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The World's Sexiest Stove
- micheljansen 15y agoCool design. Unfortunately, the "put the pots anywhere you want" concept requires induction to work. You'll have to pry my gas stove "from my cold dead hands" :P
- tptacek 15y agoWhy? Induction is nothing like an electric cooktop. It's very responsive and very very fast. They're also pretty cheap; a single burner cooktop from a good brand costs under $70. My understanding is, gas is the gold standard in the US mostly because gas (cooking fuel) is so incredibly cheap here; induction is more common in Europe.
- DanBC 15y agoGas oven with induction hobs are a popular choice. Natural gas is cheap (in the UK), but the efficiencies of induction are nice. I did have trouble a few years ago finding a good quality pan suitable for use on induction hobs with a non-stick coating for my US sister.
- tptacek 15y agoYou can get metal slugs that sit between any pan and the induction surface to transmit the heat.
- micheljansen 15y agoI'm actually from Europe (The Netherlands), but it is not the price of gas that appeals to me, but the flexibility of a gas stove. I do a lot of stir-fry cooking with a wok and the only way those things work well is if there is a blazing inferno below them. I also like to use cast-iron pans for grilling, because they hold heat well and don't cool off as quickly as aluminium cookware, which helps a lot with big pieces of meat and fish. I must admit that the cleanliness and beauty of induction stoves does appeal to me. A combination stove where half of it is induction (for boiling water, cooking pasta etc.) and half is gas for more heavy-duty work would be perfect.
- tptacek 15y agoThe gas burners designed for woks also supply heat all around the wok, not just from the bottom-up; woks are supposedly notoriously poor performers on conventional cooktops. Gas cooktops are great! For me, based on my limited experience and knowledge, it's (Tied for 1st) [Gas, Induction], then the 2-slice toaster, then the microwave oven, then electric.
- 54mf 15y agoTruth. Not to mention, I'd be terrified of throwing my cast icon pan anywhere near that glass top.
- tptacek 15y agoThat's the thing that bugs me most about induction cooktops too.
- kondro 15y agoInduction is as responsive as gas, faster to boil water (no wasted heat, or need to heat the pot before heating the contents) and more energy efficient.
- tptacek 15y agoIt's marginally slower to boil water than a good gas burner (my tests, but also Cooks Illustrated's, and they're not usually wrong about stuff like this), but they the two are so close that it's not worth comparing. Also, not sure how energy efficient. It may depend on the specific cook top. At max power, the things drain a lot of power. It's possible that they consume less "energy" than gas but are still more expensive, right? Gas is very cheap. It's very trippy to sear meat or boil water on a burner, lift the pan off, and have the cooktop surface be cool to the touch.
- kondro 15y agoGas may be very cheap, but we pull it from the ground. We may pull a lot of our electricity from the ground at the moment too, but there are options for renewable sources of electricity. GE rates their induction cooktops are being able to boil water about 25% faster than their gas cooktops with similar gas output. But I have seen other scores that show that induction is only slightly faster at boiling water.
- tptacek 15y agoI think I agree with all this; I'm just making (or actually regurgitating) an argument for why induction isn't as popular here as it is in Europe. Again: induction is awesome. But I've done my own tests and so has Cooks Illustrated and it doesn't look like the typical induction unit boils water faster than gas. On the other hand: who cares?
- michaelcampbell 15y agoInteresting; I love the "cooks anywhere" aspect and the touch screen that kinda showed where things were. On thing I noticed about the video was the horrific parallax; it looked like the demonstrator was hitting the touch screen a good 1/2" away from what was being selected.
- buro9 15y agoI guess it depends on the definition of sexy. I find this sexier: http://www.agaliving.com/our-products/classic-aga-cookers/4-oven.aspx http://www.agaliving.com/our-products/classic-aga-cookers/4-... Though, I'll be honest and say that I have trouble finding something cast-iron 'sexy'.
- gte910h 15y agoI find that stove really looks like you like your kitchen to look cool, and never be used. http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&safe=off&q=two+oven+ranges&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&ion=1&biw=1908&bih=1299&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=17310159887876987684&sa=X&ei=GUwLT9GzNs_ctwf-6vCmDw&ved=0CI0BEPICMAE http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&safe=off... does 90% of the stuff that cast iron behemoth does and won't make your house require a A/C in the winter.
- av500 15y agoAh yes, I can imagine moving a pot to the side and the thing asking with a popup: "I detected you moved a pot, would you like me to set up a new cooking area? Confirm|Cancel|File Not Found"
- micheljansen 15y agoFinally a reason to revive good old Clippy!
- nodata 15y agoOne step closer to a monthly "Patch Tuesday" for every device in the house :)
- 54mf 15y agoNo, it's not sexy. It's sleek, or simple, or innovative, but I really hope no one wants to fuck it. </petpeeve> And please, please, please stop saying "culinary enthusiast." In my humble opinion, if "[o]ne of the key consumer cues for induction is cleanability," that's less an enthusiast and more a lazy person with 5 grand to throw at a stovetop. I know a few people who actually work as chefs - the most enthusiastic of culinary practitioners, I presume - and I haven't heard any of them ever complain about the "cleanability" of, well, anything. [Edit] Not to mention, the UI on that touch panel is totally uggs. Look at those pseudo-3D buttons!
- klausa 15y agoWell, I'd imagine people working as chefs don't complain about about 'cleanabilllity' of their stuff, because they aren't ones cleaning them.
- tptacek 15y agoNo, chefs clean their cooktops continually during service. The thing to know about most pro kitchens: they're incredibly small. There's no way most of them could even fit the person who'd clean up around a cook. And in small kitchens, if you're not working clean, you're going to look like the Swedish Chef.
- klausa 15y agoYou know - I unfortunately never was to 'pro' kitchen, so I don't know how these work, but if it is similar to how I cook - sure, they're cleaning them up as they go (that's the only sane way to do it.), but I'm not sure whether such stove doesn't require throughout cleaning after whole day/night of use - and that's something I imagine being done by someone else than chef - and that's when the 'cleanability' part comes in play.
- tptacek 15y agoIf we're talking about a cooktop, my thought about the word "cleanability" is, does it attract grit and grime, can you quickly wipe it down with a side towel, does it have lots of fiddly grooves where things get trapped, do the burners get clogged easily.
- kia 15y agoOne problem with induction cooking is that you have to use cookware made of ferromagnetic metal. For other pots an interface ferromagnetic disk is required.
- nodata 15y agoOne problem? What are the others? Ferromagnetic pots are not expensive. Even Ikea sells them on half of their range.
- tptacek 15y ago"Interface ferromagnetic disk" meaning "round piece of any metal efficiently heated by induction". I think this downside of induction is wildly overstated; I have very few pieces of cookware that aren't "induction compatible", and I certainly didn't shop for them with that as a criteria. Any All-Clad pan works; my cheap-o omelette pan works; my enameled dutch oven works; obviously, my cast iron skillet works. So much normal, good cookware works on an induction cooktop that it might make more sense to think about "induction incompatibility" as a liability of exotic (or particularly cheap) cookware, instead of a liability of induction.
- jacobr 15y agoInduction is hardly new, and the touch screen interface is probably just going to piss you off massively. For an interface like this, you need input feedback and should be able to utilize muscle memory.
- k7d 15y agoExactly, the best interface for kitchen-ware is physical knobs. I hate all those touch-surface buttons that usually come integrated on stoves like this. They have no feedback and they fail to react more often than they do.
- 54mf 15y agoSeconded. Cooking and touch screens should be as far apart as possible. The kitchen is an environment full of potential disasters for such an interface: food everywhere to gunk up the device, heavy / hot / wet objects to destroy it, wet / dirty / sticky fingers (okay, okay, let's [try to] be grown-ups) to prevent proper touch detection, and so on. I love the idea of an iPad in the kitchen, for example, but only as a screen (preferably interacted with via voice) and not as a functional device.
- nodata 15y ago> Exactly, the best interface for kitchen-ware is physical knobs. I disagree: the problem with the interface shown is the disconnect between the screen and the stove. I'd like to see the stove itself as the touch screen.
- tptacek 15y agoIf you cook all day, or cook lots of things at once, being able to reliably adjust power levels without looking at the controls is a huge win. That's just a fundamental problem with touch interfaces.
- immad 15y agoI mostly agree with you, but that is what people used to say about Smartphones so maybe the flexibility given by touch screen will over rule is lack of muscle memory
- k7d 15y agoSo you can get a relatively high-end induction stove from AEG for $1000 with a similarly minimalist design. Um, $3000 for touch screen?
- billybob 15y agoCan't see it. How about a nice <img> tag instead of a plugin?
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoI like the idea of induction cooking, but I love cooking with cast iron pots and pans and they do not play well together.
- checker 15y agoI'm curious why they don't work together. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems to say cast iron should work fine. I have no personal experience with an induction range.
- tptacek 15y agoI'm assuming he's saying that because cast iron pans are extremely heavy, and because on a conventional cooktop you can be rough with them (you kind of have to be in order to, for instance, saute on one). Induction burners will shatter if you slam a cast iron pan onto one.
- kondro 15y agoYou really shouldn't be slamming anything into anything. You don't have to be that careful with tempered or borosilicate-style glass.
- kstenerud 15y agoIf you can afford $5000 for a stove, you can afford to hire a cook.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoHow's the cook going to feel about getting out of bed at 3AM because I have a sudden craving for potato pancakes with bacon & sour cream?