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What have you found challenging to cook? I moved from gas to glass top electric and had heard horror stories (had always had gas stoves before) but despite regu

What have you found challenging to cook? I moved from gas to glass top electric and had heard horror stories (had always had gas stoves before) but despite regularly cooking meals for the family I haven’t run into anything problematic beyond worrying my cast iron will scratch the glass top (no issues so far).

reddog 4y ago
I had a lot of trouble cooking on a halogen electic -- pulse on, pulse off -- stove and all those problems went away when I got an induction. For years I thought I was a terrible cook but it was always that terrible electric cooktop. The only thing that cooktop did well was boil water. The most frustating thing I tried to cook was good, crispy hashbrowns. Believe me, I tried everything and the results were always soggy, greasy horror. When I switched to induction (and replaced all my non-ferrous pans) the results were perfect everytime.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Induction seems to be the holy grail of cooking: electric (so it's clean and doesn't use fossil fuel from Russia), and highly controllable and repeatable. Everything else should just be banned, gas because it's polluting and problematic, and other types of electric because they just suck.
wonnage 4y ago
There are a few reasons people prefer gas: - heat output - heat distribution - responsiveness to inputs - durability/ease of cleaning I'm in the same boat and have found glass top actually produces more heat than a previous gas range. This isn't surprising at all numerically but people seem to automatically assume gas ranges are hotter even though you can literally just compare the numbers. Distribution is roughly the same or even better - gas tends to heat in a ring (where the flames are) whereas my glass top electric heats the entire circle. This is true even for wok cooking (although I have a flat-bottomed wok). Responsiveness to inputs is a real problem, there's a significant lag to temperature changes. Although, this is already something every cook has to deal with - different pans heat at different rates, and the amount of food in the pan is a factor too. You kind of just learn to account for it. Surprisingly the last point has been the worst for me - I'm always worried about putting pans down softly, and still have a few scratches. Cleaning is really easy for stuff that will wipe off, and near impossible for everything else. Spills with sugar/starch content need to be cleaned immediately or they'll be burned in forever. You can sort of scrape stuff off with a razor blade but you risk scratching the surface. I'm not sure why, given that glass ought to be harder than metal, but it happens nonetheless. With older coil/gas stoves you had drip pans or could line underneath the hob with foil, and just throw the foil away when it got dirty. But cooking-wise, no issues.
- shaklee3 4y ago
  gas doesn't have higher heat output. this is the reason induction heats water much faster.
- yellow_postit 4y ago
  The temp change part makes sense and I can see how figuring out how to account for that across multiple pans could be challenging for folks that haven’t worked with it before. Cleaning I’ve had no scratches using bar keepers friends to make a paste and scrape off, ymmv. Came across this mother Jones article [1] on the success of the gas branding to promote gas stoves which was fascinating. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/06/how-the-fossil-fuel-industry-convinced-americans-to-love-gas-stoves/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/06/how-the-foss...
mcguire 4y ago
The major problem with resistive stoves is that they take a relatively long time to warm up and cool down.

reddog 4y ago

I had a lot of trouble cooking on a halogen electic -- pulse on, pulse off -- stove and all those problems went away when I got an induction. For years I thought I was a terrible cook but it was always that terrible electric cooktop. The only thing that cooktop did well was boil water. The most frustating thing I tried to cook was good, crispy hashbrowns. Believe me, I tried everything and the results were always soggy, greasy horror. When I switched to induction (and replaced all my non-ferrous pans) the results were perfect everytime.

midoridensha 4y ago
Induction seems to be the holy grail of cooking: electric (so it's clean and doesn't use fossil fuel from Russia), and highly controllable and repeatable. Everything else should just be banned, gas because it's polluting and problematic, and other types of electric because they just suck.

wonnage 4y ago

There are a few reasons people prefer gas: - heat output - heat distribution - responsiveness to inputs - durability/ease of cleaning I'm in the same boat and have found glass top actually produces more heat than a previous gas range. This isn't surprising at all numerically but people seem to automatically assume gas ranges are hotter even though you can literally just compare the numbers. Distribution is roughly the same or even better - gas tends to heat in a ring (where the flames are) whereas my glass top electric heats the entire circle. This is true even for wok cooking (although I have a flat-bottomed wok). Responsiveness to inputs is a real problem, there's a significant lag to temperature changes. Although, this is already something every cook has to deal with - different pans heat at different rates, and the amount of food in the pan is a factor too. You kind of just learn to account for it. Surprisingly the last point has been the worst for me - I'm always worried about putting pans down softly, and still have a few scratches. Cleaning is really easy for stuff that will wipe off, and near impossible for everything else. Spills with sugar/starch content need to be cleaned immediately or they'll be burned in forever. You can sort of scrape stuff off with a razor blade but you risk scratching the surface. I'm not sure why, given that glass ought to be harder than metal, but it happens nonetheless. With older coil/gas stoves you had drip pans or could line underneath the hob with foil, and just throw the foil away when it got dirty. But cooking-wise, no issues.

shaklee3 4y ago
gas doesn't have higher heat output. this is the reason induction heats water much faster.
yellow_postit 4y ago
The temp change part makes sense and I can see how figuring out how to account for that across multiple pans could be challenging for folks that haven’t worked with it before. Cleaning I’ve had no scratches using bar keepers friends to make a paste and scrape off, ymmv. Came across this mother Jones article [1] on the success of the gas branding to promote gas stoves which was fascinating. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/06/how-the-fossil-fuel-industry-convinced-americans-to-love-gas-stoves/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/06/how-the-foss...

mcguire 4y ago

The major problem with resistive stoves is that they take a relatively long time to warm up and cool down.