Friendship Ended With Gas Stoves, Induction Stoves Are My New Best Friend
Soon after my parents replaced their temperamental electric cooktop with a gas cooktop, I decided that gas stoves were the best and made it one of my goals to own a gas stove one day.
The main advantage of a gas stove is the responsiveness of the controls. When you turn a burner down or off, the power source is removed immediately, but there will be some residual heat stored in the material of the heating element in the case of an electric stove. This residual heat will continue to flow into the pan for a short while, so the heat flux into the pan and food lags behind the control setting. That can be a problem if the food is burning in which case you want to stop heat from going into it as quickly as possible. With a gas stove, there is very little material that can hold residual heat, so there is much less lag and the response is nearly instantaneous. This is an advantage when your food is getting too hot and you can quickly stop it from getting any hotter.
Gas stoves remained my goal stove type until I watched a Technology Connections video about different ways to boil water and a follow-up video with more data and more details. In particular, there are sections about induction cooking at about 17:55 in the first video and 17:57 in the second video.
Induction stoves can be just as responsive as gas stoves, because the induction burner heats the pot directly, rather than heating an element which heats the pot as an electric stove does. The efficiency figures are what really piqued my interest. Near the end of the second video, Technology Connections times the boiling of three liters of water using both a 17000 BTU/hr gas burner and a 1500W portable induction cooktop powered by 120Vac. They took approximately the same amount of time—around 15 minutes, but the induction cooktop was running at a much lower power. This means that the gas stove consumed 1270 Wh of energy while the induction cooktop consumed only 390 Wh to accomplish the same task.
I realized that induction stoves have the same advantage of gas stoves, plus much more efficiency, and none of the indoor air quality concerns that Technology Connections discusses later in the video. I hadn’t previously considered an induction stove, and didn’t know much about them, so I started doing research.
The cooktop that Technology Connections uses in the videos is a Duxtop brand. It looks to be a 8100MC based on the appearance, but the model number isn’t visible or mentioned in the video. I went looking for reviews and came across a review of all Duxtop induction cooktop models. This review page was published by The Rational Kitchen which I had never heard of but they seem reputable based on their about page. (Beware though that they have a lot of tracking links so be careful when clicking on links there.) The people behind it started the site out of frustration with the quality of online reviews. They were spurred on in particular by the search for a portable induction cooktop, which is exactly what I am looking for.
In addition to reviews of specific models of cooktop, The Rational Kitchen has [a general overview of what’s most important when evaluating a portable induction cooktop][rational-kitchen-induction-overview]. A lot of the aspects are things I already expected, like control panel usability, but I learned a few things. The first was the importance of the number of power levels—more power levels means more precise control. The second was the difficulty of designing a control system that operates well at low power or temperature levels. Lower-quality models won’t be able to control the heat at lower levels (where control is the most important).
The model they recommend is the Vollrath Mirage Pro 59500P. It has 100 levels of power and temperature control whereas most other models have 10-20. It also has an advanced control system that works well at very low temperature and power settings. Another nice feature is the easy-to-use control interface with a physical knob for adjusting the power or temperature.
Unfortunately, it costs $760 as of this writing which is pretty eye-watering. The next two models recommended by The Rational Kitchen are the Vollrath Mirage Cadet 59300 which has 20 power and 31 temperature settings and costs $390, and the Duxtop 9600LS which has 20 power and temperature settings and costs $140. The Mirage Pro costs over 5 times as much as the Duxtop and almost twice as much as the Mirage Cadet. The extra features are certainly nice, but I’m not sure they’re worth that much.
One of my goals with getting an induction cooktop would be to try out induction cooking without committing to a full-size built-in range. One troubling thing is that a lot of the ranges I’ve seen only offer 10 or 12 levels of temperature or power control which is fewer than any of these recommended portable cooktops. What would be the point of testing whether I like induction using a cooktop with 100 levels of control if I’m only going to have 12 once I decide I like it and commit to induction? It seems like testing with the Mirage Pro would be misleading.
Thus I have delved into the induction cooktop rabbit hole and come up with a lot of data but no clear next step. I did avoid buying the $760 cooktop for now (though I would buy it immediately if it only cost $500), and am left coveting it but doubting whether it would truly be helpful to me. For now I’ll stew on it and be on the lookout for more information from people who have experience using an induction cooktop.