Tell me about cooking on induction stovetops

Cafe Society
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Continuing the discussion from Renter's insurance - questions/advice?:

So I’m just about a week away from moving into my new studio apartment! As I’ve mentioned in the thread I’m linking above, this is the first time I’m ever going to actually have a residence of my own which I’ll be fully responsible for (aside from the landlord’s responsibilities for maintenance, of course.) It’s simultaneously exciting and anxiety-inducing.

One of the exciting things about moving into this unit is that I’m going to be its first tenant since it was renovated from its former status as an upscale hotel. As such, the kitchenette has all-new equipment - a full-size fridge, a built-in microwave, and an electric oven with an induction top.

When I was growing up in San Diego, we always had gas stoves. That was what I first learned to cook on. When I moved to Washington in 2004, the place I moved into had an electric stove, and that’s been true of every place I’ve lived since then. I’ve gotten accustomed to cooking on electric burners, but I’ve never really liked it - it takes too long to heat up and too long to adjust the temperature, the burners have a nasty habit of suddenly going up to max heat even if you have them on a low setting, and it’s easier to just move your pan to another burner than try to turn down the heat on the one you’re using. I own a Coleman camp stove that runs off propane that I occasionally use to go outside and cook things because of this specific reason, although I understand I won’t be able to bring it with me to my new apartment because of the terms of the lease (and they provide outdoor gas grills for tenant use anyway.)

I’ve never used an induction stove before. I understand that they work by using magnets to heat the metal in your pan instead of producing heat themselves. I know you need iron or steel cookware because they won’t work on non-magnetic cookware, and I’ve bought some new pots and pans in anticipation of the move. I’ve heard that you can heat or cool the pan at nearly the same rate that you can with a gas stove. I really like the idea that all you need to do to clean off the stove is to wipe it down with a washcloth, since the burner itself doesn’t heat up and there’s no nooks or crannies to get into.

I’m starting this thread to ask for any general advice on induction cooking that might not be self-evident to a well-experienced home cook that hasn’t used one before. Are there any quirks I need to know about? Any tips for adjusting heat, or what settings work the best for sautéing, pan-frying, simmering, boiling, making omelettes, etc.? Anything you didn’t know about before using one for the first time that you wished you’d known?

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I’ve recently switched to one, from a gas stove. It heats much, much faster than the gas stove did, and that’s the main thing you need to get used to. Unattended pots will boil over or burn in a surprisingly short time.

As for what settings work best - trial and error is your friend. Every stove is different. Plus, you may find different pots and pans behave differently - it may be that some have a higher iron content, and are more responsive to magnetic fields, than others.

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At the risk of being Captain Obvious (yet again) …

Are you sure it’s induction? The mere fact the surface is smooth glass does not necessarily mean it’s induction.

The range (and cabinets) in my own apartment look uncannily like yours. The only difference is my knobs are on the backsplash, not the front above the oven door. Otherwise they’re identical in all the little details; number & shape of vents, shape of handle, knob design, etc. IOW, they’re both nice, albeit still apartment grade, Whirlpool products.

Anyhow, my range has plain old electric resistance coils under the glass that get hot and conduct the heat through the glass. There’s also LED lights under the glass that glow red when the heat is on so you can easily see where to place your pan.

Since induction ranges are much more expensive than plain old resistance heat ranges, it’s kinda unlikely the apartment management did that. Not impossible, just unlikely they did so. They probably won’t provide you with the paper manuals for your appliances, but Google can get you the PDF easily. One of my tricks on move-in is take a pic of the data plate of each appliance and go download their manuals. Having the model number helps when it’s time to replace a water filter or whatever.

If it turns out you do just have a glass-topped electric resistance range, you’ll find cooking on it is identical to any other electric coil stove you’ve used. The burner “inertia” is about the same as you’re used to. As you say, cleanup is vastly easier.

I see you already bought new pots. I hope that doesn’t prove to have been unnecessary. Then again, new kitchenware can be its own reward. The flat-top stoves really don’t work well with well-abused cheaper pans whose base has warped and is no longer dead flat.


Separate but related matter:
Induction or not, you do need to be a bit cautious about scratching the top. It’ll happen, but less damage is better. Becasue the surface is flat, it’s tempting to drag a pan partly off the burner to manage the heat. No dragging; lift and replace.

They sell stove covers that are just flat pads the right size to protect the surface while you’re not cooking on it. Here’s the first example I found: Amazon.com: Stove Top Cover for Electric Stove. Mine is heatproof fabric, not silicone, but either works well. Prevents scratches, gives you extra counter space or prep surface when you’re not heating something, and is itself unbreakable and easy to clean.

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We’ve had induction for 15 years now.

It would work a lot similar to a gas stove without flames essentially. You turn on the heat and the pot heats up, the same for turning off - you’re left with the heat of the pot itself, there’s no longer a delay like traditional electric stoves.

Most have a boost mode that will maximize the power going in and will make water boil in under a minute or so. As mentioned upthread that can cause a boilover if you’re not paying attention. But the brilliant thing is you can just lift the pot and clean up the area because the “burner” is only hot from the pot’s temperature and not burning hot in itself. Heck, you could even put a (wet) dishcloth between the pot and burner or around it and keep cooking if it’s really that prone to overboil.

As for settings: I feel ours is pretty linear. It goes up to 14, so a high heat would be 10-12, medium 7-8, moderate 4-5, etc.

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Ditto to LSLGuy. This appears to be a Frigidaire range and the knob layout looks a lot like a unit with standard heating elements. I took a glance at Frigidaire’s induction ranges and I don’t see any induction units that are similar to this one.

Congrats on your move!

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You asked about stovetops, but the newer ranges have convection ovens. And I find that in my new oven I have to set the temperature about 15-20 DEGF below what I’d normally use.

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I do lots of home canning which can be easily accomplished on both gas and electric coil stoves. I heard stoves with flat surfaces make this impossible or impractical due to the large pots requiring a large raised contact surface. Does anyone know for a fact if that’s true or not? Has anyone here actually canned using either a glass-topped or induction stove?

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We purchased a Kenmore induction stovetop last year to replace our traditional (burner elements) unit.

I’m not a cook, and I only use it to boil pasta. I really like it - it’s very fast, and much safer than a red hot burner sitting at 1000 °F. But there is an idiosyncrasy with the top burners that you should be made aware of: the dial controls the duty cycle of the element, which means a liquid will switch between boiling and not-boiling every few seconds when set to a low to medium setting. It still gets the job done, but some people don’t like the “pulsating” characteristic of it.

Wife and daughter cook on it, and use the oven. Both love it.

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Why don’t you just make 10 the hottest and make 10 be the top number and make that a little hotter?

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Well, it’s four hotter, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be cooking at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your stovetop. Where can you go from there? Where?

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Which, unironically, is how a lot of induction stoves actually do it. They will have a 0-10 range and then a POWER BOOST function for those times you really need that extra push over the cliff.

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I guess “you” here is aimed at AEG because I didn’t create it myself. It does have boost though with capital P for POWER.

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It’s a sly reference to Spinal Tap.

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It looks a lot like this (non-induction) stove:

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Frigidaire-30-in-Electric-Range/5014761025

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Add me to the “That looks like a standard contractor grade glass top stove” crew. It seems unlikely that an apartment complex would pay more for induction appliances and then have to field the many complaints they get from new tenants that the stove doesn’t get their pans hot.

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RIP Marty Di Bergi.

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I have had to deal with a cheap induction cooktop that pulses on and off (unless you set it to maximum power) rather than continuously maintaining a lower power like you might by turning down the gas. Not that this is necessarily an insurmountable problem, depending on your cookware, but take it into account.

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On my non-induction glass top I have no problem boiling a large stock pot.

I have two 5-1/2" heating areas, and two 9-1/2" heating areas. One of the 9-1/2s has an inner and outer section, where you can set it to heat only the inner 5-1/2", or the whole 9-1/2".

I have seen larger / nicer non-inductive flat tops that have a 12" element for truly huge pots.

I also note that many pots have a smaller flat bottom than it appears. My skillet is 10-1/2" across the opening, but the flat bottom that can contact the heating element is only 9-1/4" in diameter.

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Yea, as mentioned in my first post, the “pulsing on-and-off” of the burners annoys a lot of people. When I need to boil pasta, I will first use the most powerful burner to quickly boil the water, and then I’ll move it to the lowest power burner. The pulsing of the latter is more subtle.

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For some reason that link doesn’t work for me (“access denied”) but here is that exact stove. It’s a Frigidaire glass-top 5-burner conventional range, not induction, but quite a nice range for an apartment. The whole kitchen looks quite nice.

The fridge is also Frigidaire – it looks like an apartment-size version of my new one.