I have about had it with my non-induction electric cooktop. It’s an electric smooth top which is peachy to clean, but it seems to have the response time of lava and the heat transfer ability lukewarm coffee.
So it’s time for a change. On one side we have propane, which requires ‘propane’ which we don’t have yet but can get. Propane is some BTU’s short of nat gas but it has been the best thing in a bottle to cook with I have used.
OTOH there is induction, the top of the electric line. With faster heat transfer than gas, with the easy to clean aspect that gas never knew.
While installing a propane cooktop with all the gas lines and tank is much more expensive than plug and play electric, and electric can be much easier to clean, I want something that is a pleasure to cook with. Gas is my gold standard, how does induction compare?
I don’t care what anyone says, the worst gas stove beats the best electric stove hands down, and a hundred times that on days when the power’s out but you can still cook and bake bread to help keep the house warm.
Induction is fine in it’s limited way. But it’s not an oven, not a char-broiler, and as mentioned above, not working in a power outage. I’ll take gas any day, and if all works out well will have it by this time next year.
Don’t discount the ‘easy to clean’ aspect of ‘pleasure to cook with’. I prefer gas, but it’s clear that it’s mostly because it’s what I’m used to. I can see a gas flame and adjust it. I know when it’s not lit. I don’t have to find the touch screen controls, and after I find them, I don’t have to work out why they aren’t responding the way I expect them to respond.
My brother (the gourmet of the family) doesn’t find any of those things a problem, (he’s also got children in the house which, in his case, might be a problem with gas). My mother finds those problems insurmountable, but she’s mostly blind, mostly deaf, and mostly hypoxic.
In our recent kitchen remodel we put in an induction stove. I love it and we’re never going back to gas. It heats faster then any gas stove I’ve ever had, is a dream to clean, we can use the stove top as a prep surface, and it heats much more evenly on the griddle and Dutch ovens then gas possibly can.
The speed has changed the way we cook. If I put on a pot to boil for pasta it will be at a rolling boil in less than 5 minutes. Now I don’t even bother filling the pot until I’m done with my sauce. When I’m making Ramen it takes less time to boil the water than it does to open the Ramen packs.
The cleaning is great though the stove gets dirtier than our gas stove used to. This is primary due to the fact our stove top doesn’t get hot except under the pot. So now the cookbook sits on the stove along with the cutting board and all of the ingredients. The normal mess from prep now happens on the stove along with the cooking mess. Still takes about 5 minutes once a week to clean the stove spotless.
The even heat is also awesome. Since the entire pot bottom is heated equally rather than hotter spots directly above the flame ring it does some crazy stuff. We were making bacon on our griddle for the first time and the bacon cooked differently since every single piece was heated equally along the whole piece. The bacon shrank but didn’t crinkle and rendered quickly to make crispy bacon. With out dutchoven there is no fiddling with the stove to get the big burner to put out as much heat as the little burner. There isn’t a gap between the two burners either since again the whole bottom is heater evenly.
The controlls are the only real issue. Occasionally, we’ll turn up or down the wrong burner or link burners we didn’t mean too. It would be better if each burner had independent physical controls. When the power goes out we have a BBQ and a wood burning stove and a loss of power hasn’t effected our ability to cook in the 2.5 years we’ve had the stove.
It’s fast, safe, clean, precise and if I’m not mistaken cheapest to run, so in my mind nothing comes close to beating induction.
As is said, the stove itself does not get hot. That makes it easy to clean also during cooking: something spills over? just lift the pot, wipe it down and put the pot back on. You can even get away with putting a towel around the pot as you’re cooking. That also makes it safe, there’s no open flame to set fire to a misplaced towel. Burner stay relatively cool compared to other stoves.
Turning on the wrong burner by mistake will do nothing if there’s nothing there to heat. Well, it’ll probably display a warning for a while, then switch off.
Even base models will probably come with a timer of sorts, so you if your pasta needs 7 minutes for all-dente, there you go. There’s the stop & go feature as well: put everything on hold as you answer the door or give your kid some urgent attention, start the whole thing back up when you’re back at the stove.
But yes, the cable running to the stove needs to be beefy enough to push the theoretically max Watts without melting, so that’s something to consider.
I have a standby generator that can run on propane or natural gas. It’s rated at 13KW on natural gas, but 15KW on propane.
“One cubic foot of propane = 2,516 BTUs compared to one cubic foot of natural gas = 1,030 BTUs. Propane contains more than twice the energy of natural gas. In one hour, a 100,000 BTU natural gas furnace burns around 97 cubic feet while a propane furnace burns only 40 cubic feet in an hour.” from here
I’ve cooked on gas (propane) for 50 years. We’re in a rental with an induction top, and it’s awesome. Pretty much everything that Oredigger said, plus there’s growing evidence that burning gas inside a tight house is bad for air quality (duh). Especially at altitude, propane just doesn’t compare to the heat output of induction. We used to have an electric kettle for tea since boiling water on the stove took so long–no more. I’m also comparing a pro-level range (Jenn-air), so it was relatively high-output for a propane cooker–at least 18,000 BTU rating. A standard range will be even weaker.
Thank you. Where I got propane has less BTU’s then nat gas from is I have a gas range in our vacation home that can run either on nat gas or propane by changing the orifice. It’s set to run the propane we have (and no nat gas). The manufacturer gives BTU rating per burner and also for the oven functions for both propane and nat gas. On all the BTU output is lower for propane. Though I forget the numbers I gestimate about 10% difference.
From your example I guess it’s up to how much gas it flows under each mode to how much heat it will deliver.
My gas cook top had to have the orifice changed when it was installed. Propane is stored as a liquid. Perhaps if it’s drawn off too quickly it causes issues?
Right. Propane is supplied at higher pressure so requires a smaller orifice than natural gas supplied at lower pressure. With too much pressure the flame shape and oxygen mix don’t work out well. With natural gas the burner may provide more heat than propane because a larger volume of gas can be burned efficiently with the larger orifices.
The pressure gas is supplied at is set by the pressure regulator. Gas pipes are fairly standard diameters, and increased pressure is used to get increased volume for increased power. Large BBQ burners require ‘hi pressure’ propane, to run the large BBQ.
The size of the gas jets has to match the size of the air intake. To get the correct ratio, it is standard to adjust the size of the jets, rather than adjusting the size of the air intake.
The air/gas ratio has to be the correct chemical ratio, which is not (unless accidentally) the same as the volume ratio or pressure ratio or BTU ratio. If there is not enough air in the pre-mix, the flame burns cold, dirty and yellow. If there is too much air, the flame burns cold, burns your pans, and goes out.
My propane feeds my generator as I mentioned above, If memory serves, there’s an additional pressure regulator on the line that continues on into the house.
So it could be that the generator requires a higher pressure, and flow, than the cook top.
I have always lived in rented appartments so far, so I took what was there: there was no alternative. Now I am on gas, which I like, in one of my flats, and old fashioned electric stove on the other. But in my last flat before that we had induction, and I really liked it. I think I am going to put induction in the flat with the old fashioned electric stove at my own expense, because not only is everything that Oredigger77 said correct, you can programm those induction stoves to start and to stop when you want, and that is fantastic. Food is ready when you want, even if you are not at home at the beginning of the cooking process. Granted, that is not the case right now, we are always at home because of Covid, but when that changes, I will upgrade my landlords stove. Perhaps I will even before the end of the pandemic, because I loved it.
Do you know the wattage of the individual burners? I have a gas stove and a portable induction burner. The induction burner doesn’t seem as powerful as my “power boil” burner.
Unless yours is like ours (Maytag), and has some sort of solenoid or something that will shut off the gas if there’s no power to it. Found that out the hard way about a decade ago when our power went out and we decided we wanted coffee.
My center element can do 3.7 KW in the boost mode while the bigger side elements can do 7.2kw. That’s about 12k btu which isn’t as much as the big gas stoves but keep in mind there is a lot of energy lost with that fire putting heat in places besides your pot. Also, I live at 8,000 ft so you have to derate gas cooktops a bunch.