This is such baloney - there's so many way more relevant factors to the taste of food then which power source was used to provide heat. I bet if you did a blind tasting you'd not be able to tell the difference.
When people say they don’t like electric stoves, what they are saying is that they don’t like the PROCESS of cooking on an electric stove, and hence the results are not as good
Induction is the best of both worlds, but you do have to have induction pans. Stainless steel last a lifetime, and are not _that_ expensive, and you can also use cast iron!
What I don’t like about induction is there are no visual cues (lots of flames - low flames) and that if you tilt your pan to move things around you lose basically all your heat source
> many way more relevant factors to the taste of food then which power source was used to provide heat.
Yeah, but not many more relevant ones to the actual cooking.
> I bet if you did a blind tasting you'd not be able to tell the difference.
You can't do a blind cooking. How often do you cook food on the stove yourself? If you do cook quite often and still insist that gas and electric stoves are equivalent, I'd be very surprised.
Now I definitely don't want to say that I definitely can't do without gas stoves — if they have a negative health and environmental impact, I could be easily convinced to switch to induction stoves, for example. But electric really don't cut it in my experience.
I have to agree with you. I grew up with electric coil stoves, and learned to cook with them, and had them most of my adult life so far until a few years ago when we bought our current home it came a gas stove/oven. I love it, I cooks so much better. Turn the knob and heat is just there now across the whole cook surface, the oven heats fast enough i don't bother to preheat anymore. the wok sucked on the coil stove.
I’m gonna take your comment at it’s most charitable interpretation instead of getting hung up on your unnecessary emotional first line. There exists a lot of culinary processes outside of one’s personal bubble.
Please let me know what you’re willing to bet and we’ll take this forward.
Another poster has suggested that you try a butane torch, but I want to point out, that's not just an alternative, that's a better way to do it. It's much easier to move a small torch than the entire dish, so you can keep the flame moving and get a much more even roast. An aubergine (eggplant for this side of the pond) has enough water content to be pretty forgiving, but if you're roasting pita or something else with low water content, a stove will almost inevitably give you burnt spots which taste bad and contain carcinogens. It's maybe not bad enough to be a dealbreaker for a home cook, but you won't see a nice restaurant doing it this way.
And that's setting aside all the other possibilities a torch opens up, like flan or crusting cheese, which are best done from the top.
i dont know how labor intensive the butane torch is. normally id impale my aubergine on a fork and put it on a small open gas flame and do other things, its takes a while say at least 20-30 mins.
and the butane torch isnt gonna put in harmful chemicals more than my gas flame?
Well, you do have to actively use the torch, so it is a bit more labor intensive, but you definitely don't have to sit there with a torch for 20-30 minutes.
I haven't made baba ganoush this way so take it with a grain of salt, but the way I've approached fruits with similar water content (i.e. squash or apples) is to bake for an amount of time (which is going to give you a more consistent cook all the way through than roasting anyway) and then finish with the butane torch, for a crispy roasted exterior. If you're using a toaster oven without covering, that will already give you some crispiness on the exterior, so you'll likely be able to get the exterior you want with under a minute of active torching.
The sources I can find seem to indicate that butane actually burns at a lower temperature than natural gas, but you make up for this by putting the flame directly on the food, so I'd guess that the food gets hotter (I wouldn't trust sources that say this confidently, as I can't think of a good way to experimentally verify this). It seems like this gives a higher temperature contrast which gives a higher texture contrast between the interior/exterior of the food. It's subjective whether that's a good thing but I personally think it's better.
> and the butane torch isnt gonna put in harmful chemicals more than my gas flame?
I don't know, and I would distrust most sources that claim to know. Natural gas is used for a lot of things besides cooking, so I'm not sure how much effort is put into the purity of the natural gas mixture, and that's putting aside all the piping between source and destination which could introduce all sorts of stuff from molds to plastics. I'm not aware of anyone making claims about the safety of natural gas flames and food. In contrast, butane torch fuels are often explicitly intended for culinary use, and advertising makes lots of claims such as "Near zero impurities" and "No residual oders"[1] (the misspelling is theirs). Without any credible independent verification, I personally don't think these claims are worth anything.
That said, natural gas is a much more complicated mix of stuff than butane, and the chemical reaction of combustion is much more complicated. Butane, in a perfect combustion, should produce CO2 and water, while natural gas, in a perfect combustion, will produce CO2, CO (carbon monoxide), water, NOx and SOx compounds (the latter mostly due to additives to give it an odor). Perfect combustion is a hypothetical reaction that doesn't exist in real life, however, so I can't say how well that hypothetical reaction translates to practical reality.
Staying away from the flame war (pun intended), but regarding baba ganoush: you might get better results with an electric oven (grill/broiler) and a cheap gas torch.
yeah occasional. but id terribly miss home if i didnt eat it just the way i make it (my mum made actually). its a major reason why i didnt switch to all electric!
I think we need to ditch the gas infrastructure and completely get rid of natural gas lobby and influence. No gas burners at all, electricity for everything.
From a climate perspective and also from a safety and health perspective.
Gas should be opt-in, not opt-out.
And I'm perfectly fine with this being regulated because the free market sold us leaded gasoline 60+ years after they introduced it maliciously, themselves, for example.
I assume you make non-roasted dishes as well? I’d like to say the majority of dishes don’t need a flame - but I’m sure you would provide a list of exceptions.
My point is that you need to weigh the advantages and disadvantages. Some individuals wanting baba-ganoush in NY should not be the reason to avoid electrification for the others.
I appreciate that forced illegalisation is off-putting, but like others have said, renters don’t get a choice and landlords will avoid all expenditures. We need a way to help the majority wean off gas.
> Some individuals wanting baba-ganoush in NY should not be the reason to avoid electrification for the others.
What stops the others from having an electric stove, while natural gas infrastructure is still available? Are there living units in NY that have natural gas, but no electricity?
> renters don’t get a choice
Electric stovetops are about 30 dollars for two-plate solutions, if you decide for yourself that natural gas is not for you.
Gas is not charged by solely by consumption, so connecting an electric stovetop doesn’t solve the costs, or solve the safety of having a gas connection, or solve the space lost to the gas stove. Why have all that extra hassle for something that is probably more harmful to the environment and your own health?
Portable induction stoves were used in a few kitchens I've worked in, but as a supplementary tool, e.g., the pastry guy needs to make jam while the line is really busy.
The main thing that makes electric stoves hard for a professional kitchen is ultimately speed and space. You need every single burner during a rush, and you need to be reacting quick, and there is usually very limited space. If I need to stop the heat on my pan, I need to stop it now. An electric top requires you to actually move the pan off the burner to somewhere else, but good luck finding a spot without butting in on the garde manger or grill guy. A gas stove offers the flexibility of being able to leave food there until its ready to plate.
> An electric top requires you to actually move the pan off the burner to somewhere else
Is this true of induction? I've never used induction for anything more complicated than pasta, but I would have thought that since the surface (basically) doesn't get hot, turning it off would function the same way as a gas stove.