Induction Cooking:
Pros and Cons

Pros and Cons of Induction Cooking

Keep in mind that there are differences of opinion about these matters, which we will both explain and comment on when the time comes. First, though, here is a summary of the key points.

Favorable:

Instant Adjustment

To serious cooks, the most important favorable point about induction cookers--given that they are just as (or more) "powerful" at heating as any other sort--is that you can adjust the cooking heat instantly and with great precision. Before induction, good cooks, including all professionals, overwhelmingly preferred gas to all prior forms of electric cooking for one reason: the substantial "inertia" in ordinary electric cookers--when you adjust the heat setting, the element (coil, halogen heater, whatever) only slowly starts to increase or decrease its temperature. With gas, when you adjust the element setting, the energy flow adjusts instantly.

But with induction cooking the heat level is every bit as instantaneous, and as exact, as with gas, yet with none of the many drawbacks of gas (which we will detail later). Induction elements can be adjusted to increments as fine as the cooker maker cares to supply, just like gas, and--again very important to serious cooks--such elements can run at as low a cooking-heat level as wanted for gentle simmering and suchlike (something even gas is not always good at). Someday, perhaps not so many years away, the world will look back on cooking with gas as we today look on cooking over a coal-burning kitchen stove.

No Wasted Heat

With induction cooking, energy is supplied directly to the cooking vessel by the magnetic field; thus, almost all of the source energy gets transferred to that vessel. With gas or conventional electric cookers (including halogen), the energy is first converted to heat and only then directed to the cooking vessel--with a lot of that heat going to waste heating up your kitchen (and you) instead of heating up your food. (The striking image at the left shows how precisely focussed heat generation is with induction--ice remains unmelted on an induction element that is boiling water!)

As a comparison, 40%--less than half--of the energy in gas gets used to cook, whereas with induction 84% percent of the energy in the electricity used gets used to cook (and the rest is not waste heat as it is with gas). There are two important heat-related consequences of that fact:

• 

  cooler kitchens: of course the cooking vessel and the food itself will radiate some of their heat into the cooking area--but compared to gas or other forms of electrically powered cooking, induction makes for a much cooler kitchen (recall the old saying: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."); and,

• a cool stovetop: that's right! The stovetop itself barely gets warm except directly under the cooking vessel (and that only from such heat as the cooking vessel bottom transfers). No more burned fingers, no more baked-on spills, no more danger with children around. (The photo at the right--one of several similar ones to be found on the web--shows, like the one above, how only the cooking vessel does the actual cooking.)

Safety

We have already mentioned that the stovetop stays cool: that means no burned fingers or hands, for you or--especially--for any small children in the household. (In the image at the right, you can see a pot boiling water on an induction unit while a dollar bill between the pot and the cooktop surface is unsinged.) And for kitchens that need to take into account special needs, such as wheelchair access, nothing, but nothing, can beat induction for both safety and convenience (see the paragraph farther below).

Furthermore, because its energy is transferred only to relatively massive magnetic materials, you can turn an induction element to "maximum" and place your hand flat over it with no consequences whatever--it will not roast your non-ferrous hand! (Nor any rings or bracelets--the units all have sensors that detect how much ferrous metal is in the area that the magnetic field would occupy, and if it isn't at least as much as a small pot, they don't turn on.) And, while an element is actually working, all of its energy goes into the metal cooking vessel right over it--there is none left "floating around" to heat up anything else. (The image at the right shows a hand--wearing a metal ring--harmlessly touching a full-on induction element, while a metal utensil lies equally harmlessly on another, emphatically demonstrating those points.)

Moreover, gas--induction's only real competition--has special risks of its own, not all of which are as well known as they perhaps should be. While the risk of a gas flame, even a pilot light, blowing out and allowing gas to escape into the house is relatively small, it does exist. But a much bigger concern is simply gas itself, even when everything is working "right". Use any web search engine and enter the terms gas health risk cooking and see what you find (really: do try it right here); if, for example, you visit the Gascape web site, you may never again want to even enter a house with gas laid on (take some time to really poke around on this site--you may be shocked). And, of course, all combustion releases toxic carbon monoxide.

Ease and Adaptability of Installation

Unlike most other types of cooking equipment, induction units are typically very thin in the vertical, often requiring not over two inches of depth below the countertop surface. When a cooking area is to be designed to allow wheelchair access, induction makes the matter simple and convenient. (In the image at the left, notice how the induction cooktop is scarcely any thicker than the actual countertop.)

Ubiquity

It is an obvious but still very important fact that induction cookers are powered by electricity. Not every home actually has a gas pipeline available to it--for many, the only "gas" option is propane, with the corollary (and ugly, space-taking, potentially hazardous) propane tank and regular truck visits. But everyone has clean, silent, ever-present electricity.

Cleanliness

Burning gas has byproducts that are vaporized, but eventually condense on a surface somewhere in the vicinity of the cooktop. Electrical cooking of any kinds eliminates such byproducts.

Unfavorable:

The Cooking Vessels

The most obvious and famous drawback to induction cooking has already been mentioned: it only works with cooking vessels made of magnetic materials. The commonest such materials used for cooking vessels are stainless steel and cast iron. Cookware suited for use with induction cookers, from the extreme high-quality end down to thrift-store modest, is readily available; but if you already have a stock of mostly expensive aluminum or copper or glass or pyrex cookware and little or no cast iron or stainless, you might be up for a cookware investment.

On the other hand, if you have a significant quantity of non-ferrous cookware that is not terribly expensive, you can replace it--possibly with much better stuff!--as part of the process; cast iron is by no means "spendy" cookware. If you have ever seen the inside of a real restaurant kitchen, you will surely have noticed that most or all of the cookware is either cast iron or nice, shiny stainless steel (and most restaurants still use gas because the energy cost--which matters to them as it does not to a residential kitchen, because it's on all day long--is lower). Steel is most cooks' preferred cookware material for many good reasons we discuss elsewhere on this site (see the link below--and recall that enamelled steel cookware also works beautifully on induction.

(Note that not all stainless-steel cookware works equally well on induction units; much depends on how the maker has assembled the layers of metal of which the pot or pan is made. Do not assume that all cookware labelled "stainless steel" will work on an induction unit--but almost all makers whose products do work, which includes a lot, will proudly say so in their advertising material or specifications.)

As we noted elsewhere, technology to allow use of any metal cookware--even copper and aluminum--is in the pipeline, but there are definite problems with getting sufficient power levels with that technique, so it will likely be many years before units with it start showing up in the mainstream (if they ever do). So, for now, the need for ferric cookware does remain.

(To see what constitutes good cookware for induction, see our page on Induction Cookware.)

Inadequate Power?

This is not a valid negative--but we list and discuss it here because there are so many falsehoods and misunderstandings floating around on this matter. As we clearly showed, with hard numbers, induction cooking units are every bit as powerful, and often more powerful, than gas units. To recap, a top-line "semi-professional" home gas range for serious cooks might have burners each rated at 15,000 BUT an hour--but that is only about 2 kW for an induction element. As you will see elsewhere on this site, many modern induction units have capacities well above that number (some have up to 3.5 kW). Any concern over the adequacy of the "cooking power" of induction units is simply silly.

Radiation Hazards?

(Owing to the length of quoted material involved in our discussion, we have put this topic on a page of its own; but we do not think it an issue, even for those with imbedded cardiac devices--still, read about it.)

Noise

Induction itself is a noiseless process. The energy fields are, however, generated by electronic equipment; if the maker is putting a fair amount of power in a small space, it may thus be necessary to include a small fan to move cooling air over that electronics. In some cases, the fan may make more noise than some people will be comfortable with. (That seems more likely for small freestanding countertop units than build-in cooktops, but that is by no means a set rule.) Regrettably, there are no data whatever available about unit noise levels, so if you are concerned about this issue, you need to actually see (well, hear) a unit in operation--either that, or be sure you can return a unit for full credit if it is too noisy for you. Indeed, most noise isues associated with induction cooking--and again, we emphasize that this is an over-worked issue--typically derive from not from the units themselves certain pots and pans that at a strong unit's higher power levels can give off a slight buzz or hum. Again: we do not think this to be a common problem, but it can occur.

Unavailability

Until recently, at least in North America, the remaining drawback to induction cooking was one not inherent in the process, but rather a consequence of the then-present state of the market: that drawback was simple unavailability. (Units have for some time been available from overseas via "self-importing", but few were or are aware of that fact.) In the last year or two, however, availability has boomed. We discuss makers and their units on a separate page of this site, but there is now a real spectrum of available units. Importing, which was always risky (zero warranty, nominally illegal units) and so never advisable, is fortunately now also no longer necessary.

Electricity Failures

If the electricity supply to your home is interrupted, you will be unable to cook; gas supplies can be interrupted, too, but such interruptions are normally somewhat less likely than electricity interruptions. If the electricity where you are frequently goes out for hours at a time, the loss of cooking ability may be an issue for you. Most people living in such circumstances will have provided themselves with a backup, such as a propane-powered emergency generator--but if that's you and you have no backup, factor the matter into your decisions.

No "Char" Flames

For those to whom charring such items as peppers in an open flame is important, the lack of such a flame is a drawback. (It is, of course, one shared with all non-gas cookers.) But nowadays, most good ovens--gas certainly, but probably even electric--can do an acceptable job of charring food.

Neutral Or Hard to Reckon

Energy Costs

Energy-cost differences are hard to reckon because the prices of gas and the price of electricity these days are highly volatile, even relative to one another, and vary considerably from locale to locale even on the same day at the same hour (and, of course, by season, too). But in any event, this is not a really large factor. Let's look at some numbers:

Assume that you are using an induction cooker and have two elements, each 2kW, each running at maximum (a hefty load of heat indeed) for a full hour. At the present U.S.A. national-average electricity cost of about 9.3 cents a kWh, you will have used about 37 cents' worth of energy. To accomplish the same heating with gas, using the efficiency figures we supplied before, you would need to have burned up 28,740 BTU; at the U.S.A. national-average cost of $1.03 a "therm" (100,000 BTU), you'd have burned about 30 cents' worth of energy. The cost difference, in this cost snapshot, and assuming a goodly amount of energy usage, is 7 cents. And that is based on an energy use--a sold hour of two elements at maximum power--that is scarcely representative of every meal a family cooks; a more realistic premise might be, given the cost numbers, about half that usage, or something between 3 and 4 cents a meal.

Granted, pennies here and pennies there can add up--but to what? Even assuming a family that eats in for 3 meals a day every day of the year (not a very realistic assumption), one would be looking at perhaps $38 a year; so, for real life, maybe $30 a year extra, two to three dollars a month. That is just not money worth talking about.

(It may also be worth noting that the relative costs of electricity and gas are quite likely to keep shifting shift in favor of electricity over the years, albeit probably not drastically.)

Purchase Costs

It's hard to say that induction units are "comparable" to gas cookers when their prices start at well over a thousand dollars: nonetheless, we will say it. The reason we do is because one needs to be careful to compare apples to apples, and the conventional 30-inch slide-in kitchen stove is an orange in this analogy. It is not always true that "you get what you pay for", but it is always true that you don't get what you don't pay for. An induction unit is so clearly superior, in so many ways, to any other form of cooking that it is hard to exaggerate the differences. One can say that a Chevy and a Rolls Royce are both "cars"--vehicles that take a given number of passengers from Point A to Point B--but there are valid reasons for the difference in their prices.

Moreover, a cooker--ordinary, fancy gas, induction, whatever--is a very long-term investment. The cost difference between a simple, inexpensive plain kitchen stove and a decent or better induction unit is not much when averaged out over the likely lifetime of such a unit.

More to the point, though, is "apples to apples": if one compares prices for induction units with those of good or better quality gas cookers, they are thoroughly competitive. In very round, rough numbers, one can today get a good-quality, reliable brand-name induction unit for under $1500. (You can also spend much more, but that's another matter that we'll go into elsewhere on this site.) In the May 2005 issue of Consumer Reports, the price for their least-expensive 30-inch electric cooktop (a plain-vanilla "smoothtop" type) was $450; but their preferred model was $700, and the spectrum ranged up to $1300. For 36-inch gas cooktops, their recommended units ran from $650 to $900, and their top-rated pick was $1,400 (and one European-name-brand unit was $1,800). We haven't checked, but doubtless prices for such things are even higher today. So the current prices of induction cooktops are by no means wildly out of line with considerably more ordinary types of cooktops. And, needless to say, the costs of the so-called "semi-professional" or "deluxe" cooking units are far higher.

Vessel Sizes

Cooking vessels at the extremes of size--the very small and the very large--occasionally raise issues. Because the auto-detect feature that all induction units have is meant to assure that things from cooking implements (such as metal tongs or spoons or ladles) to jewelry (rings or bracelets) will not activate an element, the detectors are often set rather conservatively, so much so that on some units very small pots or pans will not be detected. But that is scarcely a major issue: one need only (we speak from extensive experience) set the smaller pot or pan inside a slightly larger one (especially practical as one is rarely if ever seeking really intense heat for anything that would go in such a miniscule pot or pan).

At the other extreme--things like griddles or fish poachers that are well over 12 or 14 inches in at least one dimension--also present issues; but we list this as "neutral" because those issues are not substantively different from induction to, for example, gas. An induction element heats a cooking vessel placed on to the width of the element--just as with, for example, a gas burner. If one places a 12-inch-diameter skillet on a 9-inch induction element, the actual heat generation will take place in a 9-inch-diameter zone in the pan bottom; likewise, if one places the same skillet on a same-size gas burner, so also will the heating be limited to the size of the burner diameter. Heated cookware will do one of two things, depending on its construction (see out page on cookware for more detailed explanations): vessels designed to accomodate rapid changes in cooking temperature, such as clad stainless-steel cookware, will be correspondingly rapid in spreading heat throughout their total cooking area; vessels intended for even-temperature cooking, such as cast iron (enamelled or not), will be slower to achieve temperature equilibrium, but once well heated will hold temperatures pretty even and constant across their total cooking area.

On any cooking technique whatever, heat is only delivered or supplied within the diameter of the zone--gas burner, induction element, heater coil, whatever. Any vessel nontrivially larger than that zone will invariably be a little less hot at the outer edge of the cooking zone. That is a fact of life independent of the cooking technology, and is thus neither a plus nor a minus for induction compared to other methods.

Actually, though, in the present state of the art induction is gaining the clear advantage as "zoneless cook anywhere" induction cooktops--meaning that the entire surface is a cooking "zone"--become more and more prevalent. On such units, an "element" is defined by the size and shape of the cooking vessel placed on the surface: the entire cooktop is underlain by a very large number of small "micro-elements", and those micro-elements lying under a vessel ware what is activated by its presence. Grills, griddles, fish poachers, super-large skillets--all are heated uniformly merely by being placed anythwre on the cooktop. This is not guessing or "futurology": units that actually work that way are to be had right now from well-known makers.

Get Others' Opinions

If you would like to take a current look at what is being said on usenet about induction cooking, here are some direct links. Each will do a realtime Google usenet search for the word induction used in any discussion; the difference between the two is that one will search one set of groups--all those with the word cooking anywhere in their name--and the second another group, all those with the word food anywhere in their name (of course, there will be some overlap between those two sets of results, notably rec.food.cooking):

• "cooking" groups (such as rec.food.cooking, alt.cooking-chat, and alt.creative-cooking)

• "food" groups (such as rec.food.cooking and rec.food.equipment, an especially relevant group)

The searches will present their results in reverse chronological order (newest first). Using these links gives you a set of results over which we have no control at all, so it's as unbiased as it gets (the selection is unbiased: many of the posters will be highly biased one way or another--see the text immediately below for examples of what we mean).

Cracked Pots

No, not the cookware you might use, but the crackpots who post nonsense about subjects about which it is manifest that they are sorely uninformed, thus creating false worries in the minds of those who expect authoritative-sounding posts to actually be authoritative. As some wit once remarked, "There is no harm in being a fool; harm lies in being a fool at the top of your lungs." And the internet, whether the web or usenet, is chock full of cracked pots apparently willing to be fools at the tops of their lungs about induction cooking and induction equipment.

We used to have here a little selection of cracked-pot postings, with our explanatory comments appended, but there's really little point to it now. Once, when so little was generally known about induction in North America, cracked pots could get away with posting ignorant (and usually snotty) nonsenses about the inferiority of induction and the supposed vast superiority of gas--but those days are gone now.

Not that there aren't likely to still be a lot of cracked pots out there--this is the human race we're talking about--but hard, factual data is now readily adduced. One could, for example, if given to being tediously supererogatory, compile a long laundry list of top-rank chefs and restaurants that use, and extravagantly endorse, induction equipment, as a sort of "Take that!" to those who insists that "the pros" use nothing but gas; but there would be no point except to prove a willingness to scan a lot of web pages, because so very many top chefs and restaurants would make that list.

The old guff seemed to be especially based on the purported weakness of induction units beside gas cookers; today, to anyone who can read without moving their lips, that scarcely rises even to the level of being humorous--it's just so silly. Remember:

BTU/hour = kW x 7185

Most household units have at least 2.2 kW elements, and many have 3.2 kW; that is very conservatively equivalent, for gas cooking, to 15,800 BTU up to just about 23,000 BTU. That is cooking power, and it's commonplace in home units. Nuff said, hm?

Summing Up

Although this site is about the clear superiority of induction to any other method of cooking, we really have tried to give as balanced a picture as possible. If it seems to you, after reading this page, that we have skewed toward the favorable, that is only because induction really is immensely superior. Its sole consequential drawback is its inability to work with certain kinds of cookware--which is not an inherent flaw, because it works with the very best--but which can be a drawback is you are at present heavily invested in incompatible cookware. (The easiest test in the world is to take any magnet--a refrigerator-decor type works fine--and see if it will cling to the bottom of a piece of cookware. If it doesn't, or if it clings very weakly, that item of cookware will not work on an induction cooker. If you're shopping for cookware that you want to be able to use on an induction unit, now or in the future, just take such a magnet along with you. Or, if you're buying off the web, make sure the product description says the item is induction-compatible, or ask for a written or emailed statement that it is, with full refund privileges.)

(And don't forget to see our page on Induction Cookware.)

You can now explore the rest of this site as you please, but if you want to jump straight to some hard data on real induction-cooking units, the logical next stop is our page on Induction-Cooking Manufacturers and Their Products.