"'It’s spectacular,' says kitchen designer Joanne Hudson, who installed two Gaggenaus in her Radnor, Pa., home. 'It’s faster than gas. It’s easier to clean up.' These are not your old-fashioned coil burners, the ones on which many of us burned a hand or two. Repeatedly. Tops tend to be shiny, black, sleek, sexy. Induction stoves use magnetic fields, which heat quickly and cool down fast. Hudson’s clients who like contemporary design favor induction; those who prefer traditional design, often dwelling in older homes, want gas ranges like the models from La Cornue that can clock in at nearly $80,000. Hudson says the love for big, metallic fortresses of fire 'is male-driven. They look like locomotives.' Consider the brand names: Viking, Wolf."
I don't need an $80,000 male-driven locomotive in the kitchen.
The house I live in has always — at least since 1986 — had an electric cooktop. And I've replaced it 3 times without considering switching to gas, though I agree the blue flames of gas look pretty and the vague pyromania of turning them up high can be viscerally satisfying.
They were standard in the NYC apartments I lived in before moving to Madison, so they don't seem that special to me, and I like to be able to turn the heat way down without worrying that the flames may go out and cause some crazy explosion, a risk that's much higher for me now that I'm incapable of smelling a gas leak.
In fact, we need to replace the cooktop again. It's the glass kind and there's a huge crack across the front burner. It still works so it's just very boring to think of replacing it. Sorry, but I don't find it "sexy," though it is "shiny, black, sleek." Big deal. It's shiny, black, sleek... and cracked.
So, do we replace it with a virtually identical shiny, black, sleek slab-o-glass or do we delve into the mystery of "induction"? Here's my problem: magnets. You're going to generate heat with magnetic fields... in my house? Is that a health issue? Or are we supposed to be so sexually attracted to it that we don't even ask?
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113 comments:
If the goal was to reduce the quality of life for everyone but the most wealthy what would the left be doing differently?
Years ago I worked for an electric utility trying to promote electric cooking for commercial applications, such as restaurants and schools. We tried to get cooking schools to use electric appliances……we only had modest acceptance, to say the least. The chefs wanted the flames for better control, better visual regulation of whatever they were cooking.
The study for this move was based on an airtight room, which is absurd. Every range in America has a vent hood. Where do you think the combustion byproducts go?
This is more nanny state on steroids.
So, do we replace it with a virtually identical shiny, black, sleek slab-o-glass or do we delve into the mystery of "induction"?
Apply 'inductive' reasoning.
Inductive reasoning is a logical process in which multiple premises, all believed true or found true most of the time, are combined to obtain a specific conclusion. Inductive reasoning is often used in applications that involve prediction, forecasting, or behavior.
Induction stove? May get you out of cooking duties if you have a pacemaker……. Don’t think it would bother knee or hip replacements….
I have gas in my home, and electric, glass like you are replacing, in our lake house. If I had to cook full time on that lake house stove it would have been replaced a long time ago. I like the instant response of the gas, and my stove has a "simmer" function that can go so low that it will hold chocolate melted without burning. I cook a lot, or used to, because I have four kids who love to eat, and their friends who know I'm a good cook. (Not to brag--it's just astonishing how few kids eat dinner around the table now.)
I don't really care about the name. It could have been named Cuddlebug and it would still be better than electric.
Oh, gosh, Creola Soul's comment about the vent hood is important! I think they are required by code. Why wouldn't they test the appliance according to the code?? A sealed room? That's insane. Even vegetable soup would be unbearable cooked in a sealed room.
We have had a gas cooktop for 30 years. Never had to replace it. Instant heat that you can see. Go take a look in the kitchen of your favorite restaurant. Most have gas.
Don't burn yourself with that induction cooktop!
"I don't need an $80,000 male-driven locomotive in the kitchen."
But in the bedroom...
Here is some actual journalism being performed towards this latest propaganda. May favorite in this thread- research shows that what you cook accounts for the vast majority of emissions. For example, olive oil – one of the most common cooking ingredients – generates 17x more emissions than gas stoves.
...also know the 'experts' in this push to ban gas stoves are climate activists with ties to climate change grifter organizations...
Unless you’re made of ferrous metal you don’t need to worry. Your expensive copper cookware will be useless, though, and if you invite Iron Man to dinner don’t let him help out in the kitchen.
They pick on gas stoves because they want everything in your home to rely on electricity, then they'll control you by turning your electricity on or off depending on their political mood of the moment...
It bothers me we don't see more average folk applying logic to this effort. If you live in the Northeast for example chances are you and your neighbors heat your home with either wood or diesel fuel- both of which are producing more bad air inside your home than a gas stove. Activists in California surely don't understand that, either...
Induction stoves are very nice to cook on, no question about it. They are also quite expensive and when the electronics fail, they are expensive to repair and probably need to be replaced if out of their warranty.
Gas stoves are equally nice to cook on, and quite simple and inexpensive (unless you want to spend a fortune). They are virtually indestructible because they are so simple. Burning natural gas at the point of use for heat is about the most efficient use of energy that you could have. It is much better than generating electricity, transmitting that electricity and then converting it back to heat.
This is all so god damned stupid! Let people use what they like for cooking.
Magnetic materials like stainless steel over aluminum, cast iron, and enamel on metal are all safe to use on an induction cooktop. However, avoid glass, ceramic, aluminum on its own, and copper. Of the materials used for induction-ready cookware, stainless steel over aluminum is the most common.
- internet
Get a couple of those magnet dogs is the first experiment.
Takes some adapting to induction, after regular electric. But the biggest adaptation of course is the cooking surface of every pot and pan needs to have enough iron content to respond to a magnet. Use a little refrigerator magnet on the underside of your existing stock to determine how many of your existing pots and pans would need to be replaced.
What does our little friend ChatGPT have to say?
Where does the electricity come from?
Depends on where you live but mostly coal.
And if electricity use goes up, will these folks be ok with a new nuke plant near them to supply the juice.
John Henry
We struggled a bunch to to replace the very old stove in the house we bought a few years ago. And, we'd been gas people for a long time and liked liked it just fine. We did switch over to induction. it was a close call, but for long term negotiations purposes (and because my wife does more of the cooking), she had the the call on that one.
I had to laugh, when the salesperson at our local appliance store told us, "it's what all the europeans are doing". I give her credit on that, but it did make me laugh.
Induction is a bit odd at first, however once you get used to it, it's pretty good.
In the late 80s/early 90s I was in the business of designing commercial kitchens and selling commercial kitchen equipment. My customers- restaurants & hotels mainly. Chef's and cooks of all stripes. All commercial kitchens used gas ranges, and mostly gas for all other cooking equipment. On a range, gas gives you quick, responsive control of heat. When making sauces, or reductions, or other delicate items- you want to have that detailed heat control. By comparison, electric cooktops are clumsy, though they are the standard in American homes.
For catering departments we were introducing portable induction cooktops back then. And it was a tough sell then. There are many pros to induction cooktops, but the pans needed for an induction cooker were much more expensive than the typical aluminum pans used by the vast majority of restaurants.
I know that today, top chefs in top restaurants will use some form of stainless steel pans, or a combination stainless + other metals. But for induction to work it has to be a high grade stainless with no aluminum, no nickel. Or it can be cast iron, or enameled cast iron. So- it's a small selection of expensive pans that can be used.
It's like solar power. It's a great idea, but it will not work for the masses, and will require other materials that cost, to make it.
In the late 80s/early 90s I was in the business of designing commercial kitchens and selling commercial kitchen equipment. My customers- restaurants & hotels mainly. Chef's and cooks of all stripes. All commercial kitchens used gas ranges, and mostly gas for all other cooking equipment. On a range, gas gives you quick, responsive control of heat. When making sauces, or reductions, or other delicate items- you want to have that detailed heat control. By comparison, electric cooktops are clumsy, though they are the standard in American homes.
For catering departments we were introducing portable induction cooktops back then. And it was a tough sell then. There are many pros to induction cooktops, but the pans needed for an induction cooker were much more expensive than the typical aluminum pans used by the vast majority of restaurants.
I know that today, top chefs in top restaurants will use some form of stainless steel pans, or a combination stainless + other metals. But for induction to work it has to be a high grade stainless with no aluminum, no nickel. Or it can be cast iron, or enameled cast iron. So- it's a small selection of expensive pans that can be used.
It's like solar power. It's a great idea, but it will not work for the masses, and will require other materials that cost, to make it.
I'm glad to hear that so many people are cooking. I thought that had died out. Or are there just a lot of people who want a fantastic kitchen but don't really use it?
Rhhardin
Most stainless steel (there are several hundred types) are non-magnetic.
Is cookware normally made of magnetic grade?
John Henry
I miss a gas stove. Don't cook a lot (spouse does most of it) but when I do, I want things to be right. Gas helps you do that.
Gas is better for heating, too. Wish I had that instead of 3 honking big heat pumps (to be fair, they did a good job with that cold snap, but then they are quite pricey units).
Why is the federal government involved in this (or trying to)? Regulating to make sure it's safe to use, but this is ridiculous.
I like the visual flame of gas, and the fact that it works when the power is out.
Friends just replaced their gas stove with induction - specifically because the wife wanted new All Clad cookware!
One of the supposed selling points of induction is that you can't burn yourself on it because as soon as you remove the pot, heat is no longer generated, but of course you can - the bottom of the pot heats the glass top plenty hot enough to burn you, and depending on the model, your visual cue that the burner is still hot may be in one corner of the surface, with a little symbol corresponding to the hot burner, rather than a glow on the actual burner. Not great.
And you know when you're trying to cook something by tossing it in the pan? Can't do that with induction because you have to lift the pan off the burner. I mean, I suppose you can scrape your pan repeatedly across the burner to keep the food moving (and scratch up the stovetop), but you can't get that flipping motion at the end without lifting the pan. For all these reasons - especially the power-out one - I'm sticking with gas.
We became food snobs living in a city with a foodie culture. Dining out around our new home is so bad we cook most days...
I'm glad to hear that so many people are cooking. I thought that had died out. Or are there just a lot of people who want a fantastic kitchen but don't really use it?
Gumbo last night. Orange-balsamic lamb chops Wednesday, though I admit that was on the grill (of which I am the primary operator). Sesame chicken Tuesday. Lamb kofta lettuce wraps Monday. (For reasons of the plot, we have a lot of lamb in the freezer.)
We went out to eat Thursday unexpectedly, or the gumbo would've been then and a French casserole en cocotte would have been yesterday.
I love to cook.
We have an open kitchen so we shelled out for a fancy six burner from an Italian commercial kitchen company. If it ever fails the company flies Luigi out to fix it at their expense. Given the stove was comparable in price to the usual high end residential brands it felt like a relative bargain...
From my cold dead hands...
Been using induction for a while now. Fast to heat up and cool down. Heat is generated in the pan not the stove top. Really easy to clean even if something boils over. On the down side, a good set of pots and pans is necessary.
"But in the bedroom...."
It does give you an idea of what women will pay for a fully realized perfected sex robot.
I can't speak for folks in other locales, but post-COVID in the front range of CO, the price/quality ratio at most dining establishments got to a point where we decided that home-cooked meals with high-priced ingredients were a much more satisfying experience. (Avoiding the restaurant mark-up on good wine was a bonus.)
We still take a break from home cooking every so often, and the results confirm our opinion. $200 for a meh meal. COVID broke something in the restaurant business, and I think it's going to take longer than my remaining life span to fix it.
rehajm said...
they want everything in your home to rely on electricity, then they'll control you by turning your electricity on or off depending on their political mood of the moment...
protip,
get a hybrid car (or truck) while you still can.
make SURE you get one with an outlet, so that it can be used as a generator
Also, stock up on bullets.. You're going to NEED them
We cook all the time. My stove was installed in 1975 and has never had to be replaced. It will function well for another 50 as long as California allows the natural gas to flow. It costs far less to operate than electric stoves I’ve had. Yeah it is slightly more demanding to keep clean, especially given my habit of roasting jalapeños to make sauces or salsa, but you can’t even blacken the skin on a pepper with an electric range. And even with unreliable power (thanks green weanies) we have heat and the ability to cook.
This is earth shaking stuff from the post-boomer era of monumentally stupid contentiousness.
I just had a 17 hour electric power failure, here in Silly Valley. Ran a generator for lights and freezers, but used gas for cooking and hot water. If necessary I could get the gas heating system running off the genny too (control and motors).
California is in the forefront of the all-electric push, but in the PG&E service area we have the most unreliable juice in my lifetime. Its been getting consistently worse for over a decade, and I don't even want to discuss the spark-caused wildfires. Good luck squaring that circle, when it takes twenty years to repair a simple dam in this state.
Where IS all this electricity going to come from?
My husband is telling me that New York either has passed or is about to pass a law outlawing gas stoves in restaurants, and not just new installations - all gas stoves. I haven't confirmed.
Sounds like a way to put a lot of small business owners out of business, dunnit?
My gas stove says 'Kenmore.' It did not cost eighty grand. It has worked perfectly for thirty years (except for a cracked igniter -- replaced). I like it a lot more than I like whoever wrote this phony 'study.'
"I don't need an $80,000 male-driven locomotive in the kitchen."
When I saw that comment, my first reaction was, "Don't be a hater, Ann."
But then this: "It does give you an idea of what women will pay for a fully realized perfected sex robot."
Meade must be some kind of manly machine!
My gas range is a 27 year old Jenn-Air. We call it "the Steinway." Zero issues over its life to date (knocks on wood). We cook.
I didn't for years, but I'm at it again. Bread's back on the menu, and I'm nursing a sourdough starter to life. Its name is Bubbles.
My Steinway? Gone? Only from my cold, dead hands.
Gas has a lot of advantages over electric, from being able to easily tell when it's on to heating up faster and being able to more finely tune the heat because you can see the flame.
You may prefer electric, but these stoves have a big drawback for their target audience--they use magnetism. People who worry about cell phones causing cancer, who resist 5G, who don't like to be near power lines aren't going to want a magnet-cooker in their kitchen.
After Hurricane Agnes, the power was back on in a few days, but the gas was out for six weeks.
I do like my little induction teapot. Heats the water to your exact specifications in short order.
my habit of roasting jalapeños to make sauces or salsa
Oh yeah, another reason to stick with gas: this and charring tortillas!
I like the advice above from "internet" about "avoiding" glass, ceramic, copper, and aluminum, as if they're just sub-optimal rather than non-functional with induction.
I actually have a single induction burner that I used to use on occasion when I needed very low or very controlled heat (like, for making candy), back before we replaced the glass-top electric cooktop the house came with. It was better than the electric but... no cooking without power, needs special pan, can't roast over the flame because there isn't one, etc. It was a compromise I no longer need and I should probably give it to my daughter.
mezzrow, my sourdough starter is Martha, named by our youngest.
It would make no sense whatsoever to replace our gas cooktop with induction.
1. The cooktop we have was expensive and works fabulously. My parents both came from poor families that made it through the Great Depression and World War II. I was raised that you don’t get rid of something that isn’t broken and unfixable.
2. We would have to get rid of our vast assortment of Revere Ware pots and pans since copper-bottomed cookware doesn’t work on induction ranges. Also our copper teakettle. Some of our pieces date back to the late sixties because we acquired them when we went off to grad school, and/or they were gifted to us on our wedding day (48 years ago last week), but they are in excellent condition — a little copper cleaner and some elbow grease and you’d have to look carefully to distinguish from brand new. We do hav a couple stainless steel omelet pans, but we need to be able to eat more than just omelets.
3. We have an industrial-quality range hood vented to the outside and are in no fear of NO2 buildup or filling the kitchen with the stench of cooked Brussels sprouts (the wife has a great recipe for Brussels sprouts but if the fan isn’t turned up to its highest setting …)
Had an ice storm a couple of years back that had us down for three days. My wolf cooktop, gas water heater and gas fireplace got us through with little suffering. Manually lit the pilot on the water heater and we were off to the showers. Snuggled in front of the fireplace in our sleeping bags. Very little suffering indeed. Motels outstate filled rapidly.
Meade must be some kind of manly machine!
Or perhaps Althouse is a beta tester for the well-regarded UW-Madison Robotics Group.p
More gassing about gas.
As the chief cook and bottle washer in my house, stove and cooking gear are very important because I believe that good cooking is mostly about technique.
I have used both gas and electric stoves (not induction) and there is no doubt that gas stoves allow for better technique.
If you eat to live (like the Brits), your technique does not matter. If you live to eat (like the French) then you need a gas stove and high end cookware. Almost any medium priced stove will do, but triple ply (stainless steel and aluminum) pots and pans are a must. If you have a lot of money go for 5 ply with copper. Don't waste your money on ridiculously expensive stoves unless conspicuous consumption is important to you.
I cook practically every meal we eat (save for my husband's patented specialties--his chili, for example). I hate takeout (everything looks tepid and unappetizing in a styrofoam box), and restaurants are for treats and date nights unless you're made of money, IMHO.
I love gas stoves (and they don't have to be pricey six-burner Vikings to work perfectly well--cheap little apartment gas stoves also yield perfectly good food). But we now live in a co-op with all-electric kitchens. I've learned hack-arounds to make up for electric stoves' problems with slow heating and cooling--namely moving pots and pans around (the ceramic stovetop really helps). I have a Mexican "asador," a wrought-iron grill that tops a burner in order to roast the skins off peppers, for example. So I can handle electric just fine, even though in my dream kitchen, I'd have one of those Vikings, along with unlimited counter space, of course. What do I care that it has a toxically masculine name that gets the feminists going?
Induction cooktops strike me as creepy. I feel the same way about them as I do about microwaving food: it's unnatural. Proper cooking means using heat to effect physical and chemical changes in food items. Moving molecules around via microwaves or electro-magnetic impulses isn't cooking--it's just heating. (Alone of Americans, I don't even own a microwave oven--it doesn't take that much longer to steam something or warm it up in the oven.) Furthermore, I'd hate the idea of getting rid of half my cookware in order to fit in with the brave new induction world. My husband gave me some wonderful 1980s Calphalon stockpots and saute pans as Christmas and birthday presents right after we got married, and at least one of them is in use at any given moment to this day. I'm supposed to throw them out? No thanks--they're part of my life.
We had electric growing up in WI (Fond du Lac) in the '60s and '70s, and I thought of it as the New Modern Thing with gas being for old people who couldn't/wouldn't 'upgrade'. I'm now 60 and I believe this is the first time I've had a gas range (may have had one way back when at a house at UW-Mad).
I'm a bit mixed on it. It takes much longer to, say, boil water, than an electric, and I know it wastes heat that's not going directly onto the pan, and I can't turn on the exhaust fan (in the middle of the stovetop) because it just pulls the flame and thus heat or towards it. Also the AC blows on it so in Summer the flame is always not as efficient as it might be. I just make it a point not to fry anything that might actually require the fan (in AZ now so I can grill outside all year round).
All in all, for the actual cooking part, I prefer electric, but it's much harder to keep them clean.
We thought about induction at the old Seattle house when it came to replacing the stove, but it was $$$ and virtually none of our cookware would have worked on it.
And, as someone said, they want everyone on electricity because it's going to be rationed eventually and that's a form of control.
This is another example of how groupthink is going to leverage small disasters into big ones (see Covid, govt. policies relating to). It is incredibly stupid to put all the eggs in the electricity basket (there are too many there as it is). Everyone should be hedging so as to make the overall system more resilient. We have rooftop solar, plus the grid, plus oil heat (oil delivered by truck), plus a wood stove, plus a propane fireplace, and we have a gas-powered generator that can make sure the oil heat system can run in an extended outage. I WISH we could get natural gas, because I'd add that. And I'll get battery storage if the price of vanadium cycle batteries ever comes down or I can get a ridiculous deal like I got on the rooftop solar (I got a half new roof for free, paid nothing for the solar, and, yes, Tesla owns the power output, but if the grid ever goes down, I have all the electronic parts necessary to disconnect Tesla's monitor-and-control equipment and just use the solar myself). Engineering controls for individual dwellings should never be centralized (rip out your Nest thermostat and replace it with a non-electronic controller). I fear we will find out the hard way that are all kinds of wifi backdoors or non-user-controlled cellular communication chips are lurking in consumer electronics, to be be used "only in emergency," and that when some bozo in a bureaucracy turns them on, small problems will become gigantic.
We just replaced an electric range with a gas one. We did not have gas in the kitchen so it cost more than the stove to run a gas line from the meter to the kitchen. My wife cooks most dinners and so it was her choice.
Ann Althouse said...
I'm glad to hear that so many people are cooking. I thought that had died out. Or are there just a lot of people who want a fantastic kitchen but don't really use it?
I have a friend and classmate whose wife wanted their new house (To replace one burned down in a brush fire) to be built without a kitchen. The builder told her it would be unsalable so they have a nice unused kitchen. I was out to dinner with them one time, not too long after the new house was built, and women in the restaurant were whispering about her. "That is the woman who wanted a new house built without a kitchen." I guess it made her famous in the Santa Barbara community. I could not tell if it was envy or horror that prompted the whispers.
Rnb
The only things I ever liked sears for was Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools.
Kenmore was mostly Whirlpool so parts and service will be available.
Pep Boys now carries craftsman but I don't know if the will still honor the warranty on my 60+ yo tools.
Fortunately, I've pretty much never had to invoke it over a lifetime of use. The 2-3 times I have, even with obvious abuse, there were no questions asked.
John Henry
There is no fucking heated debate. Anybody who likes good food cooks with gas, and the idea that gas stoves are causing excessive indoor air pollution is politically motivated claptrap. Quite probably financed by the induction stove manufacturers.
Living in a hurricane zone where every couple of years we get hit by a hurricane and have our electricity off for up to 2 weeks, gas (or in our case propane) makes much more sense. We had dinner with a cousin last night who has just installed an induction stovetop and it was quite impressive (instant on and off). I would consider getting one if we were not so prone to hurricanes and power outages.
For a while we rented an apartment in NYC on 2nd Ave for business. Just down the avenue there was an explosion and fire in an apartment building that killed two people and seriously injured 19. The restaurant on ground floor had been stealing gas from the gas main. Three buildings had to be demolished. Gas does have its problems but it isn't primarily air pollution!! In our condo I worry about the propane distribution system which we check every year.
This reminds me of people with $70,000 Ford Expeditions railing on electric cars for being for the elite.
Holy crap, Meade! Cancel that life insurance policy!
After Hurricane Agnes, the power was back on in a few days, but the gas was out for six weeks.
And every now and then someone is thrown free in a car accident because they weren't wearing their seatbelt, but what is the usual case?
Quite probably financed by the induction stove manufacturers.
Funny that you should mention that. CFLs were sold through collusion between Philips and environmentalists. The freon replacement was motivated by industry production, sold by environmentalists under the pretense of the naturally recurring ozone "hole". Brockovich sold a class action based on toxicity assesses in isolation, which produced no greater short and long-term effects than untainted environments. The Covid-19/20/21/22 vaxxxines was sold as a vaccine (i.e. sterilizing) that was safe and effective to distribute to the general population. [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate cooling... warming... change is sold through collusion between politicians, academics, financiers, environmentalists, activists, and industry ("Green") justified by a radiative effect characterized in the laboratory, inferred in the wild, of an athropogenic minority of a minority gas in the wild with net zero climate effect. That said, keep Gaia green, emit, breathe.
Induction heats a [proper] pan faster as it reacts with the pan directly but heat is still heat and the glass top still has to cool. Is there less heated mass than an electric, yes. But if you are still burning your self on electric stove eyes then you need to go back to kindergarten. One downside of electric is you can't lift the pan without the eye going off due to the pan sensing sensor. An adaptation.
But the magnetic field is very localized to the metal on top of the coil. It is the same technology as used in wireless charging devices. If you look at induction heating for metal work, the metal has to be stuck inside the coil to turn red. The stove induction is less efficient as it is a tighter coil with the magnetic field being utilized millimeters from the end.
Most of these induction advocates are repeating marketing material and reveal they have no real knowledge or experience.
Here Boston Chef/youtuber Helen Rennie compares gas, electric and induction stoves. Not giving up her Wolf gas stove, but induction fared well.
https://youtu.be/vY3yNn0AHjQ
Here is a professional cooking show/youtube cook explaining why he went induction over electric though he prefers gas when available.
https://youtu.be/xJVgA1NyvSQ?t=81
What's funny is that the same people (by and large) who insist on wringing out every last bit of safety when it comes to how we cook, are quite uninterested in the safety of an experimental vaccine. One could be forgiven for thinking they just want to be in total control.
The bad news is that the collective left have decided that this is now an important political fight "it's the new leaded gasoline ban!". It may take a few years, but you can kiss that gas stove goodbye. They will not be put off indefinitely, no matter how stupid and pointless the idea is.
" Daniel12 said...
This reminds me of people with $70,000 Ford Expeditions railing on electric cars for being for the elite."
What in the hell is that even supposed to mean?
Some of you saw this earlier.
My partner’s first husband, a professionally trained chef (he ended up as the Executive Banquet Chef of a big hotel in Las Vegas) refused to cook on electric, and had a gas range put into their house. You can control the heating of a gas stove much better. When you turn a gas burner off, it goes off then and there. Much better than having to deal with the slow cooldown of electric burners. Professional kitchens are very fast paced, and electric ranges just slows them down. We have a nice gas range in PHX, but electric in MT. We have been talking about switching it for gas (propane), and this may precipitate that move. She much prefers the gas range. It’s upscale, but very basic - with 5 rotating knobs for the 5 burners. On the flip side, she bought her mother an electric range after she had her brain aneurism, for safety reasons.
So, tonight (now a couple days ago), she was heating up a grilled cheese sandwich on the gas range. There was a clicking noise, that she called me over to fix. The clicking noise typically means that one of the burners is being ignited. None of the other burners looked to be on, so, I turned off the burner that she was using. Sound went off. Turned it back on and noticed that there were a lot of indentations to the right of High, all the way down to Low. Turns out, the stove had been set to “Lite”, which didn’t mean Light (or Low), but was the setting used to Light the burner.
So, maybe getting her a new gas range is not a good move…
The house we moved into 2 yes ago has electric oven, but there's a gas hookup behind it, so we will likely switch at some point.
2 big reasons: power outages and warming tortillas.
Both of which are regular issues for us.
gas ranges like the models from La Cornue that can clock in at nearly $80,000
Phony argument to suggest that gas ranges cost more than induction. Actual facts - La Cornue makes ranges/ovens in the exact same models and configurations that can be ordered with either gas or induction tops. We just redid a kitchen two years ago, a higher-end (but not commercial) gas top cost about the same as an average induction top.
Also, both Viking and Wolf make induction top stoves (and charge a lot for them). Does that mean people are buying them because they like big, metallic fortresses of magnets?
Sophistry at its (not) finest.
Never mind Viking and Wolf. WaPo et al. won't be satisfied until they have abolished the whole idea of "male" and "manliness." Then at some point we will need some actual men and there won't be any.
I briefly shared an apartment with someone who had a portable little one-burner magnetic induction stove. He liked it because it was fast and he liked new tech things. It emitted a quiet but piercing high-pitched whine that made being in the same place intolerable to me and would give me a pounding headache in under 30 seconds. I seemed to be the only one who could hear it, so I'd just take a walk around the block when he used it.
I've lived in two apartments with glass-top electric stove that instantly scratched and cost me a chunk of my security deposit when I left. When I asked how I could avoid this, I was recommended Barkeeper's Friend. Helped a little. Maybe the stoves were just cheap.
Also, poor, inanimate gas stoves do not emit guilt and worry. Those emotions bubble up in some people. I grew up with them, so I prefer them and like that I can tell exactly how hot they are by the size and shape of the flame. But if I grew up with electric coil, I'd probably prefer them.
Are we not a nation that for 60 years installed steam heating boilers despite the fact that dozens exploded every year before the invention of the Hartford Loop in 1919 and even then until the invention of the oil burner that could be controlled by demand? Or ancestors would take a knotted plow line to us.
Instead today we are a nation of whiners who seek to use government to impose our fears on others and learned nothing of value at our liberal arts college. If you are in a room with no ventilation and no make up air, you will find that burning gas is "not good for you". But we have exhaust hoods, and as houses are sealed better, air vents with energy recovery ventilation devices on them. In the past, we had leaky windows and doors.
In 1919, in the wake of the Spanish Flu, the Fresh Air Movement had local health authorities demanding that people sleep with the window open. Double pane windows in cities were replace with single pane to increase fresh air infiltration. And steam heat systems installed in the 1920s were to designed to heat the house on the coldest day of the year with high winds and the windows open. In the 1970s, the panic squad demanded those single pane windows be replaced by hermitically sealed double/triple pane windows.
They don’t work with my copper pots.
"Induction stove cooks are in the vanguard, as they are wont to tell you, the Tesla owners of the kitchen. They are free from the guilt and worry that gas stoves now emit."
I just now paid attention to this headline. "Free from the guilt and worry that gas stoves now emit"? Good Lord.
It must be so exhausting to be progressive. So much guilt and worry all the time. As soon as you think you can relax and enjoy something - BAM! Guilt and worry!
Ignorant of other cultures? Conscientious travel is the solution. BAM! Guilt and worry about climate change and patronizing colonialist attitudes.
Tailpipe emissions? Electric cars are the solution. BAM! Guilt and worry about supporting a reprehensible reactionary and about where the electricity for your car comes from.
Meat might be murder? Meat substitutes are the solution. BAM! Guilt and worry about how far from clean eating it is when your meat substitute is manufactured, and far greater land having to be put to the plow to grow the ingredients.
You name the progressive cause, there's going to be something about it to feel guilty and worried about - and the guilt and worry are a feature, not a bug, as they prove just how much you care.
Gas stoves emit guilt and worry?
It's not a cult.
There's no legitimate argument against gas stoves as a health hazard, other than gas explosions can happen. You have to be a fanatic to believe so. Alas, our "betters" are little more than religious fanatics without a god or heaven. But they have "The Science" which makes it all okay.
Prof drout,
Instead of fancy expensive batteries, consider standard lead acid forklift batteries.
Heavy and bulky is a problem for a car. Not a problem in most houses.
Lots of competition so prices tend to be low. I looked a couple years back and I think they 1/2 or less what solar companies were asking.
Disadvantage is that you can't get warm like you can when a tesla battery burns your house down
John Henry
Pickers with days or weeks of power outages.
I've been through 2 that lasted 8 weeks and one that lasted 15.
Coleman camp stove, connected to a 17# propane bottle and microwave run off the genny got us through
John Henry
Over Christmas this year, during the bitter cold snap, WE Energies sent emails to its customers to turn their thermostats down to 60 because the natural gas pipeline from Illinois had a serious equipment failure. Because of the extreme cold and customers using more gas there was a danger of not having adequate supplies of gas and having to shut down. Turning the gas back on is far more involved than turning on electric after an outage.
"The real issue becomes turning it back on again. It's not like flipping on a switch; it's not like that. You literally have to go to every home; turn their meter on, go inside their home; relight their pilot light, check that all of their natural gas appliances are working properly and safely and it takes some time," Conway added.
The disclosure of the issue Friday came one day after Governor Tony Evers signed an executive order declaring an energy emergency across the state.
Gas ranges are unambiguously better for cooking than normal electric, which are slow to heat up and slow to cool down. One has to treat it sort of like a grill with hot spots and cool spots and just move food around while cooking, so it's not unworkable, just suboptimal.
Induction solves the speed problem, but the heat output -- at least for the one I use, which is a plug in I use to cook hot pot or sukiyaki at the table -- is limited, compared to gas. It cuts out automatically at a temperature that is high enough to brown meat, but too low for good searing. Although one supposes that might be sold as a health benefit too, since the brown seared bits on steak are apparently a carcinogen.
All that said, with sous vide, all you need is a bit of searing or crisping, and an electrive stovetop and and oven with broiler/grill are enough for that.
I bought an old house from a very elderly couple twenty-five years ago. It quite literally had not been updated since the 1950s. I needed to upgrade every system in the house, from the 50A electric service to the rusty plumbing, but I kept the gas stove, which looked like it could have been out of an episode of The Honeymooners.
I had an appliance repairman take a look at the stove. He replaced the stove's gas connections for good measure, and he said that the stove easily would last another fifty years as long as it was kept clean and was inspected every few years or so for damage. So far, so good.
I love to cook and worked in many restaurants in my younger days. If I had the choice, I would still have gas appliances, but gas is not available in my new 'hood. I switched to induction, which I love for its fast response, super-fast heating, precise control and minimal electricity use. And it helps keep the kitchen cooler. I think the idea of banning gas stoves is absurd, but one should be open-minded and informed about induction before rejecting it.
"Don't burn yourself with that induction cooktop!" That's hard to do, since the cooktop only retains what residual heat came from the pan, and it's a lot less than on a conventional electric cooktop.
"But for induction to work it has to be a high grade stainless with no aluminum..." Uh-uh. Most quality induction-capable pans contain layered steel and aluminum.
"So- it's a small selection of expensive pans that can be used." It's a very large selection (I've recently added to my collection). Any good cookery store has scads of induction-capable pans, and they don't have to be expensive. Or use the Althouse Portal to shop for some on Amazon!
"Is cookware normally made of magnetic grade?" Yes, pretty much all stainless cookware is induction-ready.
"And you know when you're trying to cook something by tossing it in the pan? Can't do that with induction because you have to lift the pan off the burner." Not true - almost all induction cooktops have a built-in delay after the pan is removed before they shut off.
"On the down side, a good set of pots and pans is necessary." This is true. But it's also true if you do a lot of cooking on gas.
"I'd hate the idea of getting rid of half my cookware in order to fit in with the brave new induction world." This was the biggest downside for me - I had to put my nice aluminum Calphalon cookware set into storage.
We don't need the government telling us what kind of stove is acceptable just like we don't need them telling us what kind of car to drive. The climate change/global warming Chicken Littles are nothing but fascists and proponents of energy poverty.
I like glasstop ranges and have no desire to use a gas range. That's my preference. Gas stoves are fine for someone else and I would never try to tell them no. Unlike Washington state's governor and legislature, who want us paying through the nose for energy and living in the dark, driving cars that can never be charged because the electrical grid is undersized. When we really need the power, the Sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
My father gace us a good set of pots ans pans when we married in 1978. One of our sons now has them. We cooked on them on a variety of electric coil and gas ranges in apartments and houses until we replaced the coil cooktop in this house with a smoothtop. And discovered we didn't have a single pot or pan that didn't wobble on it. One of the coils under the top burned out, and we simply used the other 3 burners for a while. I was passing through the Sears Outlet store (when they existed) one day and they had a 30" induction cooktp in a box- at less then half the suggested retail. Making it less then a regular smoothtop. Bought that, installed it, and discovered we neeed another new set of pots and pans.
The only change I would make in buying the next cooktop shuld the need arise is making sure the large burner was 3 sizes adjustable. We rarely use the large burner because only a few of our pans are big enough for it.
Personally, I've never liked cooking on gas. And all the arguements I ssee are based on nothing but differences of opinion. None are superior to others- you're cooking on a pan or in a pot, not on the heat source. Superior is steak or hamburgers on charcoal, cooked on teh grill right above the heat source.
Coils and gas over time warp cookware. Heat is NOT applied evenly to the bottom. had the induction top for over a decade now and all the cookware is as flat as the day we bought it. That's the only real advantage- heat is even across the bottom of the pan. That and on high it boiles water faster. Turn a gas top to full high and the flames go up the side of a small pot, heat is wasted. With induction, the bottom gets heated, fast, and the water starts boiling.
But that's not all the ways to cook- there's the microwave. That's where all the veggies get prepared now. From from frozen to steaming hot cauliflower with cheese in minutes. The only meat we cook in there is meatloaf. We had been married for 3 years when we got our first from Montgomery Ward. With a cookbook- no one was yet familiar with how to use one. Book said the easiest thing to prepare in a microwave is meatloaf. 3 years married- we had never made a meatloaf. Made one. Moist and delicious. We still make meatloaf in the microwave. Comes out moist and delicious. If we cooked it as long as that cookbook (that we still have) in the newest microwave, it would be burnt to a crisp. They've gotten much better at getting the energy into the food. I had never really liked meatloaf because parts were delicious, and edges or top was often inedible burned to a crisp.
Then there's the One-Pot. Great for some things. And absolutely unsuitable for most everyday cooking. Crockpot? Well, we can use that- or the One-Pot.
There's no reason to outlaw gas appliances except ideology. Nothing to do with safety or health. People are perfectly capable of making their own rational, or for that matter, irrational decision to choose gas or electric.
walk don't run said...
... In our condo I worry about the propane distribution system which we check every year.
Propane distribution? In a condo? You mean natural gas, right?
"$80,000 male-driven locomotive"
Nice choice to frame the debate.
Yes, martensitic and ferritic stainless (400 series) are magnetic but austenitic (300 series) as is not magnetic. The 300 series is more common so choose wisely.
I like the comment about olive oil and other ingredients having 17 times the emissions of gas that sounds true, white fumes coming out of your pan are not from the gas. This points out that the health effects scare is insignificant. I bet they were not even cooking anything during the testing. Lying by omission in science.
If they want to save lives, use the stove replacement money to screen people for high blood pressure.
For those touting safety of electric, my electric stove (glass top) tired to burn my house down. Fortunately, I was home and didn't ignore the popping. What happened was that I sloshed a pan that had water in it. It went over the control knobs. It hit them at an angle so water went down and in the cup where the control came through. Water, evidently, seeped around the knob stem and into the rheostat. So, suddenly, without warning, an hour or so later, the stove eye came on, on high. I could not be turned off. I had to cut the breaker. That condition lasted for a few hours where they eye would "runaway" when the stove had power. For about a month, I turned the breaker off when the stove was not in active use, even after the eye started acting proper. But that's annoying as it killed the oven and the clock.
It's worked fine for several years now. I've looked but cannot find a way to put a hard switch on the stove top power. That's something that should be standard on glass tops, at least. A positive, open switch, not something electronic or dependent up on a variable resistor. Even a hard detented OFF on the controls would work. Funny, my oven does have a child lock on the controls, but the knobs on either side that can turn on the heating elements of the stove have no way to disable them when not in use.
Everything is dangerous and anything you do to idiot proof something, just know, they always make a better idiot than you've conceived.
Under the left’s rules there’s a climate crisis attached to the replacement of millions of gas appliances. Manufacturing, distributing installing all those new stoves then responsibly disposing of the old ones is a carbon intensive process…and that doesn’t include the actual pollution….
When the day is done and you want to ru-un - propane! She don’t mind…
Here's the Twitter take on this madness...seems about right
Right about the time CNN was pushing this insane bullshit, the War on Gas Stoves trial balloon was exploding in the sky over Washington.
In a month, CNN will claim only right-wing obsessives think anybody ever wanted to ban gas stoves.
You had lefty blowhards on Twitter in the middle of shouting their new War on Stoves talking points yesterday when the Biden administration suddenly backed down. It's like pulling the chip out of a Terminator while it's in the middle of emptying a magazine at Sarah Connor.
I have an induction countertop electric kettle setup, that I like. It is great to quickly boil a bit of water for tea, or maybe making small bit of stock with some bullion powder. It works fast, doesn't make a mess, doesn't take up much space, and the heat is all contained to the bottom of the kettle so very low risk of burning anything else.
That being said I would never want an induction stove top. I like the ease at which I can control the heat, the visual cue I get to see how hot the burner is, and the uniformity of the heat regardless of which piece of cookware I use. With a gas stove, my medium burner on medium puts out the same amount of heat regardless of which piece of cookware I have on it. Whereas with an induction stovetop I suspect different pieces would heat differently depending on their material composition and how receptive they are to inductive heating.
" When you turn a gas burner off, it goes off then and there."
I keep reading this, but you're leaving out that there's still a metal grate that retains heat and the pot itself retains heat and that can only slowly cool, so it's an illusion of quicker response. The illusion feels good and I understand that people want it, and that's fine. But if you want to be scientific, you'll have to prove that the retained heat in the electrical coil itself makes a difference when there is all that other heat retention going on.
Gaggenaus?
Germans and gas are enough of a red flag. I don't want anything with the word "gag" in it cooking my supper.
Similarly, you can turn the gas on high, but there's still a time lag while the metal pan heats up. Is it significantly different from the electrical coil and the pan heating up together? I think the perceived difference is emotional. But it's a product to be sold and emotion matters. Still, I'd like to see a tested comparison.
The dullard's link says "The real issue becomes turning it back on again. It's not like flipping on a switch; it's not like that. You literally have to go to every home; turn their meter on, go inside their home; relight their pilot light, check that all of their natural gas appliances are working properly and safely and it takes some time," Conway added.
Not if you have electric ignition for gas stove burners. Pilot lights are passe. The greenies, who the dullard votes for, are going to try to get us back to the 19th century, if not the 18th. Clivilization should be optional. Let us normals have it and let the greenies freeze in the dark.
If you have had to replace your electric stovetop every 12 years or so (1986 to 2023), then I believe that is a big reason to switch to natural gas. My stove is still going strong after 30 years. I've cooked with both electric and natural gas, and I'll take natural gas any day. Just my two cents.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
Similarly, you can turn the gas on high, but there's still a time lag while the metal pan heats up. Is it significantly different from the electrical coil and the pan heating up together?
Why is it necessary to argue about this ? The lefties want ban anything they don't like. Normals want to be left alone.
I’ve lived my entire life with frigid Midwest winters, so making a stockpot full of soup was a weekly occurrence. The precise temperature control of gas allowed me to keep a perfect simmer for hours. An added bonus was that whenever there was a winter storm power outage, I could continue to cook.
I learned from many church soup suppers that those 22-quart electric roaster ovens—and electric stoves—are either ON or OFF. There is no such thing as low or medium heat, because the electric circuit which produces the heat is either open or closed, period. Maintaining a simmer was impossible and the soup was served either boiling hot or not hot enough. When we moved into a house with a new ceramic cooktop, I had it removed and paid a lot to have a gas line run to the kitchen so I could have my gas stove. It's about temperature control, not about how fast a pan of water boils (although it is maddening to wait forever for the water to heat because of the ON/OFF circuit). If I want my food to boil, simmer or merely be kept warm, I want that temp continuously. If I want a sear, I want continuous high heat. Electric stoves simply can't provide that and that's why serious cooks always cook with gas.
Ann said…”it's an illusion of quicker response.”
An electric coil takes longer to heat up and longer to cool down.
The heat retention of a gas stove’s grate is nothing compared to a large radiant electric coil, which will continue to glow red even after the circuit is open and current is no longer supplied. I have cooked on both, and if I turn the gas off under a boiling pot, the boil stops immediately. If I turn the electric coil off, the boil continues for some time meaning that the hot pot has to be picked up and moved to prevent it from boiling over.
So many "induction doesn't work without the right cookware" comments. Put a cheap piece of stainless steel on the heating surface and voila! you have just created a traditional electric cooking element.
https://www.amazon.com/JIENAQIN-Induction-Converter-Diffuser-Stainless/dp/B0B4KFPYQV/&tag=althouse09-20&linkCode=ur1
Warning: The diffuser will get hot and stay hot.
Re: Althouse:
I keep reading this, but you're leaving out that there's still a metal grate that retains heat and the pot itself retains heat and that can only slowly cool, so it's an illusion of quicker response. The illusion feels good and I understand that people want it, and that's fine. But if you want to be scientific, you'll have to prove that the retained heat in the electrical coil itself makes a difference when there is all that other heat retention going on.
I've never run a scientific test, but I have an electric stovetop and most of my relatives do not. When they cook in my kitchen it's a big initial adjustment for them because of this issue (burning food because the burner is slow to heat and then suddenly it's too hot, and then overcooking food because the burner is slow to cool down). I suppose it might differ from grate to grate, but the grate is full of holes and open to the air -- it's not a cast iron dutch oven, more like a cast iron trivet. So it doesn't go to zero immediately. Also, I think most of the heat is transmitted via the flame itself, not via the grate, so when you turn down the flame that really is most of the heat gone.
One way to deal with the hot surface on glass top stoves, electric or induction, is to get one of those wood stove fans that run off the heat difference. I put one on the eye when I'm done. It blows air increasing cooling and dissipates heave via conduction. Visually it is an alert that the area is hot.
Ann,
I'm glad to hear that so many people are cooking. I thought that had died out. Or are there just a lot of people who want a fantastic kitchen but don't really use it?
You are surprised? I'm not. Occasionally people express surprise that I cook so much, and so many elaborate things. But most people don't; they just go on to ask what I've been cooking lately, and whether I might share a recipe or two. Of course, I'm a couple of decades behind you, so late-middle-aged, and I have no clue what twenty-somethings are doing in/with their kitchens now. But I imagine that most of your readership is in roughly my demographic.
I forget who above mentioned CFLs, but that was a great point. Current LEDs are indeed better than incandescent bulbs for most purposes (except those where the heat output is actually a plus, like, say, streetlights). But we weren't asked to transition from incandescents to LEDs; we were asked/required to transition to CFLs, which were much more expensive, much more cumbersome, and turned your living room into a literal hazmat zone whenever one broke. Plus the light they provided was cold and sterile.
Had we been asked to choose between incandescents and LEDs, a lot of us would've chosen LEDs as they are today. But that wasn't the choice we were given. Similarly, if we were starting de novo about cooktops, and gas and induction were the only choices, you might see some switch to induction, despite the expense. But induction is hella expensive however you parse it, and garden-variety electric is much cheaper, so the practical choice for most of us is between gas and old-style electric, and of those two I know which performs better. And so, likely, do you.
"Get induction" is currently something like "get a Tesla." (Leave out, for the moment, the idea that Elon Musk is super-evil now that he's attempted to civilize Twitter.) Not everyone can afford a Tesla, and if everyone could afford a Tesla, the electrical grid nationwide would be stone dead, because we haven't the capacity. The market is currently very nice for those who can afford a Tesla (disclosure: We have a Tesla), but that niceness will disappear as soon as people are forbidden ICE cars, and only Tesla and its increasing rivals will be legal to buy. Tesla even then holds an advantage in that its superchargers are already out there, strategically placed so that any Tesla driver can go virtually anywhere in the US -- but that advantage, again, is keyed to present levels of ownership and use. Scale it up by a factor of ten, and it's frankly unworkable. Throw in all the other EVs, whose recharging stations will necessarily be hastily put together and not systematically spaced as Tesla's are, and what you get is chaos.
"Personally, I've never liked cooking on gas. And all the arguements I ssee are based on nothing but differences of opinion. None are superior to others- you're cooking on a pan or in a pot, not on the heat source."
People who like cooking with gas are not insisting that you have to like it, and are perfectly fine with you cooking however you please. It would be nice if they were allowed the same respect for their preferences.
But that's not how progressives roll.
We need a vanguard of professional revolutionaries to lead us to the kitchen of the future.
Eventually, I'm sure they'll come for my living room fireplace, and I will be reaching for my flintlocks.
My house cooks, heats and gets hot water from gas. We’re I to have to switch any of that to electric I would have to have new circuits put in (240 volt and that each cannot be shared) and get the service to my house upgraded another 100 amps at least. And pray that I never have another power outage.
JMS said...
I’ve lived my entire life with frigid Midwest winters, so making a stockpot full of soup was a weekly occurrence. The precise temperature control of gas allowed me to keep a perfect simmer for hours. An added bonus was that whenever there was a winter storm power outage, I could continue to cook.
I learned from many church soup suppers that those 22-quart electric roaster ovens—and electric stoves—are either ON or OFF. There is no such thing as low or medium heat, because the electric circuit which produces the heat is either open or closed, period. Maintaining a simmer was impossible and the soup was served either boiling hot or not hot enough. When we moved into a house with a new ceramic cooktop, I had it removed and paid a lot to have a gas line run to the kitchen so I could have my gas stove. It's about temperature control, not about how fast a pan of water boils (although it is maddening to wait forever for the water to heat because of the ON/OFF circuit). If I want my food to boil, simmer or merely be kept warm, I want that temp continuously. If I want a sear, I want continuous high heat. Electric stoves simply can't provide that and that's why serious cooks always cook with gas.
Funny. I can everything you want from my induction top. Go from a 6 to a 1- the pot goes from boil to simmer. Immediately. I make a lot of gravy from McCormick mixes, since I never mastered the art of making gravy from drippings. And most of the time I didn't make something with dripping anyhow, and I really (REALY REALLY) like gravy. Bring it slowly to a boil, then simmer until thick enough.
Electric oven elements are on/off via thermostat. Just like GAS OVEN thermostats do for the gas control valve. Open/shut. With a pilot light or electronic ignition. Electric resistance coils are controlled by a rheostat and have what amounts to wattage settings. They're not on/off. And the electric roaster oven I just looked at at Home DEpot- temperature setting from 125°F to 450°F. I don't know what the ideal soup temperature is, but 124° seems to be in range. An electric soup tureen, if you're going to make a lot of soup often, first one on a google search 11 qt, 104°F-195°F. Sounds like operator error if everything ie too hot or too cold.
FWIW, there are 302 gas stoves from the 1930s-1950s currently for sale on eBay. They range in price from $500 to $12,500. There are 24 electric ranges for sale, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s.
Michael said...
Never mind Viking and Wolf. WaPo et al. won't be satisfied until they have abolished the whole idea of "male" and "manliness." Then at some point we will need some actual men and there won't be any.
1/14/23, 12:32 PM
[Y]ou can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 1943
http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/AbolitionofMan.pdf
@Daniel12, exactly what electric vehicle model is available for $70,000 or less that can move the people or cargo that an Expedition can move?
I loved my induction cooktop when I was in Japan... but they're _normal_ there, and don't come with the ridiculous "luxury item" premium.
In terms of day to day use, I prefer them in almost every way. Due to the way they work, your pot essentially becomes the heating element, rather than the burner needing to transfer the heat up to the pot. They are noticeably safer in terms of quickly cooling down after use. Automatically turning off if no pot is present is such a trivial feature for the manufacturers to implement that I think all of them do it.
However, if you have aluminum cookware it's going to require ugly workarounds. Real steel or cast-iron only. You can put a dumpy metal plate on your cooktop, but that's effectively turning your induction stovetop into a badly constructed electric top.
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