Cooking by Induction
As the summer advances, we find ourselves cooking less. Just the thought of boiling pasta water or baking a loaf of bread causes us to break a sweat. We love to cook, yet don’t want to add heat to our already sweltering rental house. A terrible conundrum!
As a result of this experience, we’ve revisited the cooktops planned for our kitchen renovation. Instead of going with the standard gas stove, we’re leaning heavily toward induction cooktops.
The principle behind these units is straight forward. A piece of magnetic material (for example, a steel sauce pan or cast-iron skillet) is placed within a magnetic field generated from the cooktop itself. Energy is then transferred (or induced) from the cooktop to the pan or skillet causing it heat up.
Unlike a standard electric stove that uses radiant heat to transfer energy (and thus takes a bit of time to warm up), a pot placed on an induction cooktop starts heating instantly and delivers a speedy performance similar to gas.
So why dump gas in favor of an induction cooktop? The answer is energy efficiency. A typical gas stove is only 30% efficient, meaning a whopping 70% of the heat generated is wasted on heating you and your kitchen rather than your dinner. Induction cooktops are around 90% efficient. With almost no wasted heat, cooking this way will produce less sweat, a happier cook and more yummy dinners.
The induction cooktop is made even more attractive by the fact that we can now install a fan over the countertop to keep us even cooler when cooking up a storm. This would be impossible with a gas cooktop, as the breeze generated by the fan would blow the heat away from the cooktop before it got a chance to heat up our frying pan. We have experienced this problem in other houses we’ve rented and can say that it makes for some pretty underwhelming stir-frys and a whole lot of misery.
There is, however, no free lunch. Induction cooktops are more expensive and require cookware made of magnetic materials (like steel or cast iron). No aluminum, no copper and no earthenware. For us, this means our favorite Oaxacan clay pots and the delicious slow braises they contain will have to move outside onto a gas ring. Given the heat, this is perhaps not a bad thing.
