I find it significantly harder to cook with electric than gas, and the first hurdle these days is always that for some reason all modern stoves use awful touch interfaces instead of just plain knobs. I don't understand how we got there. It should be obvious to anyone that it's a terrible interface when you are trying to multitask several pots and might also have greasy hands
I haven't seen one in a kitchen in decades, other than extremely old ones. The touch control design is absolutely everywhere. At least here in Norway, where ~all stovetops are electric.
Agreed - maybe not lots - but I got myself a HIS8055U three years ago specifically because it had knobs. No regrets there. I wish it had one larger burner, but completely night and day with traditional electric.
This! The only electric (induction or otherwise) stovetops are either bottom of the barrel portable or top of the line commercial models. Everything in between is capacitive touch garbage.
I bought a relatively inexpensive induction range from LG specifically because it has knobs - a lot of the more expensive ones from other brands were capacitive touch.
Induction is the good one - it has instant response like gas.
Resistive electric stoves suck and deserve their reputation, but induction is the best of both worlds: high power, accurate control, and you don't waste half of the energy due to the flame's heat going around the pot.
But the touch-sensitive controls are infuriating indeed. Nothing about induction requires them, it's just a dumb design fad.
Induction is shit. Horrible stuff. Not nearly the same level of control and heat dissipation as gas. Much better than resistive, but about 10% as good as gas.
Where it has a clear advantage is in boiling speed when used at full power. I've ditched my electric kettle for a stovetop one. There's not a day I'm cooking that I don't somewhat regret having replaced the old and crappy gas stove.
Even with very thick cast iron pans, the hot spots are there at any power. It takes longer for the pans to heat up and the heat is never uniform.
For pots with thinner floors, I bought thick heat diffusers. Again, they help - but they just make everything less responsive and probably a lot less efficient as well. Not to mention they don't actually make the hot spots disappear either.
It depends on what you call bad. It's certainly not top of the line, thousands of pounds worth, but it's not a cheap one either. Honestly it's my first induction one, so who knows?
I hate it but I think the reason might be regulations? I have family who recently had to replace their stove setup, they used to have a combined oven + stovetop thing where dials on the front of the oven controlled the stovetop. They wanted the replacement to work the same way but there were no options, and when they asked, they were told it's no longer legal for the stovetop and the oven to be electrically connected in that way (or something along those lines).
No idea if it's true or if it was just an impressively creative salesperson.
But it sucks. I've accidentally burned cookware by having parts of the stovetop turn on intentionally. And sometimes, if my fingers are moist while cooking (imagine that!), the touch controls just go completely insane and I have to spend time drying my hands and the controls before I regain control over the stove.
IMO the new design with touch buttons is way more dangerous.
I’m skeptical about the reasoning being regulations. There are still a few Italian manufacturers who have a combined oven & stovetop models (“range” in US terms) including induction, but they’re really expensive and with questionable reliability / warranty support. I think all manufacturers just care about cutting costs and putting out a “sleak” design.
Yeah, so my (electric) stove has knobs, but my oven and microwave are both touch buttons and this has literally never been an issue.
Admittedly I have other complaints about the microwave controls (why is it so damn many button presses to vary the power output) but it's not because the buttons are hard to use.
I don't care. Quality-of-life. I cook in a pan every day. Nothing but an open flame gives me the kind of control I need to cook with the precision I do. Whatever the harmful effects on my health are, that is a trade I make consciously. My life would be noticeably worse without my open-flame stove.
I'd wager anyone who opines otherwise in this thread barely cooks or doesn't cook in a serious fashion. A gas stove is a tradesman's tool.
No way. I cook everyday and induction is vastly superior than gas. The only time fire is vastly superior is when I use a wok which I have a stove I use outdoors. Most induction stoves have temperature maintained too. So it can keep your oil at a specific temperature let it be frying or confit or roasting spices.
Can’t (properly) cook a tortilla on an electric burner, though you can get subpar results in a pan
Can’t char a pepper on an electric burner
Can’t heat a nabe on an electric burner
Also during hurricane season, my gas burner still works when the power goes out.
The list goes on of things that electric simply cannot do. To claim one is superior over the other ignores a lot of the ways people cook. They are just simply different cooking tools.
Does the list _really_ go on though? I think we basically exhausted it (and one on that list is solved with a $10 torch, one with a cast iron pan, the other with an induction-friendly nabe). You can make lists for induction too:
- Can't temper chocolate, cook a hollandaise, or do anything that requires low heat without using a double boiler.
- Can't boil a large pot of water in under 20 minutes (unless you have a high-power/commercial burner that will absolutely murder indoor air quality/conditioning).
- Can't set the temperature of the pan (or even the contents), rather than just the power level. Think, maintaining an oil temp for deep frying, or a surface temp for browning.
That last one is a really big deal. Imagine if ovens still just had power levels (low/med/high) instead of thermostats.
- setting pan temp isn’t a thing, there are no recipes that call for a pan temp. Oil temp? Sure and that is why you have a thermometer, very solved problem. For browning etc you do it by time and feel, even if you could set a pan temp you wouldn’t just leave your meat on it for some temp x time amount.
I'll take your word on those first two. I've used gas ranges, and the smallest burner has never been small enough to avoid putting itself out. And the largest one has always taken ages to boil water. Especially since the largest one usually pops the damn flame beyond the edges of the pot. But it's possible I've never used a really nice gas range. Though, FWIW, my current induction range is the cheapest model they had on sale 10 years ago, and it handles both perfectly.
For the last one, just because you're an elite chef and can cook a steak perfectly every time on feel, doesn't mean I am. :D I can buy a $40 steak and know I'm not going to ruin it because I can maintain my pan at 350f, which will brown it and not burn it. I can make pancakes without constantly adjusting the cook time and heat every single batch as the pan continually absorbs more and more heat throughout the cook. I can put a chili on, set it to 204 degrees, then just leave and come back in a few hours without babying the power knob for the first hour trying to get it to a stable, gentle simmer. I can braise meats without using my oven, because I can keep a liquid at 180 degrees. I can make a soup at 3pm, then put in on at 145 degrees for a few hours until dinner. It's not about having a "recipe", you learn 4-5 important temperatures after a couple weeks of using it.
I mean really, all of my examples involve on-demand flame at a BTU higher than a torch, so I suppose the list doesn’t go on if you exclude things like charring eggplant for baba ganoush.
Induction is super awesome for maintaining temp. But one isn’t superior over the other in all cases. My point was purely, people need high BTU fire sometimes based off how they cook. I mean, you won’t see me cooking tagine, but surely someone in the world cooks tagine?
Can literally do all these (except nabe, don't understand what's happening there) with a basic cast iron pan + induction stove top.
They may be different cooking tools but if one is ruining the quality of your life + possibly children, wouldn't you rather do it the safe way? Or are your habits more important than your health?
Maybe it’s because my wife is literally a chef but you’ll have to pull her gas range/oven out of her dead hands. She’s worked with induction before for years, it is not the same league. For instance, you can’t tilt the pan.
Yeah I was going to say, induction is the shit. Normal electric stove tops are a far cry from them and people should not assume they’re anything alike other than a non-flame process.
Same. I feel I can give a very honest opinion on this as I insisted on a dual fuel hob when we refitted our kitchen 5 years or so ago.
The induction rings aren’t a patch on the gas ring for “proper” cooking. There’s simply no competition between them in that regard. Mad for anyone to suggest otherwise.
I’d wager you won’t find many commercial kitchens, even at the low/mid end not running some gas rings as well. I’d be amazed if any at the top-end were not using gas rings. The inductions are great for boiling some pasta or veg up fast though!
We have a massive outside venting hood overhead as well (which must have been required in UK building regs since at least the 90s?!?) so I really don’t care about indoor “pollution” lol.
You may like more food that is cooked on an open flame, if you like frying or if you like burned crusts, but precision is not the reason.
I eat only food that I cook myself from raw ingredients and I have switched years ago from cooking on an open flame to cooking with a microwave oven.
Regarding precision, a microwave oven does not have competition. Once I have established a sequence of powers and durations for each power that is appropriate for a certain recipe, the food will always be cooked identically, while freeing me to do other activities instead of handling the food.
I still have a gas stove with oven, but I have not opened it again for about 7 years.
Maybe it’s just because the gas stoves I’ve worked with are cheap, but I find them frustrating because their temperature ramps aren’t remotely linear, which can make finding exactly the right setting a pain.
To be fair, induction doesn’t heat the sides of the pan at all. So carbon steel pans are more annoying to use and keep uniformly seasoned. Woks don’t really work by default either. It’s also more susceptible to slightly warped pans exacerbating uneven heating.
Heating the absolute hell out of the sides of the pan used to be a disadvantage. That's why everyone moved to crazy-expensive, fully-clad cookware. I like how well cheap, disk-bottomed pans work on induction.
But yes, I've also basically given up on carbon steel with induction. Cast iron seasons really well though.
I've cooked every day for 40 years. Before that, I learned to cook at home on an old fashioned electric stove with the coil elements.
Sure, the reaction time is slower. You learn to think ahead.
Nothing is optimal. The tenements that my kids lived in as students had gas stoves and zero ventilation. That couldn't have been a good idea.
Our latest stove is induction, made by LG, with control knobs. I love it. Best thing is it's easier to keep clean. I'm learning to be more reactive about turning the heat up and down, just because I can. Maybe I'll discover what I've been missing all these years.
Julia Child wrote that a home cook doesn't have to be a chef.
Many professional cooks who are building new kitchens are doing it with induction. Induction gives you even more precise control, especially since they can put more sensors on the cook surface since it doesn't get as hot.
And professional kitchens turn them on! I've literally never seen anyone turn on their range hood while cooking, unless they burn something and are trying to get the smoke alarm to turn off.
And induction gets hot immediately. And it is easier to clean. And it is less likely to cause fires. It's just a better technology all around when compared to gas stoves. The only issue I personally have with it is that it is not compatible with all cookware.
Induction also dumps way less waste heat into your house, making it tolerable to exist in a kitchen even with four burners going at once. It also barely heats the cooking surface at all (just whatever heat flows back from the pan), so it's dramatically safer for households with children and the elderly.
"I'd wager anyone who opines otherwise in this thread barely cooks or doesn't cook in a serious fashion."
I started my taxable life almost 30 years ago in a Chinese kitchen. I'm literally a born-in-the-fire professional cook first and foremost out of any other thing in life I do. Induction rocks, I don't know what your skill issue is. I get pots and pans hotter, way faster than gas, and the temperature control is as fast as the cooking implement can shed the excess heat. That is as fine a degree of control as you can possibly get, the only better thing would be instantaneous temperature and that's basically a thermodynamic impossibility.
Yeah those exist, meant regular induction cooktop. Still ok for most wok dishes if you cook on batches. Regular gas stoves aren't really powerful enough for proper woking anyway, so an induction wok shaped one might actually be better for most home users.
There are actual induction units for woks now. They're large but they really get almost the whole wok really hot really fast! I'm assuming there are multiple induction loops inside the unit to be able to make that happen given how deep the wok must sit inside the unit.
I’ve been using induction since I have had kids and I enjoy it so much more than fire. That being said, I rent so I can only use 120V ones and the options are so limited here. Most of the small 120V ones make an obnoxious hum.
The Impulse Labs stove has almost cartoonish levels of excessive power and uses 120V (and doesn’t even use particularly high current). The Breville Control Freak uses 120V and is a touch underpowered but is truly excellent. Both of these even have knobs (and both have very nifty temperature control capabilities).
I love my Control Freak, but I did have to replace a couple pans. For some reason, on my dirt-cheap induction range, they didn't buzz; they do on the Control Freak.
My guess is my cheap stove cycles, and the Control Freak applies power linearly, so whatever power level the stove uses didn't happen to make those pans buzz.
We love our induction stove top. The "burners" go from 1 to 9 but also have an L and P setting.
4 is the same as gas low. 7 is the same as gas high. 8 is wok hot. 9 is too hot. P is power - for heating up water. It's amazing.
It can melt your pan but it has a sensor to not let that happen. It does sometimes give the metal that blue color you get when you heat metal with a blow torch.
The sensor is also used for pan frying. It has presets for light to heavy frying and keeps the pan at the temp the whole time.
If you do the deep research on this there are many qualifiers to get the result they’re purporting. The main issue is you have to have little to no ventilation to make their numbers work. If you have a hood and or good indoor airflow to a window then this is all propaganda.
That's why I love my induction range: all the benefits of gas (near instant heat control and response, even cooking, etc.), none of the asthma or benzene!
I’m lucky we have a proper range hood that vents outside so I feel better about gas. If this is the same paper I read a year or two ago, or related to it, apparently that reduces the “pollution” in the house by like 90% or more. Going off memory though so someone correct me if I’ve got it wrong.
If the hood breaks down or the stove needs to be fully replaced, I will probably flip to induction. I had one in my old apartment and it was great
We estimate average total residential long-term NO2 exposure across the United States to be ∼10 ppbv for people who own a gas stove (∼18 ppbv or more for households in the top 5% of gas burned while cooking) and ∼8 ppbv from total outdoor exposure for those with electric stoves, which cause no additional NO2 exposure.
[...]
Stratifying exposure by gas stove use intensity (i.e. by amount of gas burned while cooking, [...]), we find that people in households burning the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles of fuel nationally on average are exposed to 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01–0.07) ppbv, 1.7 (95% CI: 0.8–3.5) ppbv, and 10.3 (95% CI: 4.8–21.7) ppbv, respectively, of additional NO2 exposure from using their gas or propane stoves.
It seems they considered water boiling in their numbers, which makes this estimation very non-portable across countries (e.g. countries where gas hobs are used, but also electric kettles are used)
I feel like it should seem obvious gas stoves create unhealthy pollution in an indoor environment.
What is less obvious and what I would personally like to know is how much pollution remains if you have a hood above your gas stove that exhausts outdoors that is operating while cooking.
some definitely does linger and most consumer kitchen hoods are not strong enough, you can get a pm2.5 meter and find out yourself... in my experience a couple hours
the craziest thing is no hood at all, if you cook once a day that stuff lingers all day unless you open a bunch of windows
I’ll be frank - I don’t buy this stuff because there are well funded agendas behind it. We find ourselves in an era where electrical utilities have shifted from widow & orphan dividend stocks to growth companies… and shockingly the environmental people are fully mobilized with gas everywhere.
Asthma is clearly correlated to urban areas with exposure to various pollutants. We’d see those same clusters in suburban populations with gas stoves if these indoor pollutants were elevating risk.
I live in New York. The utility in my region successfully lobbied to hike delivery rates for electricity by 40%. My spring electric bill is $300/mo, as much as my peak August or January utility bill a decade ago. 3-5 years ago, various foundations were bussing hundreds of protestors to lobby for climate change legislation that is essentially outlawing new natural gas service. They also prevented construction of pipelines to serve NYC and New England with additional capacity. All new construction must be electric only.
Observational evidence is confounded by numerous variables, to say that “urban centers have clusters of asthma and rural centers don’t” ignores all of the extant factors of the urban environment. Studies have found that gas stoves could play a role in development of childhood asthma. It may not scale to the magnitude of that seen in urban cores, with the addition of other sources of air pollution, but it’s weird to discount the studies entirely as a propaganda campaign by Con Ed.
There are well funded agendas behind literally any study that makes it in front of you. An agenda is not inherently bad or corrupt. Even if it works to their advantage, if the health information is accurate, then you need to take it seriously. Your lungs do not care who funded it.
I have an agenda to better my life. It’s important context, but it doesn’t make me inherently corrupt or untrustworthy, let alone wrong.
To really drive this home: You have an agenda to advance your career and better your life. I would never dismiss you outright simply because of that.
TL;DR: “It’s funded by a GROUP with an AGENDA” is a lame, invalid, hand wavy excuse to ignore substance. Context matters, but the substance is ultimately what should be assessed.
Edit: I’d also be curious to see sources for “New York can build electric only” and all these bussing claims (mind you bussing protestors is not a bad thing, it depends if they are actually involved or paid actors, which oil and gas companies have no problem using - https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/05/608785751...)
I didn’t see it in the article, but I wonder if this is still the case if people who properly vent before turning on their gas stoves and continue to vent for a minute after cooking is finished.
The US's infrastructure was built out with gas in mind. Having a gas stove is a status symbol, where having a resistive electric stove was for the longest time considered the domain of the poor, hence why people are so romantically attached to gas despite the fact that it's worse in basically every way than a modern induction stove.
Technology Connections did a video (because of course he did) on how gas furnaces work. The short of it is that the flame is contained inside of metal tubes and never mixes with indoor air. No exhaust gases can leak into the breathable air.
I love my induction cooktop. I despise - in fact loathe - the touch interface, which becomes useless with the slightest spill of oil (and can thus be stuck on high until the interface is sufficiently wiped off and dried).
I have the Gasland IH77BFH. If someone has made a hack to modify this by adding physical dials, I'd be tickled.
We do, it's called an outdoor BBQ. Meanwhile everything inside is electric, minimal toxic byproducts from cooking and zero chance of carbon monoxide poisoning.
I find it significantly harder to cook with electric than gas, and the first hurdle these days is always that for some reason all modern stoves use awful touch interfaces instead of just plain knobs. I don't understand how we got there. It should be obvious to anyone that it's a terrible interface when you are trying to multitask several pots and might also have greasy hands
Simply not true. There’s a ton of induction and electric coil ranges with knobs. Just look at the Bosch line.
I haven't seen one in a kitchen in decades, other than extremely old ones. The touch control design is absolutely everywhere. At least here in Norway, where ~all stovetops are electric.
I just bought an LG induction stove, all knobs except oven temp setting.
I know someone who just bought a brand-new consumer-grade convection oven with induction cooktop. Knobs for the stovetop, buttons for the oven.
I mean they probably exist but the standard induction plates that they deliver with kitchens are all touch control. You learn to live with it.
Agreed - maybe not lots - but I got myself a HIS8055U three years ago specifically because it had knobs. No regrets there. I wish it had one larger burner, but completely night and day with traditional electric.
they are definitely a minority, not "tons". On the Bosch website I can't even find them.
Not really in Europe, at least not in the nordics. All Bosch are touch controls.
This! The only electric (induction or otherwise) stovetops are either bottom of the barrel portable or top of the line commercial models. Everything in between is capacitive touch garbage.
I bought a relatively inexpensive induction range from LG specifically because it has knobs - a lot of the more expensive ones from other brands were capacitive touch.
Am I missing something? A quick search for electric ranges on Home Depot shows simmerstats at every price range.
The harder one is induction, where there are lots of touch controls, but I don’t see this issue on traditional resistive stovetops.
(This is in the US of course)
Induction is the good one - it has instant response like gas.
Resistive electric stoves suck and deserve their reputation, but induction is the best of both worlds: high power, accurate control, and you don't waste half of the energy due to the flame's heat going around the pot.
But the touch-sensitive controls are infuriating indeed. Nothing about induction requires them, it's just a dumb design fad.
Induction is shit. Horrible stuff. Not nearly the same level of control and heat dissipation as gas. Much better than resistive, but about 10% as good as gas.
Where it has a clear advantage is in boiling speed when used at full power. I've ditched my electric kettle for a stovetop one. There's not a day I'm cooking that I don't somewhat regret having replaced the old and crappy gas stove.
Even with very thick cast iron pans, the hot spots are there at any power. It takes longer for the pans to heat up and the heat is never uniform.
For pots with thinner floors, I bought thick heat diffusers. Again, they help - but they just make everything less responsive and probably a lot less efficient as well. Not to mention they don't actually make the hot spots disappear either.
Have you ruled out the possibility that you have a bad stove?
It depends on what you call bad. It's certainly not top of the line, thousands of pounds worth, but it's not a cheap one either. Honestly it's my first induction one, so who knows?
It's a Belling Cookcentre 100Ei [0].
[0] https://www.belling.co.uk/en-gb/cookcentre-100ei-range
I've seen induction with dials for the stove. Ovens have had electronic buttons for decades though.
I hate it but I think the reason might be regulations? I have family who recently had to replace their stove setup, they used to have a combined oven + stovetop thing where dials on the front of the oven controlled the stovetop. They wanted the replacement to work the same way but there were no options, and when they asked, they were told it's no longer legal for the stovetop and the oven to be electrically connected in that way (or something along those lines).
No idea if it's true or if it was just an impressively creative salesperson.
But it sucks. I've accidentally burned cookware by having parts of the stovetop turn on intentionally. And sometimes, if my fingers are moist while cooking (imagine that!), the touch controls just go completely insane and I have to spend time drying my hands and the controls before I regain control over the stove.
IMO the new design with touch buttons is way more dangerous.
I’m skeptical about the reasoning being regulations. There are still a few Italian manufacturers who have a combined oven & stovetop models (“range” in US terms) including induction, but they’re really expensive and with questionable reliability / warranty support. I think all manufacturers just care about cutting costs and putting out a “sleak” design.
I can’t wait for knobs to make a comeback.
Still easy to manage, quick wipe with a paper towel, but rarely need to do even that.
Yeah, so my (electric) stove has knobs, but my oven and microwave are both touch buttons and this has literally never been an issue.
Admittedly I have other complaints about the microwave controls (why is it so damn many button presses to vary the power output) but it's not because the buttons are hard to use.
I don't care. Quality-of-life. I cook in a pan every day. Nothing but an open flame gives me the kind of control I need to cook with the precision I do. Whatever the harmful effects on my health are, that is a trade I make consciously. My life would be noticeably worse without my open-flame stove.
I'd wager anyone who opines otherwise in this thread barely cooks or doesn't cook in a serious fashion. A gas stove is a tradesman's tool.
No way. I cook everyday and induction is vastly superior than gas. The only time fire is vastly superior is when I use a wok which I have a stove I use outdoors. Most induction stoves have temperature maintained too. So it can keep your oil at a specific temperature let it be frying or confit or roasting spices.
Can’t (properly) cook a tortilla on an electric burner, though you can get subpar results in a pan
Can’t char a pepper on an electric burner
Can’t heat a nabe on an electric burner
Also during hurricane season, my gas burner still works when the power goes out.
The list goes on of things that electric simply cannot do. To claim one is superior over the other ignores a lot of the ways people cook. They are just simply different cooking tools.
Does the list _really_ go on though? I think we basically exhausted it (and one on that list is solved with a $10 torch, one with a cast iron pan, the other with an induction-friendly nabe). You can make lists for induction too:
- Can't temper chocolate, cook a hollandaise, or do anything that requires low heat without using a double boiler.
- Can't boil a large pot of water in under 20 minutes (unless you have a high-power/commercial burner that will absolutely murder indoor air quality/conditioning).
- Can't set the temperature of the pan (or even the contents), rather than just the power level. Think, maintaining an oil temp for deep frying, or a surface temp for browning.
That last one is a really big deal. Imagine if ovens still just had power levels (low/med/high) instead of thermostats.
Let’s assume we both have nice ranges.
- I can temper on my 7k BTU burner
- I can boil water quick AF on my 18k BTU burner
- setting pan temp isn’t a thing, there are no recipes that call for a pan temp. Oil temp? Sure and that is why you have a thermometer, very solved problem. For browning etc you do it by time and feel, even if you could set a pan temp you wouldn’t just leave your meat on it for some temp x time amount.
I'll take your word on those first two. I've used gas ranges, and the smallest burner has never been small enough to avoid putting itself out. And the largest one has always taken ages to boil water. Especially since the largest one usually pops the damn flame beyond the edges of the pot. But it's possible I've never used a really nice gas range. Though, FWIW, my current induction range is the cheapest model they had on sale 10 years ago, and it handles both perfectly.
For the last one, just because you're an elite chef and can cook a steak perfectly every time on feel, doesn't mean I am. :D I can buy a $40 steak and know I'm not going to ruin it because I can maintain my pan at 350f, which will brown it and not burn it. I can make pancakes without constantly adjusting the cook time and heat every single batch as the pan continually absorbs more and more heat throughout the cook. I can put a chili on, set it to 204 degrees, then just leave and come back in a few hours without babying the power knob for the first hour trying to get it to a stable, gentle simmer. I can braise meats without using my oven, because I can keep a liquid at 180 degrees. I can make a soup at 3pm, then put in on at 145 degrees for a few hours until dinner. It's not about having a "recipe", you learn 4-5 important temperatures after a couple weeks of using it.
I mean really, all of my examples involve on-demand flame at a BTU higher than a torch, so I suppose the list doesn’t go on if you exclude things like charring eggplant for baba ganoush.
Induction is super awesome for maintaining temp. But one isn’t superior over the other in all cases. My point was purely, people need high BTU fire sometimes based off how they cook. I mean, you won’t see me cooking tagine, but surely someone in the world cooks tagine?
Fair enough. I do actually have a camping stove that I've used a couple times when I needed a flame.
Can literally do all these (except nabe, don't understand what's happening there) with a basic cast iron pan + induction stove top.
They may be different cooking tools but if one is ruining the quality of your life + possibly children, wouldn't you rather do it the safe way? Or are your habits more important than your health?
You absolutely cannot do the same thing with a cast iron, I promise.
Maybe it’s because my wife is literally a chef but you’ll have to pull her gas range/oven out of her dead hands. She’s worked with induction before for years, it is not the same league. For instance, you can’t tilt the pan.
Yeah I was going to say, induction is the shit. Normal electric stove tops are a far cry from them and people should not assume they’re anything alike other than a non-flame process.
They have wok adaptors for induction now, FYI.
They've had wok-compatible induction burners since the very beginning. Induction is huge in China.
Same. I feel I can give a very honest opinion on this as I insisted on a dual fuel hob when we refitted our kitchen 5 years or so ago.
The induction rings aren’t a patch on the gas ring for “proper” cooking. There’s simply no competition between them in that regard. Mad for anyone to suggest otherwise.
I’d wager you won’t find many commercial kitchens, even at the low/mid end not running some gas rings as well. I’d be amazed if any at the top-end were not using gas rings. The inductions are great for boiling some pasta or veg up fast though!
We have a massive outside venting hood overhead as well (which must have been required in UK building regs since at least the 90s?!?) so I really don’t care about indoor “pollution” lol.
You may like more food that is cooked on an open flame, if you like frying or if you like burned crusts, but precision is not the reason.
I eat only food that I cook myself from raw ingredients and I have switched years ago from cooking on an open flame to cooking with a microwave oven.
Regarding precision, a microwave oven does not have competition. Once I have established a sequence of powers and durations for each power that is appropriate for a certain recipe, the food will always be cooked identically, while freeing me to do other activities instead of handling the food.
I still have a gas stove with oven, but I have not opened it again for about 7 years.
Maybe it’s just because the gas stoves I’ve worked with are cheap, but I find them frustrating because their temperature ramps aren’t remotely linear, which can make finding exactly the right setting a pain.
> Nothing but an open flame gives me the kind of control I need to cook with the precision I do
Please explain how an induction cooktop doesn't give you the control and precision you need as compared to gas flame.
To be fair, induction doesn’t heat the sides of the pan at all. So carbon steel pans are more annoying to use and keep uniformly seasoned. Woks don’t really work by default either. It’s also more susceptible to slightly warped pans exacerbating uneven heating.
Heating the absolute hell out of the sides of the pan used to be a disadvantage. That's why everyone moved to crazy-expensive, fully-clad cookware. I like how well cheap, disk-bottomed pans work on induction.
But yes, I've also basically given up on carbon steel with induction. Cast iron seasons really well though.
I'm a pretty bad cook which probably explains why I never had a problem cooking on any kind of surface.
I don't remember even cast iron electric causing any big issues. Maybe I just don't have skills either...
I've cooked every day for 40 years. Before that, I learned to cook at home on an old fashioned electric stove with the coil elements.
Sure, the reaction time is slower. You learn to think ahead.
Nothing is optimal. The tenements that my kids lived in as students had gas stoves and zero ventilation. That couldn't have been a good idea.
Our latest stove is induction, made by LG, with control knobs. I love it. Best thing is it's easier to keep clean. I'm learning to be more reactive about turning the heat up and down, just because I can. Maybe I'll discover what I've been missing all these years.
Julia Child wrote that a home cook doesn't have to be a chef.
Many professional cooks who are building new kitchens are doing it with induction. Induction gives you even more precise control, especially since they can put more sensors on the cook surface since it doesn't get as hot.
Some people are just resistant to change and will bitch and moan even if it’s better. Professionals can’t afford to do so.
Tradesmen typically are paid to offset the health effects of their profession, but you get benzene for free.
Professional kitchens have way better exhaust than your typical modern apartment.
If your kitchen is in your living room (and nowadays they all are) I would definitely switch to induction.
And professional kitchens turn them on! I've literally never seen anyone turn on their range hood while cooking, unless they burn something and are trying to get the smoke alarm to turn off.
“Whatever the harmful effects on my health are, that is a trade I make consciously”
Technically since it appears the effects are nebulous to you and if consciousness means informed then it seems a conscious decision is not possible
Induction is more precise with better control
And induction gets hot immediately. And it is easier to clean. And it is less likely to cause fires. It's just a better technology all around when compared to gas stoves. The only issue I personally have with it is that it is not compatible with all cookware.
Induction also dumps way less waste heat into your house, making it tolerable to exist in a kitchen even with four burners going at once. It also barely heats the cooking surface at all (just whatever heat flows back from the pan), so it's dramatically safer for households with children and the elderly.
"I'd wager anyone who opines otherwise in this thread barely cooks or doesn't cook in a serious fashion."
I started my taxable life almost 30 years ago in a Chinese kitchen. I'm literally a born-in-the-fire professional cook first and foremost out of any other thing in life I do. Induction rocks, I don't know what your skill issue is. I get pots and pans hotter, way faster than gas, and the temperature control is as fast as the cooking implement can shed the excess heat. That is as fine a degree of control as you can possibly get, the only better thing would be instantaneous temperature and that's basically a thermodynamic impossibility.
It’s not the flame/carcinogens that I’m most worried about personally, but instead the gas.
Oh, and I disagree with the fire being more precise than induction etc.
It’s just what you’re used to.
Induction is as good or better for everything except a wok.
They have wok adaptors for induction now.
Yeah those exist, meant regular induction cooktop. Still ok for most wok dishes if you cook on batches. Regular gas stoves aren't really powerful enough for proper woking anyway, so an induction wok shaped one might actually be better for most home users.
There are actual induction units for woks now. They're large but they really get almost the whole wok really hot really fast! I'm assuming there are multiple induction loops inside the unit to be able to make that happen given how deep the wok must sit inside the unit.
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I’ve been using induction since I have had kids and I enjoy it so much more than fire. That being said, I rent so I can only use 120V ones and the options are so limited here. Most of the small 120V ones make an obnoxious hum.
The Impulse Labs stove has almost cartoonish levels of excessive power and uses 120V (and doesn’t even use particularly high current). The Breville Control Freak uses 120V and is a touch underpowered but is truly excellent. Both of these even have knobs (and both have very nifty temperature control capabilities).
I love my Control Freak, but I did have to replace a couple pans. For some reason, on my dirt-cheap induction range, they didn't buzz; they do on the Control Freak.
My guess is my cheap stove cycles, and the Control Freak applies power linearly, so whatever power level the stove uses didn't happen to make those pans buzz.
Cooking itself pollutes the air (e.g. oil droplets) so external ventilation is still essential.
We love our induction stove top. The "burners" go from 1 to 9 but also have an L and P setting.
4 is the same as gas low. 7 is the same as gas high. 8 is wok hot. 9 is too hot. P is power - for heating up water. It's amazing.
It can melt your pan but it has a sensor to not let that happen. It does sometimes give the metal that blue color you get when you heat metal with a blow torch.
The sensor is also used for pan frying. It has presets for light to heavy frying and keeps the pan at the temp the whole time.
If you do the deep research on this there are many qualifiers to get the result they’re purporting. The main issue is you have to have little to no ventilation to make their numbers work. If you have a hood and or good indoor airflow to a window then this is all propaganda.
That's why I love my induction range: all the benefits of gas (near instant heat control and response, even cooking, etc.), none of the asthma or benzene!
I’m lucky we have a proper range hood that vents outside so I feel better about gas. If this is the same paper I read a year or two ago, or related to it, apparently that reduces the “pollution” in the house by like 90% or more. Going off memory though so someone correct me if I’ve got it wrong.
If the hood breaks down or the stove needs to be fully replaced, I will probably flip to induction. I had one in my old apartment and it was great
The paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf341
The numbers:
[...]
We estimate average total residential long-term NO2 exposure across the United States to be ∼10 ppbv for people who own a gas stove (∼18 ppbv or more for households in the top 5% of gas burned while cooking) and ∼8 ppbv from total outdoor exposure for those with electric stoves, which cause no additional NO2 exposure.
[...]
Stratifying exposure by gas stove use intensity (i.e. by amount of gas burned while cooking, [...]), we find that people in households burning the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles of fuel nationally on average are exposed to 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01–0.07) ppbv, 1.7 (95% CI: 0.8–3.5) ppbv, and 10.3 (95% CI: 4.8–21.7) ppbv, respectively, of additional NO2 exposure from using their gas or propane stoves.
[...]
It seems they considered water boiling in their numbers, which makes this estimation very non-portable across countries (e.g. countries where gas hobs are used, but also electric kettles are used)
I feel like it should seem obvious gas stoves create unhealthy pollution in an indoor environment.
What is less obvious and what I would personally like to know is how much pollution remains if you have a hood above your gas stove that exhausts outdoors that is operating while cooking.
some definitely does linger and most consumer kitchen hoods are not strong enough, you can get a pm2.5 meter and find out yourself... in my experience a couple hours
the craziest thing is no hood at all, if you cook once a day that stuff lingers all day unless you open a bunch of windows
Along the same lines - replacing gas stoves with electric ones is effective for treating asthma:
Article: https://theconversation.com/replacing-gas-stoves-with-electr...
Underling Study: https://www.jaci-inpractice.org/article/S2213-2198(26)00537-...
I’ll be frank - I don’t buy this stuff because there are well funded agendas behind it. We find ourselves in an era where electrical utilities have shifted from widow & orphan dividend stocks to growth companies… and shockingly the environmental people are fully mobilized with gas everywhere.
Asthma is clearly correlated to urban areas with exposure to various pollutants. We’d see those same clusters in suburban populations with gas stoves if these indoor pollutants were elevating risk.
I live in New York. The utility in my region successfully lobbied to hike delivery rates for electricity by 40%. My spring electric bill is $300/mo, as much as my peak August or January utility bill a decade ago. 3-5 years ago, various foundations were bussing hundreds of protestors to lobby for climate change legislation that is essentially outlawing new natural gas service. They also prevented construction of pipelines to serve NYC and New England with additional capacity. All new construction must be electric only.
Observational evidence is confounded by numerous variables, to say that “urban centers have clusters of asthma and rural centers don’t” ignores all of the extant factors of the urban environment. Studies have found that gas stoves could play a role in development of childhood asthma. It may not scale to the magnitude of that seen in urban cores, with the addition of other sources of air pollution, but it’s weird to discount the studies entirely as a propaganda campaign by Con Ed.
There are well funded agendas behind literally any study that makes it in front of you. An agenda is not inherently bad or corrupt. Even if it works to their advantage, if the health information is accurate, then you need to take it seriously. Your lungs do not care who funded it.
I have an agenda to better my life. It’s important context, but it doesn’t make me inherently corrupt or untrustworthy, let alone wrong.
To really drive this home: You have an agenda to advance your career and better your life. I would never dismiss you outright simply because of that.
TL;DR: “It’s funded by a GROUP with an AGENDA” is a lame, invalid, hand wavy excuse to ignore substance. Context matters, but the substance is ultimately what should be assessed.
Edit: I’d also be curious to see sources for “New York can build electric only” and all these bussing claims (mind you bussing protestors is not a bad thing, it depends if they are actually involved or paid actors, which oil and gas companies have no problem using - https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/05/608785751...)
I didn’t see it in the article, but I wonder if this is still the case if people who properly vent before turning on their gas stoves and continue to vent for a minute after cooking is finished.
I don't get it. Did the US never get electric stoves? They're over 100 years old tech at this point.
It's weird that noone here mentions there are electric stoves between gas and induction.
The US's infrastructure was built out with gas in mind. Having a gas stove is a status symbol, where having a resistive electric stove was for the longest time considered the domain of the poor, hence why people are so romantically attached to gas despite the fact that it's worse in basically every way than a modern induction stove.
Interesting. I would like to know if central heating (gas) has similar effects.
If it’s properly vented, no it wouldn’t. Huge difference between just running an open flame in the middle of your kitchen and HVAC applications.
Technology Connections did a video (because of course he did) on how gas furnaces work. The short of it is that the flame is contained inside of metal tubes and never mixes with indoor air. No exhaust gases can leak into the breathable air.
https://youtu.be/lBVvnDfW2Xo?t=266
This should be clear as day to anyone - burning causes toxic fumes.
I love my induction cooktop. I despise - in fact loathe - the touch interface, which becomes useless with the slightest spill of oil (and can thus be stuck on high until the interface is sufficiently wiped off and dried).
I have the Gasland IH77BFH. If someone has made a hack to modify this by adding physical dials, I'd be tickled.
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We do, it's called an outdoor BBQ. Meanwhile everything inside is electric, minimal toxic byproducts from cooking and zero chance of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Relax, its just a stove