Pollution and home safety aside. I found it nice to pinpoint my desired heat. It works so fast and accurate that I got consistent pancakes like i never used to before.
That’s pretty cool. Can they heat a pan as fast as a gas stove? One of the major inconveniences with an electric stove is having to wait for the burner to heat up, before you can wait for your pan to heat up. I’ve had resistive stoves for decades now, and they’re not very good IMO. But I’ve never had an induction stove. I’ve really missed the gas stove we had when I was a kid.
Resistive stoves are slow because heat has to move from the coils, to the air above the coils, to the glass top, to the pan, to the food.
Gas stoves are fast because heat can move from the flame, to the pan, to the food.
Induction cooktops are the fastest because heat gets to move directly from the pan, to the food.
Induction uses magnetic fields to directly impart energy into the metal of your pan. Magnetic fields move energy at the speed of light. That’s faster than gas can move heat. Which means your pan warms up quicker.
Back on gas after having induction (moved).
I also grew up on resistive and was as skeptical as you are. Now, I dream about upgrading to induction again once we are able to reno the kitchen. For example, boiling water on induction is more than twice as fast as gas and the temp adjustment goes so quick that even cooking eggs is a breeze.
You can imagine an induction stove to work similarly to a resistive stove, only with your pan/pot being the resistive element. The slow part of resistive stoves is the heat transfer from the element to the cookware, so you can imagine how quickly an inductive stove heats that thing up!