Induction or Ceramic

[John]

The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass hob.

What are the views of the experts?

Thanks

[Huge]

Ceramic hobs are utterly deeply crap. Induction hobs are merely crap.

[Huge]

[Derisive snort]

[Nick Leverton]

Breaking up frozen mince and chipping burnt bits off are amongst the things you should not do whilst the pot is on a glass-topped cooker of either sort ...

Nick

[Dave Liquorice]

With ceramic hobs the heat transfered from the heating element through the glass and into the pan. The glass gets FING hot. It's not without reason you can get ceramic hob cleaners and scrapers. Anything that gets onto a hot bit of glass burns and sticks well...

Induction the heat is generated in the pan base, the glass will still get hot but nothing like the searing temperature of a ceramic one. You must have magnetic pans for a induction hob, remember aluminium and stainless steel are not magnetic. Stainless pans that work on an induction hob have a lump of ordinary steel in the base.

[harryagain]

Good explanation here.

[Jon Fairbairn]

Depends on the type and what you use it for. If you want to cook something at a low temperature and you have an induction hob with a temperature sensor, it?s much easier than with gas. Generally, I?d rate them about the same as gas, but the good and bad applications are different. No doubt there are induction hobs that are utter crap, but then that?s also true of gas (poor spread of flame, over-high minimum setting, biggest burner too feeble). (I have a 3kW single ring one ? Buffalo ? from Nisbets that I use mostly for sauces, rice and stock. It has a shut off timer which is useful for the last two, but I think the current model from Nisbets lacks that feature)

Certainly ceramic hobs are horrible.

[Huge]

Ahhh, that's likely what makes them usable. I bought a 1.8kW single ring Kenwood one to see what they were like (*). It's a bit curate's egg - the heatup speed is deeply impressive (to the extent I keep boiling things over because they come to boil much faster than I expected), but the simmer performance is dismal, since it works by cycling full power off and on, so instead of a steady simmer you get "boil/silence/boil/silence".

Ditto the Kenwood, which is *very* useful.

We're in complete agreement there.

(* We're designing a new kitchen and there are some issues with having (actually retaining) a gas hob, so I wanted to see what induction was like.)

[damduck-egg]

On 5 Aug 2011 10:37:16 GMT, Huge wrote:

Exactly what I did. Quickly passed it on to my mother who recently became a widow and only needs to cook for one now.She liked it so much she purchased another two ring one for when she need to do a bit more and coupled with a combination micro and something called a Remoska (sp?) she swears by has allowed her to remove the solid fuel Rayburn we all grew up with. At 80 years she found stoking and emptying it a bit of a chore and there are no Lambs to thaw out now.

.

Never lived in a place with gas so I cannot compare with it but hated the electric hobs I have experienced in the past with the poor controllability and the Induction we purchased is very controllable. Possibly it is working by the on off method when the settings get down to the lower end of the 0 to 9 scale of each the rings. Cannot remember the power of them off hand but there are two medium power ,one low and one High. simmering seems successful particularly on the low power one. A feature which I find useful is the ability to couple the power of the medium rings or the high and low together into one of the pair. Very useful to boil up our large 6L kettle quickly or get the pressure cooker up fast. As others have said you need the correct cookware,you do see metal disks advertised which are intended to make other cookware work . These do nothing more than get hot and act as a hotplate. I experimented with a steel disk rather than pay out the £20 for one as it may have saved purchasing a new jam making pot. The hob sensed overheat and shut down. In have no reason to think a purchased converter would do any better so my advice is don't bother trying one if it were a consideration. OTOH I horrify the OT by saving washing up and occasionally just put a eg an opened tin of baked beans in the middle of the small ring and have no trouble gently heating up the contents and a set of supposedly stainless steel serving bowls heat things up beautifully when placed on a rings.

The Induction hob is the first one that have had that is really easy to clean. The glass never really gets hot enough to bake things to it unless you are careless with your utensils,sugar stuck on the exterior base of a pan is one to look out for. Gas would just burn it off but the heat from a pan on the induction will melt it enough to become a sticky.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet. Most manufactures advise that people with pacemakers might have too seek further advice to check that the pacemaker isn't interfered with. Not sure if it is real issue or a 1 in a million chance but it easy to dismiss when your life doesn't depend on such a device. An older colleague years ago would step out of a room when a Microwave was operated.

G.Harman

[Scott M]

Decent ones (eg deDietrich) have stepped power output for the top half of the setting and PWM (of the lowest setting) below. Beats the gas hobs that don't go low enough to keep the flame alive.

[Huge]

Worth knowing, thanks.

[Huge]

BTW, did some stir-frying on my induction hotplate this evening. Bloody brilliant. Much better than gas ...

[Dave Liquorice]

What even one of these?

the gas consumption 54MJ/hr that's about 13kW.

One need serious heat to stir fry properly. When I was in china blown coal fired version of the above where being used the underside of the pan would glow red...

[Frank Erskine]

I stir-fried on my Bosch ceramic hob two or three days ago. Really enjoyable, tasty and I'm still alive. Where's the problem?

[dennis]

That would be a gas ring and not a wok burner?

Heat transfer is the problem. You can't use a proper wok and have to use a flat bottomed one. The flat bottom means you need more fat to fry in. The bigger the ring the more flat bottom you need, eventually you are just using a frying pan.

[Brian Reay]

We've had an Induction hob (Aeg) for just over 2 years now an find it fantastic. We much prefer it to others we've had, including convention electric, "solar glow" (or some such name), and gas. I wanted gas but the Boss wasn't keen. The Boss won and we went with the Induction. Don't tell her I said so, but she was right ;-)

You do need the right pans. I like Le Creuset and it is great for those.

We've not had problems with the Aeg hob but we've been less impressed with the other Aeg appliances bought at the same time. I'm not sure I'd buy Aeg again.

Brian

[Huge]

Well, I meant compared to the weedy biggest burner on my gas hob. I think it's about a kW. The induction jobby is 1.8kW and couples to the wok much better.

[Jon Fairbairn]

Indeed. I have something similar¹ that?s only 8kW, but I find it to be enough for most domestic wok-ery.

However, what should have been mentioned in this thread is that induction cookers are more efficient. I measured the energy taken to cook a pan of rice on gas and the same on the induction cooker. The induction hob used about one third of the energy of the gas hob. Of course, the losses between the power station and pan mean that one doesn?t save energy by using induction instead of gas, but

(a) if you are stuck with electric (as the OP is), this is a significant saving

(b) you can divide the power needed for a wok cooker by three, so for example

or (cheaper by a mile!) are only 3kW, but I?d expect them to work pretty much as well as my gas burner. (Note that these are induction hobs shaped to fit a wok; a flat one wouldn?t be useable).

[1] the one burner one of these a wok-ring and burner.

[Huge]

Induction hobs are perfectly useable with woks, providing the wok has a flat bottom, as both of mine do.

[Scott M]

Ah, but has the hob cooled down yet?

I always liken ceramic hobs to nuclear power stations. Takes ages to get them going and even longer before it's stopped generating heat!