I have cooked on gas, induction, infrared and the old style resistive elements. Currently I have a Wolf duel fuel range which is one of the best you can buy in the U.S. and I love it.
I’ll just come out and say it…
Gas has seen its day. I say that as a current gas cook top user.
A good quality induction cook top is fantastic. It gets a lot hotter faster than gas while also simmering better. Responsiveness is off the charts too, depending on how heavy your cookware is, which is gas’s major advantage over older electric cook tops. The only issue I personally have with induction is that cheaper units make a weird buzzing noise with some cookware and settings. I did get to cook on a Viking induction cook top a few times and did not notice that issue.
I switched from gas to a 200v induction cooktop and I don’t think I would go back. Quality definitely matters. I have a cassette gas stove for power outages or if I have something that absolutely must use gas (so far, it’s never been pulled out).
A I understand it the temperature control with an induction stovetop is just as good, if not better than gas. Is that your experience?
It depends on the stove. The gas stoves in my building are much better, but that is because this place is ancient and the electric cooktops in question are whatever crap they find secondhand.
Depends on the quality of the stove. The bad ones regulate like most resistive glass ceramic stoves in on/off pulses, which is fine for ceramic because the thermal capacity smoothes everything. I’ve got a mobile induction plate like that tho and it is absolutely horrible to work with.
My decent quality stove top goes from just hand warm (keep warm function) to the fires of mount doom (power function for boiling water) in 17 silky smooth steps. On top of the pulses there is some power regulation as well (you can hear the coil hum change depending on power).
Having a gas stove certainly came in handy when we’ve had blackouts.
Electricity is expensive in my state but gas is relatively cheap.
get a camping stove for those occasions. I was worried about the same, that’s what I did.
I’d rather have health than maybe marginally better cooking experiences
It’s not marginally. It’s a superior all issues aside.
Gas? What are you talking about?
Staying indoors during rain can dramatically cut wetness.
real men use diesel stoves
I just keep a lump of sub-critical plutonium in the kitchen.
Gas stoves have a place, and I’m not about to take away anyone’s choice on the matter. With all that being said, to the title of this article, I say “duh”… Honestly, who thought that cooking using an open flame inside your home was somehow safer than the alternative?
I use electric, I’ve pretty much always used electric. I will continue to use some form of electric stove. I want to have complete control over the heat going into my cookware, and while it may not be as flashy or as quick to use electric, I can’t see any situation where electric would not be safer.
A quality electric makes a big difference fwiw. I’ve gone through several types depending on where I lived. I gotta admit that gas is my favorite to cook on. Just so many ways to control heat, where the heat is, and how quickly the heat can be changed. Most electric cooktops and ovens are shit unless you buy an upper tier brand, and even then heating a big coil under a glass top is inefficient AF.
Just switched to induction. While not the same as gas, and it does have a few peculiarities, it is by far better than standard electric cooktops. Way fast, more efficient, easy. These need to come down in price to help win over people used to gas.
I have found gas consistently shit for cooking at low temperatures because you can’t turn it down low enough. Minimum power on the lowest ring, nope, still far too hot right in the middle of the pan.
Sounds to me like you need better pans that don’t have paper thin ass bottoms
So put the pan on the edge of the burner…
Now the edge burns instead, while the other side remains cold. How is this helping?
Seems like a pretty shitty gas stove, to be honest.
Guess I was lucky? Our burner had a very low setting, perfect for low heat and reducing things like jams or whatever.
Electric is horrible. It’s either full on or off. No moderation other than time.
Huh, never seen an electric cooker that is full on/off. That sounds terrible.
Yeah, a good number of electrics do that. 100% or 0%, and they pulse between the two.
I think the core thing I have learned is getting a decent gas stove is easy. But it’s real easy to get a shit electric.
I just like being able to put tortillas directly on the flame burner.
I wish someone pointed this out 20 years ago (enough to be heard). I raised two kids with occasional asthma in a house with gas stove, and maybe that could have been different.
I recently converted from gas to induction, and find it a much better cooking appliance in every way. Pans on the stovetop heat up faster than with gas, and I can boil a pot of water faster. The oven has more options and more consistent heating, especially on the broiler.
The only problem was the cost. Way too much money to get a new circuit installed but also the range was double or more what I would have spent on gas. There were very few options at appliance stores, and I never did find one on display, of any brand. In the US, it’s unnecessarily difficult to make this switch.
When I was shopping for one I was told to pay attention to coil sizes. Sure enough experimenting with a large skillet on small coil shows very uneven heating. I did find one or two reasonable priced ranges but with only tiny coils. Even at spending way too much, I only have one coil that works well with 12” skillet or stock pot. I know ikea now sells an induction range for more reasonable price but coil size is critical and the first thing I’d look at
Having a proper exhaust hood that sucks air outside mitigates this to a huge degree, but a lot of us have hoods that “filter” the air through nothing and then shoot it up towards the ceiling.
The flippers who did my house disconnected the outside air vent, I’m still pissed and mean to get it fixed, cause I can’t afford an induction range either.
If you think you can’t afford an induction range, you also can’t afford to hire contractors to have your new ductwork put in and/or unborked.
Much as I hate to recommend Frigidaire for various reasons, the FCFI3083AS is I think the most economical freestanding 30" induction range on the market at the moment and has an MSRP of $1099. You can probably score one from some discount or independent appliance retailers (i.e. not Home Depot, Lowes, or Best Buy) for a little under a thousand.
As a taller guy who wears glasses, I’ve had the horrible experience of some of these filters blowing greasy air in my face and settling on my glasses. Not pleasant
Mine has a vent, but no hood so there’s only so much it can do. And the way they built out the kitchen means there’s no good way to install a hood without remodelling.
But now I don’t care as much. The current vent (and window) is good enough for induction
A lot of us
Everyone I know has a microwave. Is that a class thing?
It’s a failure to read the manual thing. Every OTR microwave ever manufactured functions as a hood by definition, and basically all of them (I can only think of like two exceptions) have the option to be configured for either recirculation or to duct outside. It’s just that most models come out of the box already configured for recirculation and most people ('s contractors) are so averse to reading that they fail to realize you can flip the blower motor over and thus cause it to actually accomplish something (provided a duct is in place) rather than just blowing stale air back in your face.
The ducting behind a microwave is not that common in my experience. It makes sense for microwaves to come preconfigured to recirculate instead of trying to exhaust to a sheet of drywall because most people are going to install it how it comes out of the box. I’ve installed dozens of microwaves and only twice has ducting existed to flip the venting for. Higher end houses typically have dedicated exhaust fans and lower end houses never seem to have ducting for a microwave. I installed a dedicated fan that exhausts out the roof at my house. Even with ducting those microwave exhaust fans barely provide anything of value. I’m sure my experience is very regional but it seems like a really niche middle ground where someone would bother venting out of the kitchen but also not care enough to have a purpose built exhaust fan.
Part of the problem there is I have guys just absolutely insist at me that a microwave “can’t” be vented outside so they don’t bother to install a duct, and tell me that in order to vent outside you “have” to get a hood instead. This is obviously bogus.
This also leads to the inevitable Contractor Special where a duct was there, often when the user is replacing an old hood with a microwave, but the installer just shrugs and slaps the microwave on the wall as-is where A) it is inevitably too tall and now way too close to the stovetop, and B) covering the duct outlet while still recirculating back into the room. Whenever I unearth one of these in my travels it makes me want to track down whoever the hell installed it and then punch them so hard they come clean out of their socks.
People are for some reason hyperfixated on getting appliances off of their countertops, which is why the over-the-range microwaves became so prevalent in the first place. (And then they all immediately filled the spot where their countertop microwave used to be with a countertop air fryer instead, but that’s a whole different discussion.)
Yeah that would drive me insane to run across. It’s not even particularly hard to tell that the exhaust fan motor is reversible just by looking at the top/back of the microwave before it is installed. Every one I’ve seen looks pretty damn modular in comparison to the rest of the microwave shell.
Edit: reversible is the wrong word, able to be unscrewed and rotated, I’m sure you know what I meant but on a reread of my comment I wanted to clarify.
I have gas and would fight anyone who tries to tell me otherwise. I rented a place with an induction range and now I want one so bad.
I had gas stoves my whole life until about 5 years ago I when I moved into this home I live in now that doesn’t have gas lines in the neighborhood. I have a glass top electric stove, not induction and after about a week of adjustment it suits my purposes just fine and I got used to it and it wasn’t a big deal at all. I cook pretty much every meal my family and I eat at home too with 0 issues.
you don’t say, captain obvious is on it again today
but i guess it’s nice that we now have quantitative data on it
Growing up we usedgas. Mother’s home (not our childhood home) also has gas. I’m in a home that is wired for either but had electric when I moved in. We had to replace the stove and I choose to keep it electric which surprised my mom. “But gas baking is so much nicer!” And no it’s not. Electric interior was much easier and nicer to use. But she didn’t bake much so lol.
gas baking is so much nicer!
This is odd to me, as someone who has owned both gas and electric. Baking is pretty comparable between the two. Preheat oven, put in item for amount of time. Though, our gas oven’s exhaust would really heat up the kitchen, which was not so great in the summer.
Usually when people praise gas it’s about stovetop performance. As gas instantly changes temperature and lets you use things like woks. I have also heard people praise them for working in power outages just fine.
The glass top electrics are so damn easy to clean though. That alone has made them the winner for me. On the other side, every exposed coil electric I have used sucked ass and I would pick a gas well before I pick one of those.
Indeed, we’re going with an induction stove top and a speed oven. Adios gas!
Cheap 90s era induction stoves in apartments that are still kicking give induction a bad name. New ones are the closest thing you can get to temperature control and speed of a full burner stove. My ideal would be an induction stove with one zone rounded for a round bottom wok. For a home kitchen, it’s the best choice because you’re not going to get the amazing jet burner stoves you get in commercial kitchens
