I just moved from a home with induction range to one with gas range and I feel like I am on crazy pills waiting for anything to happen now. I get that things like extreme control and wok cooking are a bit difficult on induction, but at least it's ~possible.
A consumer gas range simply doesnt put enough effective power into the cookware. This isnt only about boiling water quickly. This is about getting a pan hot enough fast enough to maintain a certain cooking style, even if its kind of half-assed. It might not be perfect, but I can make what I think is really good stir fry on a quality induction range (i.e. one that will actually tolerate movement of the pan without cutting power).
I had enough time to order an 1800w portable induction unit while I waited for my kettle to boil via fire this morning.
The gas burners are wildly inefficient at transferring heat to the pot/pan. E.g. Wirecutter says gas is only 32% efficient, so the nominal 18 BTUs is only 5.8 BTUs in the pan. Whereas electric is at least 75% efficient (higher for induction) so a nominally 12 BTU electric stove provides at least 9 BTUs in the pan. In this case the electric stove is still effectively more than 50% more powerful.
Most of the gas stove's heat is lost and doesn't make it into the food though. Hard to know how much, but I read maybe only 30-40% of a gas stove's BTU output actually makes it into the food... so I would actually think a 12k BTU induction stove could put more heat into the food you're cooking than an 18k BTU gas burner. If this is the summer time, the gas burner is extra sucky and heating up your home. You also need to blast your exhaust fan when using a gas burner and may therefore need to condition more air than with an induction.
All of that said, I can use the same techniques stepping down from a 5kW to a 1.8kW unit. Once you get above ~2500 watts on induction it doesn't feel like it's moving the needle that much. I rarely used the 5kw boost mode. It was actually too powerful in most cases, even stir fry if you weren't moving like a mad man.
Moving from gas or resistive to electromagnetic seems like the actual magic trick.
A home gas stove in the US will probably make around 10k BTUs. Some have burners designed for high heat cooking that might go over 20k BTUs. Your average wok burner used for stir frying in a restaurant is going to be over 100k BTUs, possibly 200k. To be clear, you can do a tasty stir fry over lower heat; but realize that the commercial wok burners are specialized equipment, and any home gas stove will be underpowered by comparison.
It sounds like the person I was originally responding to doesn't have a complaint with gas stoves but more with the fact that they are no longer cooking on a specialized piece of equipment.
I suspect this problem is really dependent by city or even neighborhood. I think the real practical limit is the municipal supply design rather than the available units.
A friend had a 5 burner unit in their house that visibly dropped output if you ran 4 or 5 at the same time, just not enough gas coming into the house. By comparison the commercial kitchen on the same block was happily running a flat top an 2 other stations at full blast; so it can't have fundamentally been supply just the way it was distributed.
If a country with 220/240v electric kettles, I can believe it... but in the US the electric kettle is probably 110/120V at 12-15 amps, then I would think an induction stove kettle could be faster, no?
For the volumes often boiled in kettles, often 0.5l to 1.0l, only if you use a massively oversized pot. But then you need to account of the extra evaporation and greater cookware mass which hurts the induction stove.
Induction power is still limited by pot diameter and common cookware is very heavy for water boiling because other types of cooking need more even heat and higher temperatures.
I actually raced a 120v kettle versus and high-end induction stove to boil 1l and it was very close.
Electric kettles are very well optimized for speed and efficiency.
Your induction cooktop isn’t going to dump all of its power into a single ‘burner’, and the pot you use on an induction stove will have significantly more thermal mass than your average kettle. The heating element in an electric kettle will be directly heating the water. A induction cooktop will heat the pot first, then the pot heats the water. Lots more thermal mass to heat up.
Most consumer microwaves have a turntable in them, which eliminates that problem. That's one of the reasons why most consumer microwaves have a turntable.
No, in North America all electric hobs are 240v often 30 amp (sometime higher).
With cooking it's all about efficiency of heat transfer, latency of power change, and flexibility of pan lifting between the three types of hobs (electric resistive, induction, gas).
The efficiency of electric resistive and gas is poor, induction is great.
The latency of power change of electric resistive is poor, induction and gas are great.
Flexibility of pan lifting of electric resistive and induction are poor (lift more than a couple of centimetres and you have no heat), gas is good.
The standard electric hob in North America is powered by a NEMA 14-50 outlet which can provide 240V 50A, actually. Really high end ranges use 60A outlets. 30A outlets are typically used for electric dryers.
In North America residential electric is 240V across both hot lines or 120V hot to neutral. Most normal power outlets in homes are 120V but any large electric appliance like a stove or clothes dryer will use 240V.
So built-in stoves or cooktops will take 240V but a portable single burner induction cooktop would likely only use 120V.
This is surprising because gas cooking is considered a "premium" feature here in NC, and people look for it during their house search. Personally, it is a better cooking experience than electric. Induction might be the best, but it's still expensive.
That might be a bit of propaganda from the gas industry over the last 50 years. I heard similar but when i dug into it appeared to be bunk… i cook on electric now and love it.
I grew up on electric, and Im looking to switch from my current gas to induction. Mostly for safety reasons - I don't like open flames. So Im about as biased against gas as possible.
Electric heating elements suck. They take an appreciable time to warm up, they stay warm long after forcing the cook to adjust accordingly. Also, only gas can really work with woks, but I don't use woks so that's a non issue.
If the power is out (which happens a lit in my corner of the USA) electric is MIA. Every electric heating element (except induction) is annoying to clean.
Finally, people like gas. Who made us better that we are to tell them that they've been brainwashed by evil corporations? I imagine people have at one point used electric, Americans do move a lot, and they just done like it!
Glass topped electric (induction or not) beats gas in cleaning every time imo. You take a razor blade and some scrubbing solution and you can actually clean it fully. Gas stovetops have nooks and crannies that get gross and are much more difficult to fully clean. I dread cleaning my gas stovetop.
I find the scrapping sound jarring. Also, I'm not convinced of the (material) toughness of glass top. A heavy laden iron skillet is shatter poison for glass top.
That being said, I'll accept glass top to get induction. Arrest i won't have to scrape.
We replaced our electric with induction instead of gas, which my wife much prefers to cook on. One of my best arguments against gas was that every gas stovetop available has a heavy iron framework over the flame to hold pots, and it's a pain to clean under them.
I really like the heavy grates though. Some of my recipes require me to really go to town on heavy cast iron pots and pans. Busting a glass top is a real bummer. In such cases it's almost better to have the old-school electric burners (there's a reason apartments almost never have a "nice" glass range).
Are you… dropping cast iron cookware on the stove? I don’t know any recipe that would require some movement that would damage a glass cooktop. Cast iron cookware seems to scratch glass tops over time, but that doesn’t seem to crack or damage them (unless you drop something on it, of course).
Every apartment I ever lived in that had electric had a glass range. If you’re even a little careful it’s perfectly fine. It sounds like you enjoy performative clattering, and if that’s your preference then more power to you, but that’s highly abnormal.
I don't know about your specific circumstances but for Indian cooking, gas is just miles ahead. We have electric at home, It just takes forever to cook anything and it's hard to control the heat. Our friends with gas cooktops get done in half the time.
This might be a problem with your range. I bought a house recently with a new flipper-grade electric range and the first time I used the large burner on it, the amount of heat it put out completely eclipsed what the range in my previous apartment did. The only difference is that the new one has a glass top. On the high setting I can't even bring my hand within 6 inches of the burner once its up to temperature.
The glasstops come with their own issues if you are doing a lot of cooking with heavy cast iron pans. I have some recipes that you really have to go to work on the pots and bang them around.
A gas range is really just the ideal setup for the most varieties of cooking, and there's a reason they are almost a requirement for most professional kitchens.
Something is off there, I grew up cooking on gas, and previous place I had a nice Bosch 6 burner. The electric one we have is better and I prefer it. It is fast and never had issues like that.
>We have electric at home, It just takes forever to cook anything and it's hard to control the heat.
You like have an under-powered resistance range. A proper 240v 60A circuit powered induction range will out-heat any residential gas range and do it with laser-like precision.
I can’t even cook scrambled eggs well on resistive electric. I mean, I can, but they won’t come out as good and there’s a much higher likelihood I’ll ruin them.
Delicate sauces? Getting a custard to come together just right? Maybe some people can, but me, forget about it. This is basic stuff, too, I don’t even know how to do anything fancy. I know that when I finally tried gas it was like “oh, I can cook now!”
Toasting flatbread and tortillas directly on the burners is handy.
IDK if I can do any of that on induction. I’ve only seen those in-person at the store and at one airbnb. We have a working gas stove and induction’s expensive, so I doubt I’ll own one for another decade or so, at least.
Induction is faster, more precise, more efficient/green, safer, and most importantly not spewing toxic crap into your kitchen/living room where you presumably spend time with your family/children.
Even with an externally-vented vent hood (most dump back into the room) + make up air system (that most do not have) gas ranges still contaminate your kitchen.
Induction is way better for control and latency than gas.
The only issue is if you need to genuinely ignite something (like in wok cooking--but, then, get a blowtorch--if it's good enough for J. Kenji Lopez-Alt it's good enough for you).
One real problem is that the standalone induction burners are only 110V in the US and that hamstrings them dramatically. Induction cooktops, however, do not suffer from that issue as they will be wired into 208/220V.
Agree induction is pretty great, although it limits cookware and still doesn't work for all techniques (blowtorch doesn't replace everything). And you are right that the 110V are underpowered.
The ones I've used are less granular than gas (which is essentially continuous) and latency is similar. From what I've seen europe is still way ahead on induction offerings, but it seems to be getting better.
I'd probably lean towards induction these days because the particulates from gas are obviously a problem and not easily dealt with - but I won't pretend induction is a 100% drop in replacement/improvement.
> The ones I've used are less granular than gas (which is essentially continuous) and latency is similar.
However, I find that gas has no granularity at the lowest settings. Induction has like 4 or 5 settings below the minimum setting of gas. This is really great for melting or softening things.
Maybe this is different on a professional gas stove, but I've never used one of those.
Induction’s still pricey, too. The low end of gas ranges is low-priced, indeed. And ranges (can) last a long time, so old-school electric is gonna be the “normal” electric range for many years yet, I expect.
Just checked Lowes. Cheapest induction range, $999. Four gas options are $499 or lower, four resistive electrics $499 or lower.
One technique to recover lost heating control though is to place the pot partially on the element. You need a flat top electric and high quality cookware for that, but it works in a pinch
As someone who cooks quite a lot, it's not propaganda. Induction has 2 minor/moderate annoyances vs gas: It gets low temp by varying the time the burner is on full and heating diminishes rapidly if the pan isn't in close contact with the element. The former can be super annoying in some situations (i.e. making a sauce) as the sauce boils for a second, then gets too cold non stop. The latter can be a big problem if your pans warp even a bit (i.e. most non cast iron pans) or if you are basting.
That being said, I currently cook on induction at home because the annoyances above have work arounds/mitigations and the cleanup/ lack of heating the room of induction vs gas is worth more to me than not being annoyed sometimes. I don't like the pressure to get rid of this stuff, it should be individual choice depending on your own personal situation.
>it should be individual choice depending on your own personal situation.
Your average individual is completely unequipped to make an informed decision on this topic. They have no idea their crappy gas stove is spewing high volumes of carcinogens and other nasty things into their kitchen.
We do the same thing for toys, my wife should be able to buy my child a toy at the store without having to bring an XRF gun to look for lead paint. Everything in the store should be safe by default. If you want to make a difference _at scale_ that's how you do it.
So, either your comparison is false equivalence or lead is way safer than it has been made out to be and probably deserves less restriction, because gas ranges are not default unsafe.
They are in fact unsafe by default in basically every metric. In a brand new one spews toxic byproducts into your home, which for most people lacks the ventilation to remove it.
It also comes with the fun side effect of blowing up dozens of houses per year, being environmentally wasteful, and being inferior to induction for cooking.
I found the induction ranges are far more trouble than they're worth to me. The low temperature thing is a serious problem, and I really dislike that you have to use certain types of pans. I've used gas stoves enough to know that they're fine -- but for me they offer no important advantages over electric.
> I don't like the pressure to get rid of this stuff, it should be individual choice depending on your own personal situation.
So much this! Different strokes for different folks.
A hot electric coil IS true garbage, it's inefficient and slow (I have one of these at home). When we say electric here, we mean induction.
Personally I'm a fan of cooking with gas. The inability to lift and move the pan on induction I don't like, and the glass tops they come with I find far too delicate for my liking.
> Gas cooking is obviously a more luxurious experience and anyone who says otherwise has not tried to make a hollandaise sauce on each.
I've made hollandaise and other delicate sauces on both. In my book, they're both perfectly fine. Excluding induction (which I have struggles with), I wouldn't call either better than the other.
Don't you make a hollandaise sauce with a double boiler type approach? So shouldn't that really make the heat source even less relevant? As you lift the inner bowl to adjust cooking temp?
It's the opposite where I am. People tend to avoid gas. I've even seen people go to the extent of having gas service physically removed from houses they've bought.
Where is that generally? I am super conscious of air quality, would flip my stove but not sure I would rip out gas heat unless it already needed replacement.
I would prefer not to say very specifically, but I'm in a part of the US where electricity is less expensive than gas, which is probably the largest reason why people avoid gas around here.
Also, the majority of houses never had gas piped to them in the first place. Most people are used to electric and it's a nonissue for them, so there is little desire to use gas.
Resistive electric? I’m with you, I truly would just go for my own propane supply before going back to that crap. But you can get propane conversion kits for natural gas ranges, no need to get the camping stove.
I haven’t had a chance to try electric induction yet. I don’t know anyone who has one.
As the article says, gas cooking is poor for our health & the environment. Utility firms have to fight against buyers who are getting more educated about this, along with stricter codes also informed by this knowledge. At some level, you have to decide where you want to be on the axis between your cooking experience & your child's health (if that's a concern in your situation). If you feel induction is too expensive, you may qualify for assistance, under a state program or under the inflation reduction act.
Other than that, it's become a bit of an ID Pol issue [0], [1], [2], so I can see why considering it "premium" would be a thing in a sorta purple, sorta red state.
The correlation between gas and children's asthma is pretty weak. And there are already existing correlations between gas usage and cold climates, and cold climates and children's asthma.
There are also strong correlations between electricity in the home and harm to children, but anyone in their reasonable mind would understand that you can improve consumer protections. So it's a bit of whataboutism to imply that only gas users are making safety tradeoffs.
Here in British Columbia, we replaced our gas furnace with a heat pump and received $11,000 in rebates from the provincial and federal governments for doing so. We also replaced our electric stove (that we hated) with induction, not gas (which we loved) due to the health concerns of gas cooking in homes.
I'm not surprised the gas industry is resorting to "inducements" to keep gas in vogue. Our last gas appliance is our water heater, and we're considering getting rid of it as well so we're gas free.
Natural gas supply companies incentivize their sales channel to install the connection which is needed in order to consume the gas product. This seems like business 101.
In many places, heating your home and your domestic hot water is still financially less expensive using natural gas. Sure, there's negatives to using natural gas, but being more expensive is not one of them.
I won't speak to cooking. But, gas central air heaters are much cheaper to operate than heat pumps in Phoenix, AZ. I wish it wasn't so environmentally speaking. But from a cost point of view, its better to use natural gas than electricity.
I can see heat pumps costing more than natural gas furnaces in cold regions, but I would not have expected it in Phoenix. Are electricity prices super high or gas prices super low?
There's not even a physics reason why a heat pump needs to be electric. There are gas-fired heat pumps. There are even gas-fired refrigerators. These weird anti heat-pump memes are just being regurgitated by people who do not understand what they are talking about.
A modern gas turbine is around 50% efficient, give or take 10%. A modern heat pump has a COP of around 4, so burning gas to make electricity to run a heat pump is more efficient than burning gas to make heat.
I'm intentionally being reductive, but I have worked on several furnaces and gas furnaces are an order of magnitude simpler than their respective heat pump.
... gas furnace + A/C compressor is another story.
I live in Texas. At least for electricity it’s a fairly free market of prices. I would be surprised to learn natty gas is being heavily subsidized here too.
In the past 20 years I've lived through two natural disasters that disrupted residential electrical service for more than a week. While electric utilities struggled to restore service, our gas fireplace gave emergency heat, our gas stove top cooked our food, and our gas water heater made our home the destination for our neighbors to get a hot shower. (The neighbors had gas water heaters too, but the high-efficiency kind that won't light the pilot if 120v isn't present.)
Besides the practical benefits, gas energy is significantly cheaper than electric, a distinct advantage as prices inflate.
I don't have gas to my place--they just installed a line on the street, so I could get it relatively cheap now...
... but probably going to get a heat pump instead. Electric heat sucks money, so I'm keen to replace it with something. And now that we've gone from 1 too-hot day per year to 7-8 with smoke, it's a double win.
The paid appearance came as part of a celebrity-focused program the American Gas Association launched in the 1970s, after the association had reportedly conducted its own research into the health dangers of gas appliances. After finding a link between gas stoves and indoor air pollution, the trade group sponsored shows hosted by Pépin’s frequent collaborator Julia Child, as well as actors Mary Tyler Moore and Doris Day, Rebecca Leber recently reported. (The industry still includes celebrity restaurateurs in its pro-gas campaigns.)
This reads like satire, like it could have been a throw away line in Thank You for Smoking, but no, this cartoonish level of villainy is real, and all too common.
A consumer gas range simply doesnt put enough effective power into the cookware. This isnt only about boiling water quickly. This is about getting a pan hot enough fast enough to maintain a certain cooking style, even if its kind of half-assed. It might not be perfect, but I can make what I think is really good stir fry on a quality induction range (i.e. one that will actually tolerate movement of the pan without cutting power).
I had enough time to order an 1800w portable induction unit while I waited for my kettle to boil via fire this morning.
Even the cleanup is 10x better on induction.