4 ms·

I don't buy it, sorry. Electric ovens are garbage, and there's no such thing as an induction oven. Most of the health concerns are probably solved by requiring

by ouid 5y ago

I don't buy it, sorry. Electric ovens are garbage, and there's no such thing as an induction oven. Most of the health concerns are probably solved by requiring the installation of range hoods. 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.

onli 5y ago
The article explains pretty well the advantages of induction. I had induction in my last appartment, gas before and currently a glass-ceramic cooktop (without induction). Induction was clearly the best. Very fast to make water boil, no issues with the gas sometimes not starting to burn or other maintenance work the gas needed. And I see no reason to doubt the negative health effects of gas, burning stuff is always bad. 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.
- ouid 5y ago
  I have never had any luck broiling anything inside an electric oven. The heating elements just don't cut it. As to the non-universality of induction. Many cooking techniques require you to be pretty active with your pan. Perhaps to toss the contents to stir, perhaps to collect hot oil that you are spooning over your fish to brown the top. Many techniques depend on the pan having different temperature at different spots. In particular they require you to use a pan whose geometry is fundamentally incompatible with your induction surface. Induction cooktops do some things better than gas ranges, no question, but they do not do everything better, and there are some things that they don't do at all. Burning things is not always bad. Smoke is basically always bad, aerosolized oils are usually bad, but the product of combusting natural gas is almost entirely carbon dioxide and water vapor. Vent hoods are for oil particulate, and oil particulate contains all sorts of nasty shit for your lungs.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    You are talking about an oven and the article is talking about cooktops, those are different things right? There are also new kinds of convection ovens with air circulation to consider (so they support air frying), but that is a totally different topic. I agree with the AQI aspect: get a good range hood that is vented to the outside (not just recirculating).
com2kid 5y ago
> Electric ovens are garbage, and there's no such thing as an induction oven. 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.
- Slartie 5y ago
  > Spray on magic glass cooktop spray There's your error. That spray-on stuff sucks. It does not work as advertised. What you need is the stuff that is largely solid and dry, comes in a jar and which has a sand-like feel to it. Sorry, I don't know the name or brands of that stuff in the US, but it probably exists there as well (the German name of the stuff I use translates to English into something like "cleaning stone"). You take a sponge, put some water on it, rub some of the sand-like substance out of the jar and scrub the junk from the cooktop with that water-sand-solution. The cleaning agent works like sandpaper and is thus much more effective against dried and/or burned-on residue than chemical-only solutions. You only need the razor tool for the really hard cases. I usually clean my glass cooktop in about 60 seconds this way, and it is actually clean afterwards (ok, maybe add 30 seconds for an additional wipe with glass cleaner to get that pristine "just-installed" look). With the gas ones, even though I love cooking on them when I sometimes find one in a holiday home (because it surely does satisfy that primal urge to tame and use fire), I hate the cleaning, it takes forever because removing the grates and cleaning those takes a few minutes already, and forget about them ever looking like new again. And the cooktop itself also never actually feels "clean" except after a one-hour cleaning marathon because there are so many little edges especially around the burners in which the dirt will inevitably hide during casual cleaning, while the glass one is just a big slab of plain glass, with no place for dirt to hide and accumulate.
kleinsch 5y ago
You seem pretty misinformed. Electric ovens aren’t garbage - most high end homes built today with separate ovens and ranges have electric convection ovens and built-in gas ranges. 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.
ink_13 5y ago
> Electric ovens are garbage 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.
- ouid 5y ago
  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?
  - gruez 5y ago
    >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?
    - ouid 5y ago
      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.
  - nkurz 5y ago
    I've used lots of electric broilers, and a fair number of gas broilers, and have never found one better or worse. I would have said that the main difference is that it's hard to get a dry heat with gas, and hard to get a moist heat with electric. But this is more of an issue for breads and meringues, neither of which gets broiled. Could you explain more about how you find it "incapable of broiling"? I'm wondering if you might be using it wrong. You may have to preheat for a couple minutes, and may have to leave the door slightly open to prevent the thermostat from cycling. Or maybe I've never fully utilized a gas broiler and don't realize what I'm missing.

by ouid 5y ago

onli 5y ago

The article explains pretty well the advantages of induction. I had induction in my last appartment, gas before and currently a glass-ceramic cooktop (without induction). Induction was clearly the best. Very fast to make water boil, no issues with the gas sometimes not starting to burn or other maintenance work the gas needed. And I see no reason to doubt the negative health effects of gas, burning stuff is always bad. 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.

ouid 5y ago
I have never had any luck broiling anything inside an electric oven. The heating elements just don't cut it. As to the non-universality of induction. Many cooking techniques require you to be pretty active with your pan. Perhaps to toss the contents to stir, perhaps to collect hot oil that you are spooning over your fish to brown the top. Many techniques depend on the pan having different temperature at different spots. In particular they require you to use a pan whose geometry is fundamentally incompatible with your induction surface. Induction cooktops do some things better than gas ranges, no question, but they do not do everything better, and there are some things that they don't do at all. Burning things is not always bad. Smoke is basically always bad, aerosolized oils are usually bad, but the product of combusting natural gas is almost entirely carbon dioxide and water vapor. Vent hoods are for oil particulate, and oil particulate contains all sorts of nasty shit for your lungs.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  You are talking about an oven and the article is talking about cooktops, those are different things right? There are also new kinds of convection ovens with air circulation to consider (so they support air frying), but that is a totally different topic. I agree with the AQI aspect: get a good range hood that is vented to the outside (not just recirculating).

com2kid 5y ago

> Electric ovens are garbage, and there's no such thing as an induction oven. 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.

Slartie 5y ago
> Spray on magic glass cooktop spray There's your error. That spray-on stuff sucks. It does not work as advertised. What you need is the stuff that is largely solid and dry, comes in a jar and which has a sand-like feel to it. Sorry, I don't know the name or brands of that stuff in the US, but it probably exists there as well (the German name of the stuff I use translates to English into something like "cleaning stone"). You take a sponge, put some water on it, rub some of the sand-like substance out of the jar and scrub the junk from the cooktop with that water-sand-solution. The cleaning agent works like sandpaper and is thus much more effective against dried and/or burned-on residue than chemical-only solutions. You only need the razor tool for the really hard cases. I usually clean my glass cooktop in about 60 seconds this way, and it is actually clean afterwards (ok, maybe add 30 seconds for an additional wipe with glass cleaner to get that pristine "just-installed" look). With the gas ones, even though I love cooking on them when I sometimes find one in a holiday home (because it surely does satisfy that primal urge to tame and use fire), I hate the cleaning, it takes forever because removing the grates and cleaning those takes a few minutes already, and forget about them ever looking like new again. And the cooktop itself also never actually feels "clean" except after a one-hour cleaning marathon because there are so many little edges especially around the burners in which the dirt will inevitably hide during casual cleaning, while the glass one is just a big slab of plain glass, with no place for dirt to hide and accumulate.

kleinsch 5y ago

You seem pretty misinformed. Electric ovens aren’t garbage - most high end homes built today with separate ovens and ranges have electric convection ovens and built-in gas ranges. 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.

ink_13 5y ago

> Electric ovens are garbage 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.

ouid 5y ago
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?
- gruez 5y ago
  >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?
  - ouid 5y ago
    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.
- nkurz 5y ago
  I've used lots of electric broilers, and a fair number of gas broilers, and have never found one better or worse. I would have said that the main difference is that it's hard to get a dry heat with gas, and hard to get a moist heat with electric. But this is more of an issue for breads and meringues, neither of which gets broiled. Could you explain more about how you find it "incapable of broiling"? I'm wondering if you might be using it wrong. You may have to preheat for a couple minutes, and may have to leave the door slightly open to prevent the thermostat from cycling. Or maybe I've never fully utilized a gas broiler and don't realize what I'm missing.