Comment by diego_moita
16 hours ago
> What is NG good for?
Mostly a myth by cooks that think it "heats faster" or "heats with a better distribution of heat".
It is foolish, but many still think so. I personally believe that the only kind of cooking that benefits from NG are round-bottom woks. But they can be substituted by flat-bottom pans without problems.
> Mostly a myth by cooks that think it "heats faster"
It’s almost entirely about heat _control_, especially when you turn the heat down or off. Non-induction electric stoves can take minutes or longer for a burner to cool down. When you cut the heat on a NG stove, it’s essentially immediate.
This matters quite a bit for heat-sensitive dishes like omelettes.
Induction doesn’t have this problem, but also hasn’t been widely available until maybe recently and won’t work on a lot of aluminum cookware. So you’re asking people to change their cookware along with their range. That can be a bridge too far for many.
They are mostly Nouvelle & Haute Cuisine french dishes: omelettes, holandaise/bernaise sauces, custards (Crème Anglaise, Pots de Crème), melted chocolate, caramel, generally poached stuff, etc.
For the lower temperatures, a lot of that temperature control can be made with bain marie (warm water).
And the remaining ones aren't made in aluminum cookware, anyway. And people that cook such sophisticated food probably will have a lot of non-aluminum cookware, already.
Flat bottom woks need a lot more oil to stir fry properly, due to the lack of pooling. Flat bottom woks on electric cooktops (radiant or induction) also tend to have essentially nonexistent heating of the side slopes, preventing you from using the technique of splashing soy sauce (and other cooking sauces, as well as cooking wines) in a wide arc so that it reduces rapidly to form a sticky coating for the food. Instead, all of the sauce will just run down to the bottom where it joins the rest of the liquids coming out of the food, contributing to boiling/steaming rather than stir frying.
I don't know about that. I like my induction cooker but I can't use cast iron on it (I've ruined other ones trying). I will use it for 90% of my cooking though.
I have a duxtop induction burner and I notice it gets hotspots where the coils are. I wonder if the breville control freak is worth the money or it has better granularity of its heating element.
But yeah if I built a new house, I would have an induction top.
The control freak (commercial one) is worth every penny.
Burning gas also releases a lot of pollutants — we’ve a gas hob but always switch the extractor on when we use it because of this
You should have the hood on while cooking no matter the type of stove top.
> Burning gas also releases a lot of pollutants
To be more precise: mostly CO2 and small amounts of CO. But the actual concentration of CO2 in your house can be affected by a lot of other factors (ventilation, urban environment, weather, etc).