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I enjoy cooking a lot and I cooked on gas stoves, electric ones (the ones that have those red hot spiral things under a glass) and top-of-the-line induction one

I enjoy cooking a lot and I cooked on gas stoves, electric ones (the ones that have those red hot spiral things under a glass) and top-of-the-line induction ones. In my opinion (and probably many restaurants' opinions from what I can see through their reactions on bans for gas appliances in new buildings), a gas stove is just unmatched in how much easier and better it makes cooking. I totally get the desire to switch to electric appliances for many reasons, but I am yet to meet an electric stove of any kind that I remotely enjoyed cooking on. Is this everyone's experience? Did I just not meet the right induction stove yet? Is there some sort of new technology on the horizon that will make electric stoves infinitely better?

R0b0t1 5y ago
I was able to get the most even heating with a high quality (but not insanely expensive) induction stove. Boiling water in about a minute, insane. And because the heating element is necessarily closed loop you don't have the regulation problems you do with an ohmic heater. A gas stove is a lot more powerful (10-60kW vs 1-3kW) but a lot of that heat simply escapes upwards.
- bogota 5y ago
  Its not about power or speed for me. Whenever i visit my parents i hate cooking anything because the electric stoves release heat in bursts then turn off for a bit then a huge burst. It’s impossible to cook anything the way you want . Normally i just go for overcooking everything. But in general i find cooking relaxing and that stove turns it into something that makes me mad every morning. Maybe this is specific to the stove they have though. I have and will continue to use gas because of this.
  - leoedin 5y ago
    My AEG induction stove has short enough pulse cycles it's not noticeable - a low setting just means low heat. In fact, it's the best stove I've ever used by far - it can go from gently melting chocolate to way too much heat in about 2s. Apart from boiling water I never use the most powerful settings because they'll burn stuff. The only thing it can't do better than gas is wok cooking - the curved sides don't get hot. My parents have a different brand induction which does seem to have longer pulse cycles - maybe one every 5s or so. That is probably the effect you're describing - it'll go from essentially off to too hot and back. It's obviously a manufacture specific thing.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - winkeltripel 5y ago
      For the wok, you can get a ring for heating the sides of it.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    I don’t know why but when I visited Japan, every stove has this sensor which cuts off the gas almost completely when the pan gets to hot, I guess it’s to prevent oil fires. If you want to hate cooking, go to Japan and use one of those things.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    That's not an inherent quality of electric stoves, just crappy ones. I use a 50s-era GM Frigidaire electric stove+oven and it doesn't modulate current to control temperature. It's quite a gas-like pleasure to cook with, prior to this I'd only ever experienced electrics like you're describing and they're awful.
    - danachow 5y ago
      I hate to break it you but an old 50s era stove works exactly as the GP describes - there certainly wasn’t low cost high power solid state power conversion circuitry in those days - the mechanism is extremely simple, an adjustable bimetal thermostat that can turn the element full on and off with adjustable duty cycle - and that modulation frequency is over seconds. Any smoothing of this mechanism is inherent in the thermal capacity of the heating element. And this is modulation of current - think of it as a very slow PWM.
      - pengaru 5y ago
        If it's modulating as you describe, it's completely imperceptible, unlike any of the other ones I've had to live with in SF bay area apartments. But I must admit I have not disassembled the thing to understand its workings. I don't even bother with heavy copper-clad pots and pans anymore, which were necessary before. This thing behaves like a gas stove. So it's the heating element thermal inertia that differs, to smooth out the temperature? Edit: Looking at [0], what you're describing seems to be known as an "infinite switch". That's not what the old stoves like mine has, this is just a rotary switch with 5 selectable presets. I assume it's changing the resistance. Worth noting is also the even older Kalgoorlie [1] style stove, which changed the number of heating elements connected to regulate temperature. This repair guide [2] describes both infinite and rotary switch controls on a high-level: When the heating element is on, the heater inside the switch is on. The bimetal heats (along with the element) until the contacts open. Then the bimetal cools (along with the elements) until the contacts close again. There are also fixed-temperature switches that vary the voltage going to the heating elements to maintain fixed, pre-set temperatures. These are usually push-button or rotary switches with fixed settings such as warm, low, medium and high. In fixed-temperature switch controls, heat levels are varied by applying different voltages (110V or 220V) to different coils of different resistances. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_switch [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_stove#Kalgoorlie_Stove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_stove#Kalgoorlie_Stov... [2] https://www.appliancerepair.net/oven-repair-4.html https://www.appliancerepair.net/oven-repair-4.html
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    You are comparing a cheap electric radiant hob to a gas one. The GP was praising an induction hob, which is the third type.
    - JackFr 5y ago
      Radiant electric replace the age old coil with elements below a ceramic or glass surface. They are uniformly abysmal to cook with. Induction are very different from radiant electric and require cookware of particular materials. They are amazing in some respects and limited in others. From a glance though both have smooth glassy surfaces that look modern.
      - Symbiote 5y ago
        I haven't seen a coil hob for years, I think my grandma had one. The cheapest option apparently called a solid plate hob in Britain. Those coils are inside a ceramic (I think) plate. The cheapest ones cost about £80. They're difficult to damage, so you find them in the cheapest rented apartments (students etc): https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/hobs/essentials-csphobx21-electric-solid-plate-hob-inox-10221688-pdt.html https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/h... "Ceramic" hobs refers to the one with heating elements below glass/ceramic. Starts from £110, but it's a bit easier to damage. Many rented homes would have this, since it looks fancy and clean.: https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/hobs/essentials-cchobkn21-electric-ceramic-hob-black-10224996-pdt.html https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/h... Induction hobs start at £180: https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/hobs/logik-lindhob16-electric-induction-hob-black-10143242-pdt.html https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/h... Most ordinary (cheap or expensive) cookware sold in Europe is compatible with an induction hob, but not necessarily everything.
oofabz 5y ago
I do a lot of cooking and I prefer electric. I'm sure it's because I've cooked on electric ranges my entire life, the kind where the pan sits directly on the spiral heating element. I only ever cook with gas when I'm visiting a friend or relative. Gas stoves are great at bringing a pot of water to a boil. But they are not so good at very low heat, like leaving a covered pot to simmer. Most gas ranges don't go as low as I would like, and I need to watch the pot more carefully and stir more frequently than I would at home. I'm sure most of my issues are familiarity. If I had spent my life cooking with gas, my techniques would have developed to work better with gas. But now that I'm set in my ways I will stick with electric.
- ericbarrett 5y ago
  A proper induction range will boil water much faster than gas. Under two minutes to take a full pasta pot—8 quarts (7.5L) of water—from tap-cold (50F/10C) to a rolling boil. Do not confuse them with resistive coil electric stoves, which are inferior in every way! Unless you're dead set on aluminum cookware.
  - Flashtoo 5y ago
    I like induction cooking as well, but it's not _that_ fast. Assuming a 3 kW (usually it's less powerful) induction stovetop, 7 kg of water, 4 J/(g.c) specific heat and 90 C temperature increase, that would take at the very least 14 minutes. Should take longer if you include heating the pan itself, phase change energy and heat losses. If you wanted to do it in two minutes, that would take twice as much power as a home Tesla charger. Heating water just takes a ton of energy.
    - JackMcMack 5y ago
      I can confirm that our induction stove is very fast, much faster at boiling water than the (domestic) gas stoves I've had experience with. A pot of water really does boil in under two minutes, so I wanted to question your math, but it seems correct :-). The problem here is the quantity, why are you (gp) boiling 7 liters of water? edit: the boost is more powerful (3.7kW for the largest zone), but still. That's time limited (10 minutes or less), and limits the current to the other zone on the same phase.
leobg 5y ago
I love induction. The main annoyance, for me, are the touch controls. You regulate up or down in steps, and the controls sometimes have trouble recognizing your fingers if they are wet. There’s also no tactile feedback. I’d much rather turn a knob. Then it would be perfect.
- kergonath 5y ago
  Yeah tactile controls are rubbish. I can’t wait for the next design fad where we’ll go full circle and have dials and knobs everywhere.
- params 5y ago
  This is so true, my parents have an induction stove with touch controls. It takes ONE drop of water on the 10x40cm touch control square to make the whole stove top shut down with a beeping alarm sound. If you have buttery fingers it won't recognize any touches (major annoyance when making butter heavy sauces). On top of that it also relies on long-presses, you have to hold your finger on the "button zones" for 2 seconds, then you can alter the heat, one touch at a time on a 1-10 scale. Takes about 10-20 seconds to adjust the heat. When I looked for a new stove last year I tried to find one with induction AND knobs. I ended up getting a non-induction stove, with knobs, works well enough although I would swap it for one with induction and knobs any day, haha!
  - leobg 5y ago
    Yeah. Manufacturers act like having wet or oily fingers was some kind of edge case in a kitchen.
    - wallacoloo 5y ago
      stove/oven UX has been shit ever since they were first digitized. my first home had an analog-controlled electric oven: turn the dial to the temperature you want. every oven i’ve owned since uses up/down touch buttons to adjust the temperature in 5-degree increments. it turns the half-second process of swinging a knob to the right place into a 5-second process of holding a button until it hits the right temperature. worse, i find myself trying to micro-optimize my use of oven temperature buttons: instead of holding up until the temperature is reached, i repeatedly tap it to make it go faster — but not so fast that the debouncing mistakes 2 presses for just one press, otherwise it’s net slower. i find myself actively making latency v.s. throughput decisions: i can preheat the oven by pressing “on”, dialing in the temperature, and then pressing “start”. or, i can press “on”, “start”, and then dial in the temperature and press “start” an extra time. preheating begins whenever you first press “start”, so this shaves off 5 seconds of preheat latency at the cost of 1 extra second spent on an extra button press. i get irrationally angry every time i use a digital oven. the digital oven is like some looking glass into a half-dozen interlinking societal systems that have managed to settle into some totally unsatisfying equilibria… and they’ve stayed there for decades. it’s legitimately depressing.
askvictor 5y ago
In terms of fine control, induction is a game changer (me resisting moving from gas for a long time). I use lower, more precise cooking techniques more now. For high-temperature (e.g. searing a steak) stuff, there's something different about how it heats. I haven't worked out what it is yet, as induction gets the pan insanely hot really fast (on 'boost mode'); almost too hot, which should be excellent, but seems wierd, and sometimes seems to burn the pan. But for that kind of cooking I use the gas BBQ outside mostly. Having bought an induction stove when refitting our kitchen, then replacing it with a different one a couple of months later, I can advise that the size of the elements matters. The 'linked zones' thing seems to be rubbish, and doesn't heat evenly (maybe it does on really high end stuff). I now have a three-element stove (60cm) - one really big one and two smaller ones. I don't think I've ever used 4 burners at once anyway... I just wish there was an API for induction stoves; interfacing with a thermometer to keep a certain temperature, or for a set time, or even a removably physical control panel (i.e. knobs) that would let you put it away and keep the flat-top thing (which is actually really nice when you need the bench space).
- amelius 5y ago
  Perhaps someone could use an IR camera to determine the difference.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Induction stoves with temperature control do exist - set the desired temperature and it'll control the heat output accordingly. Edit: https://www.hafactory.it/2015/10/19/miele-news-about-temperature-control-in-induction-hobs/ https://www.hafactory.it/2015/10/19/miele-news-about-tempera...
- maxwell86 5y ago
  We bought a professional "manual" (no fancy electronics) from a restaurant (with knobs and no touch), for 100$ each. And built our own system with that. You can set the knob, and turn it on and off with a relee, connected to a raspberry pi. We have temperature sensors on the "food side" of the pans and pots, since what we care about is the temperature that the food feels. 99% of the time we don't use it with the pis, but have a couple of recipes as Jupyter notebooks that we use the temp control and temp staging with. One advantage of induction over gas here, is that the thermal mass of some induction pots and pans is almost zero, and temperature changes are instantaneous, so from the point of view of control algorithms, programming induction cooking is infinitely better than any other system that i've used, cause you don't have to solve a PDE to regulate the temperature. YOu can just turn it on if its too cold and off if its too hot, and that's it. +-0.5C of accuracy, which at the 100$ level for a single plate is unbeatable. We spent ~400$ for 3 heats. 100% recommend.
kergonath 5y ago
Induction is very good, in different situations than gad. With induction, you have a reliable temperature control and can heat the whole pan uniformly, even at low temperatures. It’s very easy to let something simmer for hours or heat something just so it does not cool too much. One of the main issue with common domestic gas stoves is that the heat is not well distributed, and good pans don’t necessarily have a great thermal conductivity. This is a problem when what you’re hearing is not liquid enough to redistribute heat by convection. Another is that you don’t control the temperature of the flame, just its size. So temperature control is always finicky, particularly at low temperatures. So personally I go for induction most of the time, and a barbecue when I need a flame.
test001only 5y ago
I love cooking on gas. As you mentioned the convenience is unmatched and it is a pleasure compared to cooking using induction or hot plate. Induction certainly seemed more efficient with how fast it used to boil water, but when cooking food, gas always wins for me. Not to mention, lot of pans I have will not work on induction or hotplate.
reaperducer 5y ago
a gas stove is just unmatched in how much easier and better it makes cooking. I agree with you there. I've had gas for the last ten years, and recently moved to a place with induction. It's a significant change. I had regular electric for a long time before I had gas, so there was an adjustment period there, too, but I got used to it pretty quickly. But induction is somehow very different from either of those two. I've been on induction for six months, and I still have such a very hard time with temperature control that I cook at home a lot less than I used to. It has a thousand controls, but only seems to have two settings: surface of the sun, and off. That said, I'm OK with the move toward eliminating natural gas in homes. I just wish I ended up with a regular electric stove top instead of induction. But it's an apartment, so you get what you get.
jart 5y ago
First they came for rough and tumble, then the cigarettes, then the lightbulbs, and now prometheus fire. Before you know it you're in a Darth Vader pod and you have no mouth but you must scream. Wealth inequality has gotten so dramatic that the state probably profits 10x more off people existing than the people do themselves, so the state cares 10x more about people living as long as possible than the people might themselves; as such, the state will show no hesitancy in making any tradeoffs that maximize long-term economic value extraction. https://youtu.be/tetwGGL997s?t=159 https://youtu.be/tetwGGL997s?t=159
goodpoint 5y ago
Even a cheap portable induction hob is so much better than gas.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Induction plates vary a lot in quality and in the amount of energy they transfer. The more expensive ones can dump a lot of energy into a pan really quickly. Some go up to 3-4KW even. If you are trying to boil a large pan of water/soup/etc., a good induction plate gets the job done very quickly whereas you might have to wait a bit with a gas stove or a cheaper, lower capacity induction plate. Like wise, if you are searing a steak, you'd want a large wattage to get the pan really hot, really quickly. Gas is nice mainly for things that are really temperature sensitive like searing meat, using a wok, etc. Of course when cooking stuff like that you want good ventilation for this because otherwise you end up with a lot of grease and soot all over the kitchen. So, the pollution of gas matters less if you have that set up correctly. The main reason gas is so nice for cooking is how quickly you can adjust the temperature. Induction plates also respond really quickly of course. The old fashioned red hot spiral things, are much more tricky because they stay hot for so long; it takes a minute to reduce the heat; or to raise it. I have one at home and I'm used to it but it is still annoying. A neat trick is to simply move pans away from the heat to control it. Induction plates don't have that problem. But I really hate the touch controls many of these things have. They are very fiddly; especially with wet hands and they also can get hot. I'd prefer to have some old fashioned dials. But in terms of instant, fine grained control, they are actually pretty good.
maxwell86 5y ago
> I totally get the desire to switch to electric appliances for many reasons, but I am yet to meet an electric stove of any kind that I remotely enjoyed cooking on. Is this everyone's experience? We bought a profesional induction plate, 4.5kW, 100$ on ebay. Performance wise, its ~4x better than the 4kW gas stove it replaced. The time required to heat 50L of water to 60C went down from 60min with gas to about 10-15 min with induction. Instantaneously hot, and instantaneously cold. For us it opened a lot of new ways of cooking. What kind of cooking do you prefer doing on a gas stove over an induction stove? Obviously the same pots and pans don't work on both, but if you have a top of the line induction stove you know this already.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  What kind of cooking requires raising the temp of 50L of water by 60C? I'm open to the induction stove thing but I don't understand why its proponents are so focused on the speed of boiling large amounts of water. Is this the primary cooking activity of many ordinary families?
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    Because it’s the one thing induction is good at. People who don’t cook often are impressed by it. I have a gas range with a high quality induction plate built into it. So I can boil water faster. But I hardly cook on it, for that gas is king.
  - maxwell86 5y ago
    Beer brewing.
- aemreunal 5y ago
  > What kind of cooking do you prefer doing on a gas stove over an induction stove? I haven't cooked much on induction stoves. I only do so at my parents' place. So among the few things I cooked on both induction and stove, I know I prefer gas for cooking steaks and making scrambled eggs. I know part of my frustration is with the touch controls, though, and I presume some of it is due to my lack of intuition with what setting is good for what sort of "cooking I want to apply to food". I do agree with one of the replies to your comment, though: it seems like everyone just talks about how good induction is at boiling water and not much else specifically. I have an electric kettle for that job so it's not some alluring aspect to me.
Latty 5y ago
If you get hot while cooking, induction is the best—all the heat ends up in the pan, not the air around it. Induction took some getting used to, but outside of a few very specific things (mainly stir-fry), it's better than gas across the board for me.

R0b0t1 5y ago

I was able to get the most even heating with a high quality (but not insanely expensive) induction stove. Boiling water in about a minute, insane. And because the heating element is necessarily closed loop you don't have the regulation problems you do with an ohmic heater. A gas stove is a lot more powerful (10-60kW vs 1-3kW) but a lot of that heat simply escapes upwards.

bogota 5y ago
Its not about power or speed for me. Whenever i visit my parents i hate cooking anything because the electric stoves release heat in bursts then turn off for a bit then a huge burst. It’s impossible to cook anything the way you want . Normally i just go for overcooking everything. But in general i find cooking relaxing and that stove turns it into something that makes me mad every morning. Maybe this is specific to the stove they have though. I have and will continue to use gas because of this.
- leoedin 5y ago
  My AEG induction stove has short enough pulse cycles it's not noticeable - a low setting just means low heat. In fact, it's the best stove I've ever used by far - it can go from gently melting chocolate to way too much heat in about 2s. Apart from boiling water I never use the most powerful settings because they'll burn stuff. The only thing it can't do better than gas is wok cooking - the curved sides don't get hot. My parents have a different brand induction which does seem to have longer pulse cycles - maybe one every 5s or so. That is probably the effect you're describing - it'll go from essentially off to too hot and back. It's obviously a manufacture specific thing.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - winkeltripel 5y ago
    For the wok, you can get a ring for heating the sides of it.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  I don’t know why but when I visited Japan, every stove has this sensor which cuts off the gas almost completely when the pan gets to hot, I guess it’s to prevent oil fires. If you want to hate cooking, go to Japan and use one of those things.
- pengaru 5y ago
  That's not an inherent quality of electric stoves, just crappy ones. I use a 50s-era GM Frigidaire electric stove+oven and it doesn't modulate current to control temperature. It's quite a gas-like pleasure to cook with, prior to this I'd only ever experienced electrics like you're describing and they're awful.
  - danachow 5y ago
    I hate to break it you but an old 50s era stove works exactly as the GP describes - there certainly wasn’t low cost high power solid state power conversion circuitry in those days - the mechanism is extremely simple, an adjustable bimetal thermostat that can turn the element full on and off with adjustable duty cycle - and that modulation frequency is over seconds. Any smoothing of this mechanism is inherent in the thermal capacity of the heating element. And this is modulation of current - think of it as a very slow PWM.
    - pengaru 5y ago
      If it's modulating as you describe, it's completely imperceptible, unlike any of the other ones I've had to live with in SF bay area apartments. But I must admit I have not disassembled the thing to understand its workings. I don't even bother with heavy copper-clad pots and pans anymore, which were necessary before. This thing behaves like a gas stove. So it's the heating element thermal inertia that differs, to smooth out the temperature? Edit: Looking at [0], what you're describing seems to be known as an "infinite switch". That's not what the old stoves like mine has, this is just a rotary switch with 5 selectable presets. I assume it's changing the resistance. Worth noting is also the even older Kalgoorlie [1] style stove, which changed the number of heating elements connected to regulate temperature. This repair guide [2] describes both infinite and rotary switch controls on a high-level: When the heating element is on, the heater inside the switch is on. The bimetal heats (along with the element) until the contacts open. Then the bimetal cools (along with the elements) until the contacts close again. There are also fixed-temperature switches that vary the voltage going to the heating elements to maintain fixed, pre-set temperatures. These are usually push-button or rotary switches with fixed settings such as warm, low, medium and high. In fixed-temperature switch controls, heat levels are varied by applying different voltages (110V or 220V) to different coils of different resistances. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_switch [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_stove#Kalgoorlie_Stove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_stove#Kalgoorlie_Stov... [2] https://www.appliancerepair.net/oven-repair-4.html https://www.appliancerepair.net/oven-repair-4.html
- Symbiote 5y ago
  You are comparing a cheap electric radiant hob to a gas one. The GP was praising an induction hob, which is the third type.
  - JackFr 5y ago
    Radiant electric replace the age old coil with elements below a ceramic or glass surface. They are uniformly abysmal to cook with. Induction are very different from radiant electric and require cookware of particular materials. They are amazing in some respects and limited in others. From a glance though both have smooth glassy surfaces that look modern.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      I haven't seen a coil hob for years, I think my grandma had one. The cheapest option apparently called a solid plate hob in Britain. Those coils are inside a ceramic (I think) plate. The cheapest ones cost about £80. They're difficult to damage, so you find them in the cheapest rented apartments (students etc): https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/hobs/essentials-csphobx21-electric-solid-plate-hob-inox-10221688-pdt.html https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/h... "Ceramic" hobs refers to the one with heating elements below glass/ceramic. Starts from £110, but it's a bit easier to damage. Many rented homes would have this, since it looks fancy and clean.: https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/hobs/essentials-cchobkn21-electric-ceramic-hob-black-10224996-pdt.html https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/h... Induction hobs start at £180: https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/hobs/logik-lindhob16-electric-induction-hob-black-10143242-pdt.html https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/household-appliances/cooking/h... Most ordinary (cheap or expensive) cookware sold in Europe is compatible with an induction hob, but not necessarily everything.

oofabz 5y ago

I do a lot of cooking and I prefer electric. I'm sure it's because I've cooked on electric ranges my entire life, the kind where the pan sits directly on the spiral heating element. I only ever cook with gas when I'm visiting a friend or relative. Gas stoves are great at bringing a pot of water to a boil. But they are not so good at very low heat, like leaving a covered pot to simmer. Most gas ranges don't go as low as I would like, and I need to watch the pot more carefully and stir more frequently than I would at home. I'm sure most of my issues are familiarity. If I had spent my life cooking with gas, my techniques would have developed to work better with gas. But now that I'm set in my ways I will stick with electric.

ericbarrett 5y ago
A proper induction range will boil water much faster than gas. Under two minutes to take a full pasta pot—8 quarts (7.5L) of water—from tap-cold (50F/10C) to a rolling boil. Do not confuse them with resistive coil electric stoves, which are inferior in every way! Unless you're dead set on aluminum cookware.
- Flashtoo 5y ago
  I like induction cooking as well, but it's not _that_ fast. Assuming a 3 kW (usually it's less powerful) induction stovetop, 7 kg of water, 4 J/(g.c) specific heat and 90 C temperature increase, that would take at the very least 14 minutes. Should take longer if you include heating the pan itself, phase change energy and heat losses. If you wanted to do it in two minutes, that would take twice as much power as a home Tesla charger. Heating water just takes a ton of energy.
  - JackMcMack 5y ago
    I can confirm that our induction stove is very fast, much faster at boiling water than the (domestic) gas stoves I've had experience with. A pot of water really does boil in under two minutes, so I wanted to question your math, but it seems correct :-). The problem here is the quantity, why are you (gp) boiling 7 liters of water? edit: the boost is more powerful (3.7kW for the largest zone), but still. That's time limited (10 minutes or less), and limits the current to the other zone on the same phase.

leobg 5y ago

I love induction. The main annoyance, for me, are the touch controls. You regulate up or down in steps, and the controls sometimes have trouble recognizing your fingers if they are wet. There’s also no tactile feedback. I’d much rather turn a knob. Then it would be perfect.

kergonath 5y ago
Yeah tactile controls are rubbish. I can’t wait for the next design fad where we’ll go full circle and have dials and knobs everywhere.
params 5y ago
This is so true, my parents have an induction stove with touch controls. It takes ONE drop of water on the 10x40cm touch control square to make the whole stove top shut down with a beeping alarm sound. If you have buttery fingers it won't recognize any touches (major annoyance when making butter heavy sauces). On top of that it also relies on long-presses, you have to hold your finger on the "button zones" for 2 seconds, then you can alter the heat, one touch at a time on a 1-10 scale. Takes about 10-20 seconds to adjust the heat. When I looked for a new stove last year I tried to find one with induction AND knobs. I ended up getting a non-induction stove, with knobs, works well enough although I would swap it for one with induction and knobs any day, haha!
- leobg 5y ago
  Yeah. Manufacturers act like having wet or oily fingers was some kind of edge case in a kitchen.
  - wallacoloo 5y ago
    stove/oven UX has been shit ever since they were first digitized. my first home had an analog-controlled electric oven: turn the dial to the temperature you want. every oven i’ve owned since uses up/down touch buttons to adjust the temperature in 5-degree increments. it turns the half-second process of swinging a knob to the right place into a 5-second process of holding a button until it hits the right temperature. worse, i find myself trying to micro-optimize my use of oven temperature buttons: instead of holding up until the temperature is reached, i repeatedly tap it to make it go faster — but not so fast that the debouncing mistakes 2 presses for just one press, otherwise it’s net slower. i find myself actively making latency v.s. throughput decisions: i can preheat the oven by pressing “on”, dialing in the temperature, and then pressing “start”. or, i can press “on”, “start”, and then dial in the temperature and press “start” an extra time. preheating begins whenever you first press “start”, so this shaves off 5 seconds of preheat latency at the cost of 1 extra second spent on an extra button press. i get irrationally angry every time i use a digital oven. the digital oven is like some looking glass into a half-dozen interlinking societal systems that have managed to settle into some totally unsatisfying equilibria… and they’ve stayed there for decades. it’s legitimately depressing.

askvictor 5y ago

In terms of fine control, induction is a game changer (me resisting moving from gas for a long time). I use lower, more precise cooking techniques more now. For high-temperature (e.g. searing a steak) stuff, there's something different about how it heats. I haven't worked out what it is yet, as induction gets the pan insanely hot really fast (on 'boost mode'); almost too hot, which should be excellent, but seems wierd, and sometimes seems to burn the pan. But for that kind of cooking I use the gas BBQ outside mostly. Having bought an induction stove when refitting our kitchen, then replacing it with a different one a couple of months later, I can advise that the size of the elements matters. The 'linked zones' thing seems to be rubbish, and doesn't heat evenly (maybe it does on really high end stuff). I now have a three-element stove (60cm) - one really big one and two smaller ones. I don't think I've ever used 4 burners at once anyway... I just wish there was an API for induction stoves; interfacing with a thermometer to keep a certain temperature, or for a set time, or even a removably physical control panel (i.e. knobs) that would let you put it away and keep the flat-top thing (which is actually really nice when you need the bench space).

amelius 5y ago
Perhaps someone could use an IR camera to determine the difference.
HPsquared 5y ago
Induction stoves with temperature control do exist - set the desired temperature and it'll control the heat output accordingly. Edit: https://www.hafactory.it/2015/10/19/miele-news-about-temperature-control-in-induction-hobs/ https://www.hafactory.it/2015/10/19/miele-news-about-tempera...
maxwell86 5y ago
We bought a professional "manual" (no fancy electronics) from a restaurant (with knobs and no touch), for 100$ each. And built our own system with that. You can set the knob, and turn it on and off with a relee, connected to a raspberry pi. We have temperature sensors on the "food side" of the pans and pots, since what we care about is the temperature that the food feels. 99% of the time we don't use it with the pis, but have a couple of recipes as Jupyter notebooks that we use the temp control and temp staging with. One advantage of induction over gas here, is that the thermal mass of some induction pots and pans is almost zero, and temperature changes are instantaneous, so from the point of view of control algorithms, programming induction cooking is infinitely better than any other system that i've used, cause you don't have to solve a PDE to regulate the temperature. YOu can just turn it on if its too cold and off if its too hot, and that's it. +-0.5C of accuracy, which at the 100$ level for a single plate is unbeatable. We spent ~400$ for 3 heats. 100% recommend.

kergonath 5y ago

Induction is very good, in different situations than gad. With induction, you have a reliable temperature control and can heat the whole pan uniformly, even at low temperatures. It’s very easy to let something simmer for hours or heat something just so it does not cool too much. One of the main issue with common domestic gas stoves is that the heat is not well distributed, and good pans don’t necessarily have a great thermal conductivity. This is a problem when what you’re hearing is not liquid enough to redistribute heat by convection. Another is that you don’t control the temperature of the flame, just its size. So temperature control is always finicky, particularly at low temperatures. So personally I go for induction most of the time, and a barbecue when I need a flame.

test001only 5y ago

I love cooking on gas. As you mentioned the convenience is unmatched and it is a pleasure compared to cooking using induction or hot plate. Induction certainly seemed more efficient with how fast it used to boil water, but when cooking food, gas always wins for me. Not to mention, lot of pans I have will not work on induction or hotplate.

reaperducer 5y ago

a gas stove is just unmatched in how much easier and better it makes cooking. I agree with you there. I've had gas for the last ten years, and recently moved to a place with induction. It's a significant change. I had regular electric for a long time before I had gas, so there was an adjustment period there, too, but I got used to it pretty quickly. But induction is somehow very different from either of those two. I've been on induction for six months, and I still have such a very hard time with temperature control that I cook at home a lot less than I used to. It has a thousand controls, but only seems to have two settings: surface of the sun, and off. That said, I'm OK with the move toward eliminating natural gas in homes. I just wish I ended up with a regular electric stove top instead of induction. But it's an apartment, so you get what you get.

jart 5y ago

First they came for rough and tumble, then the cigarettes, then the lightbulbs, and now prometheus fire. Before you know it you're in a Darth Vader pod and you have no mouth but you must scream. Wealth inequality has gotten so dramatic that the state probably profits 10x more off people existing than the people do themselves, so the state cares 10x more about people living as long as possible than the people might themselves; as such, the state will show no hesitancy in making any tradeoffs that maximize long-term economic value extraction. https://youtu.be/tetwGGL997s?t=159 https://youtu.be/tetwGGL997s?t=159

goodpoint 5y ago

Even a cheap portable induction hob is so much better than gas.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Induction plates vary a lot in quality and in the amount of energy they transfer. The more expensive ones can dump a lot of energy into a pan really quickly. Some go up to 3-4KW even. If you are trying to boil a large pan of water/soup/etc., a good induction plate gets the job done very quickly whereas you might have to wait a bit with a gas stove or a cheaper, lower capacity induction plate. Like wise, if you are searing a steak, you'd want a large wattage to get the pan really hot, really quickly. Gas is nice mainly for things that are really temperature sensitive like searing meat, using a wok, etc. Of course when cooking stuff like that you want good ventilation for this because otherwise you end up with a lot of grease and soot all over the kitchen. So, the pollution of gas matters less if you have that set up correctly. The main reason gas is so nice for cooking is how quickly you can adjust the temperature. Induction plates also respond really quickly of course. The old fashioned red hot spiral things, are much more tricky because they stay hot for so long; it takes a minute to reduce the heat; or to raise it. I have one at home and I'm used to it but it is still annoying. A neat trick is to simply move pans away from the heat to control it. Induction plates don't have that problem. But I really hate the touch controls many of these things have. They are very fiddly; especially with wet hands and they also can get hot. I'd prefer to have some old fashioned dials. But in terms of instant, fine grained control, they are actually pretty good.

maxwell86 5y ago

> I totally get the desire to switch to electric appliances for many reasons, but I am yet to meet an electric stove of any kind that I remotely enjoyed cooking on. Is this everyone's experience? We bought a profesional induction plate, 4.5kW, 100$ on ebay. Performance wise, its ~4x better than the 4kW gas stove it replaced. The time required to heat 50L of water to 60C went down from 60min with gas to about 10-15 min with induction. Instantaneously hot, and instantaneously cold. For us it opened a lot of new ways of cooking. What kind of cooking do you prefer doing on a gas stove over an induction stove? Obviously the same pots and pans don't work on both, but if you have a top of the line induction stove you know this already.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
What kind of cooking requires raising the temp of 50L of water by 60C? I'm open to the induction stove thing but I don't understand why its proponents are so focused on the speed of boiling large amounts of water. Is this the primary cooking activity of many ordinary families?
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Because it’s the one thing induction is good at. People who don’t cook often are impressed by it. I have a gas range with a high quality induction plate built into it. So I can boil water faster. But I hardly cook on it, for that gas is king.
- maxwell86 5y ago
  Beer brewing.
aemreunal 5y ago
> What kind of cooking do you prefer doing on a gas stove over an induction stove? I haven't cooked much on induction stoves. I only do so at my parents' place. So among the few things I cooked on both induction and stove, I know I prefer gas for cooking steaks and making scrambled eggs. I know part of my frustration is with the touch controls, though, and I presume some of it is due to my lack of intuition with what setting is good for what sort of "cooking I want to apply to food". I do agree with one of the replies to your comment, though: it seems like everyone just talks about how good induction is at boiling water and not much else specifically. I have an electric kettle for that job so it's not some alluring aspect to me.

Latty 5y ago

If you get hot while cooking, induction is the best—all the heat ends up in the pan, not the air around it. Induction took some getting used to, but outside of a few very specific things (mainly stir-fry), it's better than gas across the board for me.