Cooking With Magnets: An Intro To Induction
Induction stoves may be making their way into restaurant kitchens, but for home cooks they’re still a mystery. Fortunately, Wired product editor (and food geek) Mark McClusky volunteered to enlighten us:
It took me nearly an entire evening in the the kitchen at Alinea before I realised what was weird about it. Sure, there’s the stunning intensity of the chefs as they prepare Grant Achatz’ intricate dishes, and the nearly-operating room level of cleanliness. But that’s not what struck me one night at the end of service. What struck me is that I didn’t know where the stove was.
You see, in most restaurant kitchens—like most home kitchens—the stove is the focal point of the room, the place that all the action revolves around. If you’re running the sauté station in most big restaurants, you’re the man, the line cook who’s banging out the most food in the hottest, most extreme environment. You’re the alpha cook.
Not so at Alinea. Of course there’s a stove, but it’s much smaller than you’d expect for a kitchen that puts out a couple of thousand plates a night, just four burners and a flat top. Instead, the chefs at Alinea do the vast majority of their cooking using induction burners, portable ones from CookTek.
Induction is just plain cool. Instead of using a flame like gas, or radiant heat like standard electric burners, induction burners use a magnetic field. The field creates heat through the property outlined in Joule’s first law—you do remember your thermodynamics, right?—in which current passing through conductive material generates heat.
So what? Well, a couple of things. First, induction is super-efficient. Induction burners convert about 85 per cent of the energy you pour into them into heat, compared to about 70 per cent for electric burners and 40 per cent for gas. That means you’ll spend less to cook on induction.
And since the burner itself doesn’t create heat, it stays cool to the touch—take the pan off, and you can put your palm on it. That also means that they don’t throw off ambient heat like gas or electric, so the kitchen stays much cooler.
Then, there’s the responsiveness of induction. Like gas, when you turn it off, there’s no residual heat from the burner, just the pan. Plus, there’s the flexibility of portable burners like Alinea uses. Frying something smelly? Got an outdoor power outlet? Set up a portable burner, and you can keep the stink out of your house. Want to keep soup warm at a party? Throw a burner on the buffet, and you’re good to go.
The one thing to keep in mind is that your pans do have to be magnetic. That might be a pain in the arse, especially if you’re hip deep in anodized aluminium pots. But the good news is that some of the cheapest (and most fun to use) cookware around—cast iron—works amazingly on induction burners, as will all your fancy pots as long as they’ve got some stainless steel kicking around in them. If in doubt, grab a magnet from your fridge door to check.
As far as specific models to check out, Circulon makes a nice burner, and Spanish appliance giant Fagor has one. For the best combo of power and price, check out the Max Burton 6000, which puts out 1800 watts for just $US125 retail.
That’s how to cook like they do at the best restaurant in America. Or, really, it’s how to cook with the same methods. The talent is up to you.
Mark McClusky is products editor at Wired magazine, and one of the authors of the Alinea book. You can follow him on Twitter @markmcc. Also check out his Wired special: The Future of Food.
Taste Test is our week-long tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.
Top image found UNCREDITED at Titanium Elite, Green By Design and This Old House; most likely a promotional image for Sauter cooktops.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
How is this not an add? :/
‘Induction burners convert about 85 per cent of the energy you pour into them into heat, compared to about 70 per cent for electric burners and 40 per cent for gas. That means you’ll spend less to cook on induction.’
– Yes, less compared to electric burners, not less compared to gas! It does not take into account the issues of how that electricity is generated and the loss of energy there. Poorly written or deliberately misleading.
Also if it is an add and money has changed hands but you have failed to inform us of this fact then the .au part of this site is in breach of the Australian Advertising Standards Act.
Are you guys for real?
Induction cooking is hardly new. Mainstream cookware brands have been selling them for years. One quick Google found an article from July 2003 (that would be over 6 years ago) from CHOICE Magazine Australia comparing induction cooktops back then. Even that article said back then “Induction cooktops have been relatively common overseas for years…”.
See for yourself: http://tinyurl.com/lhyqqx
I must have been mistaken – I thought Gizmodo was about the latest stuff.
Damocles is hanging waiting to land.
I have gas. Love it.
Hey look! Another stupid comment that talks about articles being ads!
Anyone who has used induction cooking knows that what the article says is correct – it’s clearly the way to go. And that was without the article talking about other really good stuff like highly accurate & repeatable temperature control, etc.
I didn’t say it wasn’t it wasn’t ‘the way to go’, I didn’t say it wasn’t useful for precise temp control. Its a good point and should have been in the original article.
But to claim that this ‘means you’ll spend less to cook on induction’ is at best an unqualified statement (electricity from coal being at best 43% efficient)and at worst potentially deliberately misleading one.
And since I have come to expect a high quality of news from Gizmodo, leads me to think that this particular article does not fit.
And if anyone in the cooking appliance industry had half a brain they’d know you can have inductive appliances that heat non ferrous cookware.
Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to melt aluminium, bronze, or zinc in my induction furnace. In a clay-graphite crucible.