a) so the total possible power is technically less than a gas stove; 2800w effective. However, gas stoves are very inefficient so in reality it's not a huge problem and 240v electric stoves could even be hotter (~4000w) than a gas stove. > Xie estimates that he pays around $500 to $700…

Not a chef, but I cook nearly every meal, whether home or at my SO's. A gas stove is a world of difference compared to cooking with an electric one. One major pain point is that the number settings on electric barely provide insight as to what level of heat you're cooking with, and there seems to be a lack of consistency between one electric stove to another. Whereas with gas, you can just eye the flames and know wha…

It’s not gas vs electric. It’s gas vs induction vs everything else. An induction cooktop is more powerful than any residential gas range, and responds instantly when you change temperature.

The only two problems I’ve encountered are a) the heat stops instantly if you pick up the pan and b) you don’t get heat up the sides of a wok or other curved pan.

I’ll never go back to gas, and that’s not even considering the health risks of indoor combustion.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#509

Post by wolverine876 »

Kirby64 wrote: post #243
wolverine876 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is mostly because the considerable majority of the heat from the flame goes around the pot without heating it. (A pot on a grate is a terrible heat exchanger.) I always wonder: Why aren't pots insulated? Just putting the lid on allows me to cut the flame ~~ 80%.

You want pots to conduct heat, not contain it. The closest comparison is cast iron which has a large mass, so heat ebbs and flows from it slowly (and, is more consistent). Insulation would mean you have an even harder time transferring heat to the pot, so it's not only worthless, it's actively bad.

> Insulation would mean you have an even harder time transferring heat to the pot

Obviously, insulate the sides and top.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#510

Post by wolverine876 »

seibelj wrote: post #272
wolverine876 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> infinitesimally ... completely ... totally ... utterly ... insane Words like that are an attempt to add impact, but they don't change the underlying facts and argument. Can you back up these claims? Paraphrasing Mark Twain, 'replace all your adverbs and adjectives with 'damn', and then edit for a family-friendly newspaper.'

> Eco-Cycle is unable to provide any data to back up this number, telling Reason that it was relying on the research of one Milo Cress. Cress—whose Be Straw Free Campaign is hosted on Eco-Cycle's website—tells Reason that he arrived at the 500 million straws a day figure from phone surveys he conducted of straw manufacturers in 2011, when he was just 9 years old. > Cress, who is now 16, says that the National Restaur…

The publication Reason isn't usually considered the most credible source. I'll just leave the claims as 'unfounded', which is fine.
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