I love our induction cooktop (36" Jennair 5 burner). It can do everything mentioned above plus you can wipe down any overspill/splash immediately and prevent any burning (which doesn’t really happen anyway). The 5 timers are awesome and have made Thanksgiving preparation, etc. very easy. We even do a lot more reheating on the induction that used to go into the microwave. And people don’t really comprehend the boiling speed until they see it in action. We were making homemade noodles the other day and realized we hadn’t started the water boiling even though we had prepped the noodles completely down to the last cut. My kids started running the noodles through the final cutter while I filled 4 pots (including one 10 qt central one) from the tap with 2-3 qts in each one. The goal was to get the smaller ones hot before combining everything into the 10 qt together for the actual noodle boiling. By the time pot 3 was on the stove, the first one (10qt) was starting to boil. Pot 4 goes on and #2 is boiling and get dumped into the big one. 1 minute later, 3&4 are dumped into the big one. In two minutes, I got 2 gallons of water to a full rolling boil. The noodles weren’t ready to go in for another minute (and this was two preteens constantly feeding them into the cutter attachment on the Kitchenaid at full speed).
Now all of that being said, there is one drawback to the induction oven. We (actually my partner) have destroyed 3 pans all due to overheating them. With induction you don’t need to crank up the heat to get the pan going and then turn down, set the desired temp and it will get there. The pans destroyed were: le creuset dutch oven (the porcelein? interior spiderwebbed and splintered off after cooking bacon too hot to start lentil soup), a calphalon 12" non-stick (which got a cloudy and substantially less non-stick appearance), and a very nice chicken fryer (which developed a substantial dome to it as well as charred remains in the interior). She often cranks up the heat to get things faster rather than actually planning or timing her cooking though. I have a dedicated wire brush attachment for our drill to remove some of her “leftovers”. But just remember, you should crank up the temperature setting unless it is for something like boiling water.
Works fine. In fact, that’s what she went to the showroom to test out is if she can successfully make her Chinese signature dishes. Worked out wonderfully
As Disheaval points out, high is too high for most cookware and cooking. Not sure how many pancakes got scorched in about 2 seconds.
Our Miele has one small bug. If you turn on the burner at 12 and immediately lower it, it remains at 12 even though the counter will be lower. After the burner has been on 5 - 10 seconds, it doesn’t do this. I just learned to always start at zero and raise the temp instead of vice versa.
If you have little kids, the induction is safer as well. No open flame. It won’t work if you put your hand on the burner. Now, it isn’t perfect as when you heat up say a pan of water and remove the pot, the burner will be hot and probably give you a mild burn if you keep your hand on it for any length of time. I have a child on the autism spectrum, and it’s been nice to know that she can’t burn herself.
And as someone else has pointed out, clean up is a breeze. Just wipe with a damp cloth
I’ll just pipe in with a ‘meh’. Put an samsung induction slide in range on our new place last summer. Chose induction as Mrs Fluffy complained last time we had a gas range that it was a bother to clean with the grills etc.
The Samsung is no Miele, but it is no light weight either, was damn expensive. I was going to get All Clad but couldn’t find a good deal at the time. Ended up buying a kitchenaid set that seemed decent enough.
The range is fast, accurate, easy to use, a breeze to clean, but it’s noisy. A cooling fan runs whenever it’s on and continues after its off until the cooktop cools. The pots whistle, especially at high settings. I got ready to pack them up, but did a search and it was a common complaint. Several people commented that their allclad pots whistled too and it wasn’t just lesser brands.
I got an expensive fry pan as well that has slightly warped after four months. That’s not the ranges fault but I can’t help but think it wouldn’t be as big a deal on a gas range.
Maybe better cookware is the answer but generally I think I should have bought the gas version of the range for a lot cheaper and have a quieter appliance.
Thanks again for the feedback. It looks like they’re going back to the appliance store to look at specific ranges tomorrow. Turns out my sister has a set of pans that pass the magnet test, so they’ll likely swap sets to get started. My suggestion was to see how those work out and rather than buying a whole set of new cookware just buy single, nice pieces as needed.
Special thanks for the heads up regarding high heat issues. I’ll end up cooking on this a fair amount, and my MO is definitely crank the heat to start and then dial it back to where I want it. I’ll have to break that habit.
FluffyBob, could you explain the pots whistling thing? Other than a tea kettle or pressure cooker, I’m not getting how that would work. Just curious.