Two things here. I was forced to go induction when I moved house about fifteen years ago, and I love it. It’s just better than gas. I’m terrible at many things, but I’m a good cook, and I can say, there’s nothing I can do - nothing - that isn’t better on induction. Admittedly, not crazy about the waste of new things, but even so, worth it.
Also, turns out, Big Natural Gas lied to you. It’s dangerous (which the article states). This is a carrot and stick. I’m all electric, and working on solar soon.
Agreee, and a third thing. Gas usage for cooking is so small, it’s really a non-issue.
Gas usage for heating is the big one we need to curtail. Having a culture war on cooking ranges is a distraction.
It’s not a distraction so much as it’s the bait. Gas cooking gets the utility serviced to the building, which enables the gas furnace vs electric heat pump conversation. Gas furnace is cheaper up front, so that’s what goes into suburbia.
Builders and developers will always do the absolutely cheapest thing possible to stay competitive, and will only do better when they’re either legislated to or consumers demand it. Home builders associations lobby to keep minimum requirements … minimal, and most consumers just see pretty showers and big kitchen islands, so this is why we still build houses like it’s 1980.
Always amuses me how many people care about gas mileage on a $50k car but couldn’t give two shits if their $2m home is efficient.
Source: I’m a home designer who frequently has this conversation and that’s usually how it goes down.
Then you are living in an area that is running a bit behind.
Once you electrify heating, no one is going to pay for a gas line in new construction.
We (Netherlands) had these conversations go down like this 5 years ago. Now, no new home construction is running a gas line.
Agreed on both points. As a trial we got a cheap induction hot plate and really like it. We also learned that we want a range that doesn’t have a noisy fan and has a continuous very low setting.
Those Ikea induction hot plates are really nice and a great way to try induction cooking.
Weirdly, I’m in the opposite boat. I have solar, I grew up with an electric oven/stovetop and my previous house had an induction stovetop. I hate, and I mean hate induction and electric for stovetops.
My new house has gas and it is just the best. I love cooking on my wok, my pans heat up in no time, and I feel like I can gauge and control the heat better.
Yes, air flow, exhaust, and air purifying is taken into account to use it safely too in my home.
If your pans are taking time to heat up, you probably had resistive plates, not induction. Induction is FAST - fast to heat up, but also fast to cool down. It’s very similar to cooking on gas.
They probably had glass-ceramic. A lot of people confuse those for induction, since they basically look the same when it’s off: a black glass plate.
When it’s on, the glass-ceramic lights up and becomes red or purple, while induction stays black.
Induction is faster than gas. I have never met anyone who prefers gas to induction after using induction for a while.
Try curved induction plate. Wok doesn’t work with flat induction plates because the moment you start moving it, you’re not heating it anymore.
Induction is objectively superior in heating speed and heat control. But if your cooking technique doesn’t work with it, the previous statement is meaningless.
If your cooking technique involves flipping rice past the flame so oil catches fire a little, then gas is the only option.
this is why big gas is cranking up the propaganda on stoves. induction stoves are better, don’t believe them
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.
That’s not really the type of information I was looking for, but thanks anyways.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
This here shows where the propaganda appears:
When people think of electric stoves, they think of resistance not induction. If people had more experience with induction, I’m sure they’d be less resistant to the change.
But this is America, they still use checks…
They’re so controlled by their corporations.
Give me a digital transaction without fees and I’ll give up checks. They cost less to accept.
Just picked new appliances for our house. I wanted to look at induction but the ones that were within budget had some questionable reliability in the reviews. However we made sure we have the beefy outlet so we can upgrade as the price comes down. I miss cooking with gas but new electric stoves and some good pans are not that bad. It’ll hold us over until upgrade time… I hope.
induction is nice, and the old school induction are fine if all you do is casual cooking. there’s no reason to give big gas more dependence
In my experience both have their upside and downside. I only ever use my resistance stove to braising or stewing, anything that require simmering for long hour, as it provide a consistent heat throughout the cooking process.
Are you saying induction doesn’t provide consistent heat for long periods? Because resistance is the one that doesn’t (at high temp anyway) with the element being turned on and off again and again…
Induction directly heat the cookware so the heat really only coming from the cookware itself, if the cookware isn’t thick enough it will conduct the heat away quickly, or if i turn it on high it will quickly burn the bottom of whatever i’m cooking. It still have to cycle on and off to control the heat though.
Electric stove on the other hand heat the metal coil/ceramic surface so the heat can conduct into the cookware. This way i can have a surface that is consistenly around that temperature, making it easier to control the heat if i want it low enough to simmer but not boil.
In my experience, it’s easier to get my food burn with induction because of the direct heating of the cookware. Maybe yours have those fancy-mancy setting to prevent that, but i don’t have that sort of setting unfortunately.
This should be required watching for every moron who claims gas is better.
If you need that instant temperature drop, remove it from the heat??
Also, induction is even better. Hopefully they become affordable and not priced like fancy appliances in the next decade.
The main advantage for gas isn’t speed, it’s control. I have both gas and electric, standard halogen etc type stoves are junk compared to the fine (also instant, consistent, and reliably easy to gauge) control that gas hobs provide. Not to mention a very even heat . But I agree modern induction finally provide that similar level of control (though the one induction hob I’ve used, while excellent granular control, did seem to heat unevenly requiring the pan to be regularly turned to avoid one-sided burning).
I’ve had a different experience with gas stoves… many of the standard ones can’t be turned down low enough. Simmering something or just keeping it warm is a challenge because there’s too much flame. Really easy to burn sauces or hard to keep them from boiling after they’re done and you just want them to stay warm.
When shopping for appliances for a new house a few years ago I had to pay quite a bit extra to get a higher-end gas stove that had a dual ring of burners that could be turned down lower. In retrospect I wish I’d simply went electric.
Induction is better in every way, like power output, heating speed, and control, except being able to lift the pan freely wok style. Cooking with gas indoors is totally stupid.
Better in every way is nonsense. Cooking indoors is only stupid for morons that don’t know how to safely use a gas stove top. There’s a reason most professional kitchens still use gas and haven’t all rushed to replace with induction - the benefits don’t outweigh the investment.
IKEA has induction cooktops for like $600 or 700 bucks. They’re made by Frigidaire and are backed by a 5-year warranty… If you buy from home Depot that same Frigidaire cooked up, you could only get a 1-year warranty. Otherwise it’s the same exact product.
Okay, the price went up a little bit:
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/saerklassig-induction-cooktop-black-20462066/
Are induction stove tops still expensive where you live? I just bought one used from a colleague at work and will wire it up today. I haven’t really tried to get a good overview of the market since I didn’t buy a new one, but I got the feeling that it doesn’t exactly come with a hefty price tag nowadays.
I’ve been using a standalone portable induction system whenever I didn’t need 2 or more pots/pans at the same time, so I have some experience how neat the technology is. The fact that it wastes no energy going past the pot (like gas), doesn’t require a perfectly sized pot to maximize efficiency and reacts instantly to changes when I turn the knobs made it a very desirable purchase for me. And the fact that it’s a fast way to heat your food. I doubt that I’ll be using my water kettle to pre-heat my pasta water anymore.
Heat storage effect -as soon as you put anything in cold in the pan the whole element goes cold and it takes ages to reheat. Unlike a gas flame.
And “induction” heating is 90% conduction - only a tiny part of the pan is inducted and then the heat has to conduct to the rest of the pan. So in some ways its worse than a conventional electric hob because the heating is so uneven, and you still get the heat storage effect.