People here seem unaware that there exists a 3rd option that isn’t either gas or induction - a ceramic hob is electric, heated coils under glass, but you can use it with any pot or pan, so there’s no need to spend all that extra money replacing all your cookware, and the hob itself is cheaper too.
And they’re terrible at cooking: any change in temperature, including heating up takes a ton.
They’ve served me perfectly well for over a decade.
The difference in supposed quality wouldn’t be noticeable to most while the difference in cost definitely would be. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Not unaware, just not mentioning it as an option because it’s so inferior.
I got an induction system yesterday and ripped my old ceramic one out. I mean, it worked okay apart from the fact that it was slower and would take a while to cool down again.
What always bothered me was not always having the ideally sized one and seeing all the red glow around the bottom of the pot or pan. “Fuck, I’m wasting 30 % energy right now…”
this is why big gas is cranking up the propaganda on stoves. induction stoves are better, don’t believe them
I didn’t have a gas stove until I was in my late 40’s. I will not willingly go back to conventional electric. Gas stoves are better. Finer control, faster temp changes (esp. when decreasing).
I’d be willing to try an induction stove. They’re rare in the US, but my limited experience with them was positive. Not quite as nice as a gas stove, but miles better than an conventional electric range, and good enough that the easier cleaning would tip me over.
You mention propeganda; it’s odd that the only propeganda I encounter is the anti-gas kind. It’s non-stop on NPR and social media. I haven’t heard or read a single pro-gas piece.
Edit: I think you were only talking about induction, so I changed some phrasing.
This here shows where the propaganda appears:
GF was a professional cook for 15 years, still prefers our induction stove to the gas stoves she worked on all this time.
Yeah, I can believe I could learn to prefer induction. They’re just incredibly rare in residential US homes, which is where I live, and what the article was about.
The only place I’ve encountered an induction stove was in the EU, where - I gather - they’re more common.
I haven’t heard or read a single pro-gas piece.
Right-wing media apparently. Not American, but from what I gather if you watch NPR, you’re a communist and a homosexual. So that means you won’t be watching real American media like Fox News.
Stuff like this from a member of congress:
“I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!”
https://twitter.com/RonnyJacksonTX/status/1612839703018934274?t=ptxUxaAhqE1ax8FwY15cyA
Gas stoves are better. Finer control, faster temp changes (esp. when decreasing).
Gas stoves are better in some ways, but “finer control” is debatable. If you turn the knob from 0 to 10, it’s obvious that the energy output is non-linear. On my stove the flame has like 50% of its increase between level 2 and 3 or 4. You also have a more narrow range of heat with gas. That is, the lowest setting has to be high enough that the flame does not blow out, so the min heat is higher than the min level on electric. Electric also gets hotter than gas on the high end.
With electric you get precise control. Power level 5 gives exactly half the heat energy that 10 gives; power level 6 is exactly triple the heat of power level 2. You don’t get that precision with gas. You can only eye-ball it which means harder to get reproduceable results.
You probably meant to say gas gives you /immediate/ control. Conventional electric is quite slow, but induction is fast.
Maybe it’s a brand or quality difference; I can pretty finely control the flame on our range.
“Control” is the ability to adjust to a desired temp with fine accuracy, right? I can see the flame, and observe changes more rapidly, with gas. Isn’t this finer-grained control?
A common residential electric range outputs a max 7,000 BTUs. A common gas stove outputs max 18,000 BTUs. Electric stoves are not hotter on the high end.
That’s not really the type of information I was looking for, but thanks anyways.
Better air quality, otherwise they are merely not as inconvenient as other types of electric stoves.
But you need to buy new induction capable pots for them and the pulsing heat they make takes some time to get used to.
While I don’t agree they’re better, a key feature over conventional electric (and one of the main benefits of gas) is that the stove surface doesn’t inherently retain heat. They get hot, but only because the pan is hot. When you turn down the heat, it’s immediate, like a gas stove.
I don’t know about how fast they can heat; gas can output a ridiculous amount of BTUs, but at 240v I wouldn’t be surprised.
I don’t know about the US, but in Germany it’s common that the individual or two plates of the induction stoves have their own 380V cable and breaker.
Have to keep efficiency in mind as well. Practically all of the heat produced by induction goes directly into the pan bottom. With gas, quite a bit of the heat doesn’t end up in the pan.
In my experience, induction on high settings heats much faster than gas. Sometimes faster than is desirable actually. A pot of water will boil at the bottom when the top is only somewhat warm.
In addition to the other comments about it being just as quick, if not faster and easier to get a consistent heat, I also found the noise level was way better - it’ll hum if the pan isn’t centered properly, and the power is turned up, but when simmering, it’s pretty much silent which was weird but suprisingly nice.
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.
It’s the oven, not the stovetops, where gas is most useful.
Gas ovens give moist heat which is good for baking moist foods like cakes. Electric ovens give dry heat which is good for foods that should be crispy (pizza crust). Ideally an oven would offer both kinds of fuels. Europe lacks in this regard (no thermostatic gas ovens anymore!).
Energy efficiency aside, the stovetop debate is somewhat silly in comparison because you can cook anything on either stove and adapt to the control.
Wouldn’t it be far more ideal for the electric oven to have a way of introducing moisture instead of requiring all the components for a separate fuel source?
A simpler design is an advantage in itself but it doesn’t cover all factors (e.g. pricing).
If your closest power plant burns fossil fuels, then there’s a big inefficiency at the power plant which still has the emissions followed by a considerable inefficiency in the transmission of electricity and still some heat loss from the wall to the food in converting electric back to heat. Electric heat is more efficient if you only measure from the wall to the food. It’s overall less efficient because you have fuel → heat → steam → turbine → electricity → transmission → heat conversion (lossy at every step), when you could simply have fuel → transmission → heat. And as a consequence electric is usually more costly. Exceptionally, some regions manipulate the energy pricing in order to make electric nearly as economical as gas.
So whether gas makes economical sense depends on where you are. The prices can also swing especially in Europe due to the Russian war. Thus having both options is ideal once you consider pricing (esp. fluctuating pricing). Having both options hedges against price swings and at the same time gives you the option to choose the kind of heat you need for what you’re preparing.
power outages
Some folks live out in the sticks and have frequent power losses. Every storm is likely to cause a power outage in some remote areas where the power lines are near trees. And because those communities are small, response time is slow. So the power can be out for days. Several times this happened to someone in my family when they had a cake in their electric oven. The cake would have been ruined had they not had the option to transfer the cake to a propane gas grill.
It does. Stick a pan with water in it in the oven with your baked item. This is necessary even for gas ovens, if you require a moist cooking chamber.
The air inside a gas oven isn’t especially wet at 400°F, because of the inverse relationship of temperature and relative humidity.
Induction only drawback is the need for more expensive cookware.
For me, induction and cast iron is a match made in heaven.
For me pretty much everything but the china special supports induction. The only stuff I have that I can’t use with it is either old (20+ years) or was the cheapest option in the store and it’s generally not too good (a student needs to start somewhere)
Aluminum is stupid popular in my country, being cheap, affordable and pretty resistant. Most people resist moving to induction as it will require purchasing new pots and pans.
A stainless steel 25cm frying pan, of good make can cost anywhere from €35 to €70. If not more. I’m keeping on the affordable range, not crazy designer stuff.
The equivalent aluminum can cost between €10 and €20.
I mean you can get a good lodge cast iron pan for like $25, so it’s not really even that expensive. Sure the fancy ones are $100-200, but (don’t tell the cast iron fanatics) they’re only marginally better than lodge, and mostly because of things like aesthetics, ergonomics & weight than cooking performance.
Cast iron is expensive. Between the material itself and the late hype for this particular type of kitchenware, price are high.
I bought my first cast iron pot for €45. It’s a 4 litre, so not that big.
I recently bought in a promotion a skillet and grill for €40, as a promotion, but each piece should have cost of around €40/piece. Most won’t fork that much.
Right now, I’m thinking about a nice paella or mushroom ragu to really break in the skillet.