Hey, so really I just want this to serve as food for thought. On that note, _only 38%_ of US households have gas stoves. The majority are using conventional electric *right now* and somehow life goes on! Still, you may very well have reasons to prefer gas cooking - and until quite recently, I did, too! But after a more honest assessment where I added up all the quality-of-life disadvantages from cooking with gas, I'm over it. Oh and, fun fact, right after I finished editing this I used my big 12 inch skillet on that big burner to fry up some vegetables and it went *so much faster* than it ever has with the gas stove! It definitely _feels_ like it's taking a while to heat up but that's mostly in our heads. In fact, using an IR thermometer, that pan got to 280°F (137°C) surface temperature in 60 seconds on a stone-cold burner. Doesn't seem slow to me!
Electric kettle at home is so much faster than the gas stove Kettle that I never use my gas stove kettle anymore, even tho its twice as big, I can heat up all the electric one so quickly that's pointless to worry about the bigger one
My big thing about the whole "gas is better" argument is that it's never been backed up by studies, it's been backed up by commercials from the natural gas and oil companies! Thank you for consistently showing us with measurements how things work and are, I loved your heat pump and regular space heater videos as well, very evidence based approach. Thank you!
@@KoroWerks if the electricity comes from burning fossil fuel in power plants, it is better just to burn the fuel in your own kitchen. power plants are inefficient, often 30% and below.
@@sleeptyper feels like reddit now. I watched this entire thing at 1.5 speed while cooking, eating and doing the dishes. Have a gas stove. No ventilation. Was waiting to drop dead any second. Luckily survived.
When we remodeled our kitchen, we were dead set on gas but decided last minute to go with induction. Love that the induction cooktop doesn't heat up the entire kitchen and it's also a lot safer with kids.
@@jmdavison62 One cooking channel expressed disappointment that the induction heated area was smaller than the pan bottom, so a skillet full of things being browned do not brown evenly.
Ok, I finally built up the resolve to watch an hour long video about gas vs electric stoves. It went by a lot faster than I expected! I am genuinely surprised by the results, as I too thought that old-school electric was (much) slower. However I've also had a gas stove in every house we've rented or owned for the last 15 years, so it's been a while since I used electric. We recently removed an old (but good quality) gas stove and replaced it with induction, and there is no way I would ever want to go back to gas. Induction is so much better in every way, especially with respect to the cookware not being too hot to touch! I can't believe what a difference it makes! We also have some spatulas and other various plastic kitchen accessories that have burn marks or have partially melted because someone left them too close to the gas stovetop. That never happens anymore! Plus, of course, the indoor air quality. It's very clear to see that induction is the future. It really is the best in every category. There's just one thing I hate: capacitive buttons. Is it too much to ask for a hob with physical knobs (like a gas or traditional electric) instead of capacitive buttons?! I hate it when I accidentally spill some water over the button area and the whole thing freaks out until it's dry. I tried to find a decent induction stovetop with physical buttons but they're all either very low end models, or very very high end models, and none were in stock anywhere anyhow. So yeah, sorry for the long rant, but long live induction ... just give us physical knobs and buttons.
… this is such a bad misuse of state-actor political, economic, and strategic capital. This is such a misguided adventure. Please please please course-correct.
Interesting to read you here Jason and absolutely agree about the touch controls. There's one more disadvantage with (a lot of) induction hobs from my experience: especially with the larger burners, very often the coils underneath don't cover the full area, but rather consist of one of the same coils from the smaller burners aided by an additional ring around it to cover the outermost diameter. This wouldn't be so much of an issue for traditional ceramic glass cooktops because the radiation spreads the energy quite well and it's slow anyway, but with the direct and responsive nature of induction it actually creates hotter and colder areas on a pan if you are heating it up fast. It's not only annoying for cooking, it can warp your cookware. Temps obviously even out over time but for that you're relying on the internal conductivity of your cookware, partly defeating the point of having a highly responsive hob in the first place. Sounds easy to avoid once you're aware of it, but annoyingly most manufacturers are very secretive about how the coils under each burner are shaped, so you'll only find out once it's installed, you boil some water and wonder why the bubbles at the bottom form rings. Ask me how I know.
Having used gas and electric, I'll give you some general real feelings (yes objective). Grilling on a Gas stove? To me, seems faster... However... Baking in a Gas stove? Absolute crap shoot. First off: I've had the oven NOT IGNITE and I only noticed because I didn't hear the *FWOOSH* If I was less paranoid about Gas, I'd have missed it... This was on a Whirlpool Gold series from 2017. It's not ancient tech, is what I'm trying to say. So, the baking? Amazingly inconsistent. Give me an electric convection oven any day. All day. Hell if I can use my air fryer (fancy talk for small convection oven) I use that. The gas oven has hot spots, depending, and broiling in the gas stove? OMG it's terrible compared to broiling in electric. So those are my... *Sunglasses* hot takes.
FLAWED TEST: There are both different wattages of electric coils 1500 watt (5118 Btu/h) and 2100 watt (7165 Btu/h) are common. And Btu value of Burners 2000 Btu/h (586 watt) to 18000 Btu/h (5275 watt) are common. SO TO HAVE A LEGITAMATE COMPARISON you need to use a Electric Burner and Gas Burner with same energy output. Then also used different Pans that might make a difference in heat performance.
@@pablopicaro7649 Correct! Induction hobs are even higher power, usually around 3.5kW and could require three phase depending on the supply. Of course it all depends on how the energy is transmitted, converted from one form to another and the cumulative losses in the system . It's very difficult to say which is "better" from a green perspective as it depends on how the electricity is generated in the first place, whether it's stored in a battery or capacitor array or generated in real time with transmission line losses. From a thermodynamics perspective the specific heat capacity of methane is high and the enthalpy of combustion for methane means it's very exothermic. I won't get into the partial differential equations but the theoretical value for pure methane is 891 kJ of energy out per mole of gas combusted into H2O and CO2. That's incredibly good, but nobody's kitchen burners are ideal thermodynamic systems nor even close ... especially when the vast majority of the energy expended went straight up through the water and out the top of the uncovered pot.
I'm a professional chef. I have worked at just about every type of restaurant when I was moving up - from sports bar's to high cuisine. I've worked all over the West Coast from San Diego to Portland and Seattle where I now live, and even us pro's are going to induction. They're faster because the magnetic fields heat the pan directly, not the cooktop. It's also safe because it's harder to burn yourself on them and they keep the kitchen *_way_* cooler, which is fantastic in a busy restaurant kitchen, you're also not stuck breathing in filth for a whole shift, and when opening a new place, those shifts can easily last 12 or more hours. If you need an open flame for a particular technique, just use a butane burner, you can get a good one for around 20 bucks.
As you know, in Europe, for some reason, induction stoves have become the norm. To me, the best advantages of induction over hot-electric and gas is that it's ridiculously easy to clean: because the surface never gets hotter than the pot, food does not stick and burn when spilled. Plus, it's quite fast and immediate-reacting to input.
my landlord replaced a broken, cheap electric cooktop with a new, cheap electric cooktop… six months later the hobs are rusted to heck and some of the markings on the knobs are 100% obliterated by light contact and cleaning :/ I want to just get a 1- or 2-place freestanding induction hob
It strongly depends in witch country and what kind of ground you live. Gaspipes is something you just don't see in the mountians(rock). and it depends how you're country makes electric power.
Hello from the Czech Republic. For those of you in the USA, who have little experience with induction cookers, I have two tips for using them: 1) If you place an ordinary paper kitchen towel or any piece of cloth on the induction cooker, and then the pot on top of it, it stops shaking and creating that characteristic hum. The distance between the cooker and the pot can be as little as a few millimeters (1/4 inch), and the induction will work as if the pot were directly on the hob. After all, that plate is made of glass, and it's also not dimensionless 😀 However, if you use high energy, egt. for pan frying, on such a paper towel, it will gradually burn to brown. But it won't ignite. It will just look ugly 😀 2) For the use of pots or other things that are not magnetic, a mat is made for using pots or other things that are not magnetic. Its made of several layers, just like stainless steel induction cookware. The middle layer is plain iron, that's why it works. I have one, and I use it, for example, to heat a terracotta pot. Of course, it will reduce the efficiency a little, but only a little. During the approximately 15 years that I have been using induction, I have naturally replaced the other dishes with ones that suit me. Paradoxically, the best cookware for induction turned out to be "grandmother's" enameled cookware from ordinary "black" deep-drawn sheet metal. It is still produced in the Czech Republic, but I don't want to put a link here so you don't have problems with "advertising". You will certainly find references, and I have no doubt that similar dishes are also produced in the USA. Also ordinary cast iron, also "grandmother's", is very good for induction, but enameled tinware is best. In closing, I will allow myself to wonder about one thing you said. According to you, a single-burner induction cooker costs $3,000 in the US. It costs around 3000 CZK (our currency), in Czechia. But that would mean that when the current exchange rate is CZK to USD, your cooker costs 22.3 times more! 😁
I think that the cost for full range/stove in the US is $3k, not for the single burner portable induction cooktop. That was $60-70 US. I just purchases one at IKEA to use in our RV and I’m really liking it. Thank you for the tip.
Doesn't induction work like a microwave oven? You don't want that radiation shooting out between the stove and the pan, out into the room or in your face. A normal electrick stove is the way to go.
@@knekker1 The technology of a microwave oven and an induction cooker doesn't have much in common. A microwave oven is radiating....well... microwaves that are harmful to living organic material. Whereas an induction cooker creates only a magnetic field that heats up certain metals such as iron in the bottom of your cookware. In principle it works like a wireless charger but at a different frequency and on much higher power. An induction cooker is not dangerous to organic material.
@@knekker1 There's no radiation like you would of like with Chernobyl or nukes. It's just a strong magnetic field that flips the north and south poles, over and over, really fast.
Well, he's done it. We're literally watching water boil. And yet, as always, he manages to make the mundane entertaining and informative. Just how does he do it? :)
Green Energy nonsense will be the downfall of civilisation as we know it i see populations around the world decreasing because of it combined with death from starvation as all the nations try to get more control over the existing populations!
My electric stove goes from 0 to 9 in power level, but if I press the "+"button again, it goes to a "P" setting, which disables the limit that causes it to turn off. It is not a safety risk and is the indicated usage for boiling water. From what I understand, most electric stoves have a similar setting, so I would suggest looking up what yours has to offer in that regard. Thank you for the great content, love your channel. Bye.
the knob on a gas stove is not really a temperature control but a flow control knob. in reference to what you pointed out at 15:28, if you make the flame about half the diameter of the pot you might bet better efficiency. i think the burners are also different sizes as well for this reason. love your channel, wish you the best :)
If the flame is licking the sides of the pot/kettle, you're losing massive amount of energy. In his first test, the lack of steam, in my opinion, indicates he was using too small of a pot.
I was never able to find a satisfactory answer for why steam never showed while the burner was on! This has always been a mystery to me. Thank you for clearing that up.
Alec, I really enjoy your videos. A tight house makes it difficult for ventilation fans to pull air out as very little out door air will be able to replace it. I recommend looking into an HRV or ERV. They connect to the HVAC system and turn on at regular intervals. It pulls air from outside in and pushes the inside air out maintaining a static pressure. The air passes by an heat exchanger to minimize any thermal losses(80%efficient depending on model). It would also make a great future video topic as well.
Thank you for saving me the trouble of typing almost exactly this Lol. But you are entirely correct, fans will have minimal effect in a tight structure. I have been to restaurants where there was inadequate make up air to the point where the kitchen exhaust fans were pulling a vacuum on the building....you could hear air whistling around the doors when they were closed and the pressure difference would take them right out of your hand when you tried to open them.
@@jw8292 Yes! I've been to restaurants where the vacuum created by kitchen exhaust fans was so strong that many people had a pretty hard time actually opening the door to get in. They were all in old, historic buildings where installing proper ventilation can be quite difficult. As an electrical designer I deal with design work for new restaurants from time to time and in new construction commercial kitchens in my area tend to have balanced ventilation systems with HRV, including independent HRV units for kitchen hoods. Those commercial hoods can be pretty interesting, with a system of nozzles and vents that simultaneously supply and exhaust air in and out of the building, creating a sort of draft over the range. Around here new houses usually have an ERV/HRV ventilation as well, due to energy consumption requirements for new and renovated construction. On top of that they tend to be very airtight, therefore ventilation units usually have a "hood" mode for when you cook, which turns off the exhaust fan and leaves supply fan for the entire house to make up for what a typical hood extracts.
This really confirmed what I already thought. I had a gas stove in my first house and the only benefit I could see was the fact that off was truly off. I remember thinking it took forever for water to boil on my gas stove. Since then, I've had 2 different glass tops, one being brand new, and my current one being at least 10 years old and I much prefer the glass tops.
I've always preferred electric stoves, too, as did my mother. I agree the only benefit I see to gas is that off is instantly off, but that can be used to advantage with an electric stove. I turn mine off before my food is finished cooking, and the residual heat is enough to finish cooking it. So that advantage of gas might not really be an advantage.
@@abc-wv4in Also with an electric stove you can just move whatever you're cooking to another burner. That won't work if you're cooking four things simultaneously but really how often are you doing that? And if you are, why do you need to keep it on the burner after its done cooking?
@@snowthearcticfox1is not objectively worse. Gaa has its advantages. The main being that you can use it when there is no power. Abeg the are special cooking methods you can only do with gas especially in Asian cooking. I'm Pro induction but they are edge cases and you can overcome the cons.
We have induction cooktops since ages and I cannot stop raving about them to friends and everybody on the internet :) they don't have the inertia issue, they're much better and safer than ceramic ones. Moving to induction was the same experience for me as putting SSD in my computer the first time.
That's actually a really great comparison! my boot time dropped to about 10 sec on my laptop when I upgraded to a sata SSD. I can boil a quart of water in about 2 min on our induction stove too.
I ordered an induction range last week to replace my ancient resistive coil range, I'm so excited to get it for the responsiveness. I have an "electric compatible" wok and it's alright on my old coils but the lack of responsiveness is the main problem for the kind of food you normally make in a wok
I had 2 Induction rings installed when i was working in a commercial kitchen, i used it for a la carte sauces because it was as flexible as gas in terms of turning it down but as fast as electric in terms of getting things hot from cold and also i didnt burn cream to the gas ring.
Just remember that when ssds first came around they were much smaller in capacity and much higher in cost. Now there much more reasonably priced and have large capacity’s. Will time comes refinement and cost reduction.
My new electric ceramic hob also has that or a similar feature. If you turn it on medium, it will actually turn on high (100%) for a minute or two and then go to medium, so it heats up quite quickly
We had 2 versions of electric radiant and my in-laws have gas. We now have induction and it completely beats any other type of cooktop on heating speed.
Induction sucks. It is just for boiling stuff and can destroy (warp) Carbon Steel and Cast Iron Pans. Induction, electric and similar non-gas burners are much less responsive than gas heat.
Instant Cream of Wheat was my favourite breakfast before heading out to school, especially on cold mornings! My favourite flavour was cinnamon apple. Thanks for the memories!
@@Jablicek think that comes to my mind... How much E85 (etanol /gasoline) can my old car handle, how mush less power does my computer use on energy mode, can I got lower over heat temperature indoor if I decrease temperature during night (heat included in rent) and so on. What is the optimal charging power to not enable heater in my tesla depending on outdoor temperature... 😂
@@nallebrean That actually sounds interesting and you should absolutely contribute to the sum of human knowledge if you can get around to it - it does sound like it would be a grind.
Moved to a house that had an induction stove already installed, it's life changing. Literally boil a pot of water in seconds, and the amount of temperature control you have once you get used to it makes cooking so much easier.
I LOVE my induction cooktop. We took a leap of faith when renovating our kitchen but I'm converted. It's faster, safer, and easier to clean. Kids and pets can't turn it on accidentally, and the surface it cools down almost immediately. Even if I had a lot of expensive pans, the cost of a few new skillets is weighed against the time and energy I save not scrubbing the stove, and how awesome it is to literally make a pasta dinner in 15 minutes start to finish. I read a lot of downsides, but they haven't materialized in three years. Our energy bill didn't shoot up, and I find the cooking experience is great, and I cook a lot. I'll never voluntarily go back to gas or electric.
I have a very old gas stove with no working vent fan above the stove. Plan to replace with an electric version this year. This video was perfect for showing me I won’t be missing much after the switch. Thank you.
Exactly, I always put a lid on the pot if I want a fast bring to boil. Also do not add salt to water. I don't think I have ever had a medium pot of water take more than 5-6 minutes to heat to a boil when cooking on my electric.
Came here to complain about the lid. @@cellgrrl Be aware that salt reduces the boiling point. So basically you should wait for the water to boil to add salt.
@@Agentum13 Salt increases the boiling point of water. But not by much, a teaspoon in a quart/liter probably makes a few hundredths of a degree (choose any temperature standard you want) difference.
Yes, I came here to complain about the lid as well. I learned to do this at an early age because I didn't want my mom glaring at me and telling me to put a lid on it. While it depends on the shape of the pot, the level of the water, and a few other things; I find that it takes about 20% longer to boil water if you don't use a lid.
That's a really amazing observation about the gas exhaust and the condensing steam. I've always lived with electric stoves (aside from one year when I lived in NYC but never had time to cook anyway) so I'd not experienced that phenomenon myself, and I probably wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been pointed out. When I redid my kitchen I was looking for a dual-oven induction stove for the same reasons as you did, but for me the induction cooktop was the more important thing than the second oven, so that took priority. The oven on mine is fast enough with the convection fan that it felt like an okay tradeoff, and if I need a faster compact oven there's always toaster ovens (although that's a whole other product category-based rant for me right now).
Yeah, you can actually get more from using a smaller hob with a higher flame or a same sized hob with a lower flame. the size of the flame should be matched to the size of the pot, or in some cases you should use a flame spreader.
My Breville toaster oven was expensive, but I use it more than my full-sized oven and traditional toaster *combined*, using far less power and generating far less waste heat. It’s not a “smart” appliance, but it is intelligent and consistent. If doing multiple batches of toast or bagels, the second batch will have a shorter cook time, because the oven is still warm from the first batch.
I literally just finished cooking on gas and I saw the steam the same way with gas on/off. And the handles of a the pot with boiling buckwheat weren't too hot. Also he mentioned that the exhaust gas flow is so big, that it prevents smelling the food. Something strange is going on
Fun complication on the "storage drawer vs. second oven" thing is that in some ranges the drawer is for storing pans and in some of them it's a keep-warm drawer for your baked goods and it sounds like the main way to know which you've got is to burn something in the drawer.
Also I think some might put the broiler in that drawer, but it's usually the top of the oven. I suspect gas ranges are more likely to put the broiler below the oven because it simplifies the gas plumbing.
I kept my home server in the drawer - it had its own dedicated 15A circuit on the rangetop, and I figured it would help it survive a fire if one ever happened. My boyfriend turned the oven to 450F for something he was making us for dinner. He thought I played a joke on him and put a hair dryer in the drawer. It was the CPU fan. LOL. So don't put your server in the drawer under the oven. My background is Electrical Engineering, I did not know it was a keep-warm drawer.
@@TheLawrenceWade surely it would be fairly obvious not to put something like a server so close to a massive heating device whether or not the drawer is intended to directly heat something?…
I really enjoy your videos and appreciate the time and effort you put into research and presentation. There are so many topics you have covered that I had very little prior knowledge of, and the way you break things down and present them breaks through my thick skull so that I can understand. I've been hanging on to a gas stove (that was bought used in '83) for all of these years "just in case" we lose power and need to heat with it. Which happens much less frequently in recent decades. If I can manage to run an electric line to the wall the oven is on, it may be time to switch over.
For ventilation you should look into an HRV or ERV, otherwise known as "fresh air systems." They bring in filtered outdoor air and Recover (the R in those acronyms) heat or energy, greatly improving indoor air quality, while exhausting bad air.
I'm actually considering it already - need to do a little more research on what's out there as I have very limited possibilities for where it could go.
@@TechnologyConnextras Check out Matt Risinger's BUILD channel -- he's put out a lot of content around them, including a long form video just a few days ago. 👍
If you have a forced air heating system already, there are some that can be integrated/replaced with such systems. There used to be a little forced air heating spree here in Finland in 1970's and 80's. It was copied from the americas, but eventually replaced by "Vallox kotilämpö" or "Enervent kotilämpö" which use heat pumps and/or ERV instead. If you don't want to use the forced air system, you need to do new ducting with Vallox Bluesky or something similar.
@@shinybaldy I used to pay Risinger for ads. He'll say anything for a free meal and a plane ticket. But - you can find some cool ideas on his channel too. Heat/air recovery systems are absolutely amazing.
After your video about induction, I bought a standalone single-spot induction cooking device thingy with temperature control and timer for 120€. I splurged a little because I wanted all the features. And I can tell you, THIS THING IS F*CKING AMAZING. I often burned food, because I forgot to turn the (electric) stove off, but thanks to the timer, that's a thing of the past. Also, thanks to the temperature control I can now throw all incredients into the pot at once, set temp and time and leave. Even if I forget everything, nothing bad will happen and I'll come back to a hot meal. Frying is also a delight. Instead of waiting an eternity for the oil to boil, it takes like 5s and I can start throwing in the incredients. I once fried frozen fries in 10min. And when I say 10 min, I mean I opened the freezer at 0s and had a meal ready at the 10min mark. You only get that with a blow torch (and a probably broken pan).
I'd recommend better matching your pots to the burner size. The intent is for the burner on an electric stove (and probably gas one too) to heat the base of the pot, not the sides. It wouldn't significantly change the findings, but undersized pots waste energy and end up heating the handles - not ideal from a safety perspective.
@@NicMediaDesign He mentions the upper fields are to keep stuff warm only, though I'm not familiar with this concept of having burners that can't do full power.
I call bs on this vid. Our old house had a newer gas stove and our new house had a brand new electric stove. It didn't take a week for us to notice how much longer cooking took, from cold start to finish with an electric stove. So we bought a gas stove. From a cold start, water and soups took 3min to start boiling with Gas, 4.5min with electric. Bacon would start sizzling in 35sec with Gas, 60sec with electric. This vid 👎
WHOA! WHOA! this vid perpetuates a mistake which apparently the vast majority of gas users make..if you let virtually all the heat escape around the SIDES of the pot, you are, obviously, WASTIING that energy AND in the process, creating much more CO2 and NOx than is needed to do your useful heating. i disagree with Thermal Ions inasmuch as to say, i think using either the right size pot (much wider & shallower) or the right size burner would vastly increase fuel utilization efficiency (but only the wider pot would make your sample boil faster). this mismatch of pot size and burner size is the kind of misunderstanding about energy transfer that gives gas an undeservedly bad name.
"You can just pick it up" is going to be my new electric stove catch phrase lol! Great video as usual!
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The main disadvantage of the induction stove as they are sold here in Belgium is the lack of physical buttons. When the water of the pastas boil over, they go over the touch button that becomes unusable, and thus the cooking is locked in the position it was (usually the maximum position) and I have to remove the pot, clean all the (very hot) water, then I can continue with normal cooking. Note to Bosh and Siemens : I love physical buttons!
Imagine sealing the physical button from boiling hot water. Or oil. And the mess around cleaning all the nooks and crevasses afterwards. With flat, glass touch buttons, you just keep a paper towel nearby (you might already have one over there, it's the kitchen after all) and wipe whatever spills on the surface. Or use a bigger pot for your pasta :)
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@@thegiq if the buttons are on the front of the stove instead of the top, there is no problem. I would even take touch button on the front. Now I googled and found some induction stoves that have front physical buttons at good prices. This is good news. This video and the comments have enlarged my views on the subject, thanks a lot!
Reminds me a bit of this sleekness over usability pest of newer cars stuffing tons of dials, controls and features into a cumbersome and convoluted touchscreen one constantly needs to look at to control, as opposed to some knobs and buttons one can control basically blind.
It's significantly easier to clean a smooth glass top with touch controls. Buttons or dials are a pain to clean around. Maybe don't boil over water so much?
To give it a fairer test against kettles perhaps it would be better to: cover the pot while boiling water, use a little larger pot for the gas burner, and perhaps use a pot without the base for induction (I'm not sure if it insulates a lot, but it is a mediocore pot for the test). Fascinating video as always.
I have a hob with 3 induction and 1 gas burner. I use Induction for almost everything for both speed and controlability. The gas is there for either non flat bottomed pans (wok) or for certain non induction cookware I have (usually some traditional South Asian stuff). The induction beats gas in all other uses, as its faster, and as controllable. My Particular induction hob has some other tricks, like temp set, to allow you to slow cook at 80C, as well as set a temp cutoff so that when the temperature rises above 100C (when the water runs out) it will stop, which is great for cooking rice, or steaming
@@DanielinLaTuna This is why even though I have a gas range as my primary stove, I don't bake during the Summer and I tend to use induction as my cooking method during the warm months. Not having all that waste heat in the kitchen is a godsend.
European here - To be honest, I would go for induction even if that was many times more expensive. It is AWESOME (mainly no inertia = instant response) compared to standard radiant type (had both, even for some time I had combined induction+radiant in the same cooktop). Mine can go to 3.3kW per burner in boost mode. I doubt you will get the same power with plug-in burner you showed.
I'm moving to a house with an electric stove and I have been pretty worried about it. I've never had anything but a gas stove, and I wasn't sure how this new stove was going to work. This video was so helpful, I feel a lot better about it, and I learned a lot about both that I never knew. It made me feel pretty dumb at times that I hadn't already thought about or realized some things but now I'm smarter for it so thanks!
@@krisswolf2011 Having used both the "old school" electric stoves and more modern glass top electric stoves - the old ones I've used put out a ton of heat once they're going, but take aaaaaages to heat up. I think it's just because they have a lot of thermal mass. When comparing boiling water, I'm not sure how they'd compare, but if what you're doing is heating up a pan, frying something for a few minutes and then turn it off, you definitely want the modern ones.
grew up with an electric stove top and as an adult moved into a house with a gas stove and I definitely prefer electric especially just from an ease of cleaning standpoint. it's so easy for food to get into little crevices and if there's ever a spill it's a huge mess. we had a glass electric stovetop and it was so much easier to clean
CLEANING!!!! Dear god I hate our gas stove for this reason above all others. So much effort to clean all the surfaces. It is usually pretty filthy as I have to build up to dealing with cleaning it.
Electric definitely has a lot of advantages. Just...not if you use a lot of pans with small or no flat bottoms. (think a wok for instance) Also if your pans' bottoms aren't properly flat you'll lose quite a bit of efficiency as the heat can't transfer properly. I'm thinking of maybe switching to electric when my current gas stove gives out. But I really like my wok pans... Their shape is just...better for stirring or tossing stuff around imo. The only times I use pans with completely flat bottoms is when I'm making soup or large batches of sauces.
Looking forward to your review/comparison of induction ranges. We have a Samsung induction stove. It took me a few months to finally learn that you must not walk away when you put something on to boil. Whether it's a little pot with just enough water to cover a couple of eggs or a big pot with several cups of liquid, if you don't stand there and watch, it will boil over and make a mess. It's not instantaneous, but it's a lot faster than anything else I've used. It does go from 'almost boiling' to 'boiling furiously' almost instantaneously. Fortunately, if you do make a mess, you can just move the pot and wipe it up right away because it's the pot that gets hot, not the stove top (although it can be warm enough to burn bare skin just from contact with the pot). Now that we're used to it we love using it. Ours has glowing indicators in the stove top that show which elements are on, what they're set at, and which ones have just been on and might still be warm. Also, each "burner" has a ring of blue LEDs under the surface that look like flames to indicate when they're on. It's the range of the future! (As long as you've got suitable cookware.)
As someone who has only lived on my own with an electric cook top and am quite culinarily adventurous I tend to use the whole stove to overcome this. If I have something very temp sensitive or something that boils over easily like rice I will turn on one burner on high to raise the temp and when I see it’s getting close I’ll turn on a second burner to the temp I want and as soon as it boils transfer the pot to the preheated low temp stove.
I was thinking about this(haven’t lived with a gas stove since before I was old enough to cook), but I assumed since no one mentioned it, it wasn’t good to do that for one reason or another(higher electricity usage, thermal shock, some other reason).
My family had a gas stove growing up, and I started using a electric when I went to college. I started cooking things different, and now cook things lower for a longer time. I like the results I get from that, especially with eggs, but that's very hard to pull off with a gas stove. The flames can only go so low.
This is the thing other side was saying. Choice, that is all. I’ve cooked with both and prefer gas with cast iron over a vent hood. The hood takes care of pollutants, which blows my mind that no one covers this aspect. On top of that I’m Mexican and prefer cooking my tortillas over a flame and this video just covers boiling speed as the only metric to cooking. Washington just has a disproportionate amount of a certain demographic who can’t cook for sh*t (I promise you AOC microwaves her tortillas) and pass rules based on their lack of culture. Here’s an easier way to understand the point of a gas stove. Walk in the kitchen to any good restaurant and tell me where the induction/glass stoves are at. Cooking goes way beyond boiling eggs in water 🙄
@@jon07crz as a professional chef, I will say that high end(very expensive) induction stoves are making their way into professional kitchens. However, i have never seen a traditional electric stove in any kitchen i’ve ever worked in, except one where the sole purpose was to keep sauce warm for service.
Regarding power outages: I'm in South Africa and we have load shedding quite often for 2 hours at a time. I have a radiant stove and a single plate plug-in induction cooker, which is what I normally use. When I need it I have a camping gas bottle. Your previous video on CO2 indoors convinced me to not get a gas stove. In our hot climate it's so much better to just use electric appliances just for the raw thermal output into the house.
My condolences regarding the government's dysfunction there, one of the manifestations of which is the power cuts. It is sad to see how dysfunctional the government has been for the past decade and a half.
I live where there are often hurricanes. The single burner induction is helpful when on the generator, and we have a little camp stove too. Lived with the camp stove backup for 40 years, have had to use it up to days, even a week or more at a time. It’s not a big deal. It’s also hot here, gas is the worst. Didn’t realize that until visiting a friend. Omg. So bad. Even with central ac.
Yeah I’ve seen a variation of this comment on several other videos extolling the virtues of gas-stove alternatives. Just be honest with people. Every cooking adjacent YT channel is pushing this now. Don’t burn out your trust budget on unimportant things. Please. Seriously.
@@shawnmllr86 The numbers show that gas stove is the alternative, not the other way around. Basically there's a bunch of money behind advertising gas stoves and they're still at 30% market adoption. I was being honest. It's exactly what happened to me when I bought my place 6 months ago.
I just did your test on my induction stove. At the highest setting (which is time limited), the largest burner boiled 4 quarts of water in 6 minutes and 15 seconds. This is a very cheap model, but it's still vastly superior to every gas and radiant electric stove I've used in my life.
This is consistent with my experience on a 1987 Kenmore induction cooktop. It I make pasta or stew (with about a gallon of water to boil) I set my alarm for 5 minutes and it's usually done a minute or two after I go back to the kitchen. Edit: major caveat in my results: water probably isn't Chicago cold to start with, and I have high quality pots that convert almost all the magnetically induced electricity into heat.
@@filipb100 actually no. The pot has only so much surface area and as mentioned in the video, if you don't want to burn the handle and blast hot air at your hand while stirring, the flame diameter needs to be adjusted same as an electric burner with different diameter sizes. So by sizing it, you get same if not similar results and a more pleasant cooking experience than what Alec described. I know I used to do the same thing as him thinking if I blasted more heat, thing would get hot faster, but the inefficiency plus getting burned is not worth it.
Switch over a year ago to induction and it's amazing how good it is at cooking and not heating up the kitchen. So much time now saved with boiling water and not burning myself. As for power outage issue. Just keep a small propane camping stove around and bam you can cook. Gas ovens the to dry out food as compared to electric.
And the superpower of being able to wipe clean right away when things boil over saves so much scrubbing. The surface is "cool" enough despite boiling water and pasta mere seconds before.
@@AMacProOwner the one we have can measure the pot or pan and automate cooking. It's the best you choose from 1-5, which the manual explains , and it keeps the pan at a perfect temp. So good for fish and eggs!
I got one of the Frigidaire Induction ranges and it absolutely rules. Apart from some quirks it’s the best range I’ve ever used after a life time of gas and a brief time with coil tops.
We had one of the first-generation(?) Frigidaire ones in our last house and absolutely loved it. When we moved late last year and had to get a new stove, we also got a Frigidaire induction model - one of the next-generation ones with touchpads instead of knobs. And frankly we hate it - the touchpad doesn't work well, the oven doesn't have a true "bake" mode (I suspect it has no bottom heating element - on "bake" it just cycles the convection fan on and off). The "auto-sizing" burners don't work right... I could go on and on. We're very disappointed.
The burner cycling on and off like that may be a safety thing to prevent the burner from overheating. May be some combination of the stainless pots reflecting IR back in to the burner, and maybe the pot not being large enough to fully cover (and absorb) all the heat that is being produced. Would be curious to see if that behavior continued with something that fully covered the burner, and was less reflective to IR, something like a large seasoned (not enameled) cast iron pan.
My understanding is that in order to let a large modern electric burner heat up as fast as possible they build them to output so much heat that if it just stayed on it could damage itself and would wear out much faster so they power cycle it so that it can heat up quickly but stays below a safe temperature for its components.
Just warning for anyone. Don't put your cast iron pan on a burner turned to high from cold. Even when full of food it can cause the pan to crack from the thermal stress.
induction gang here, i would be really annoyed to go back to regular electric now because of the slow response time, however i got one of these cooktops with only square zones and they can be a little be a little bit uneven compared to a round zone, but that's my only complaint really, and its not _that_ bad.. we also have a plugin induction cooktop but it's way less powerful (1000W vs 4000W) but also really loud in terms of fan noise, the big cooktop is basically silent.. consistency
We recently replaced our gas range with an Induction range (Beko) prior to installing it my gas range took 6:43 to boil 1 quart of cold tap water, same kettle same 1 quart of tap water the Induction range took 1:56 to full boil.
One thing you didn't mention was HEAT DIFFUSERS! But I like that you mentioned burner sizes/types and power outages. My mom and sister live up north and sometimes have a lot of power outages during the winter. One time they lost power for a week straight. My sister only has an electric stove and my mom has gas, so she was able to do cooking during that time, which was awesome. My mom is 80 and she can't go running around getting hot meals outside the home, but was able to do a lot of cooking and baking (which provided nice warm food and warmed the house a bit more than just the fireplace). A lot of people don't even notice the fact that many gas stoves have varying size burners for different purposes, and pot size matters. I had to nag my girlfriend a few times about her plopping a small kettle on the larger burner and cranking it on the highest setting. She would get frustrated about it boiling slowly and she melted the handle because the flames were all outside the base of the kettle! If the flames are going around it, move it to a smaller burner, turn it down, or use a heat diffuser!
Yes. It bugs me when people don't put a pot or pan that is the proper size on the proper sized "burner". When i put my skillet on the large burner, it fits the burner perfectly and there is no heat loss around it.
Yes, people in freezing areas should have the OPTION of gas stoves. Hot food during a few days without power is a big deal. Personally, some day I'm going to have induction and then for an emergency I'll have propane, either a grill or an outdoor wok burner, whatever. If things get really hairy, then I could also use the propane with an indoor space heater. When it's -20F outside, there comes a time when CO risk isn't your biggest concern.
my sister melted the handle off my mocha pot and almost set my apartment on fire while she was doing a tik tok dance due to putting my tiny single serve mocha pot in the biggest burner at the highest setting. the flames were halfway up the mocha pot
Nah, there's no reason to normalize and continue poisoning the groundwater for mainstream cooking on something that can melt the handle on your cookware and poison the air in your home, directly, year-round, when a backup cook top can be used only in emergencies.
One issue I saw when doing the gas test was that you had the flame WAY too high. Most of the heat was blowing right past the pot. You could have turned the gas down by half with a negligible increase in time to boil; and possibly could have decreased the time. (With the appropriate reduction in emissions.) The flame you had is more appropriate for heating a 12" skillet.
We have induction now, but in our previous apartment we had the same kind of stove as you depict here. I always found it extremely slow to heat and pretty weak in general. Eventually I realised the reason is that instead of true split-phase 240v AC we had two legs of 3-phase power giving us only 208v, which means the stove was actually significantly lower power than it would have been in a house. So this kind of thing might be the reason some people think electric stoves are weak. But now we're in Europe and everything is 240v , which is just awesome.
Standard stoves (and dryers), only have 75% the heat output on 208 compared to 240. Its probably the one weakness of having three phase power in a residential setting, as otherwise three phase power and equipment are normally more efficient and reliable, particularity three phase AC units. This is due to the fact that stoves, while capable of running on 208, are optimized for 240 and not an inherent fault of 208 in of itself. Commercial ovens that are actually designed to run on 208 don't have this problem, but commercial ranges like that are also very expensive, since they are designed for commercial uses in restaurants and the like.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 Just to clarify, our apartment did not have 3 phase power. The building has 3 phase power, but it delivers only 2 phase to each apartment. So 3 phase equipment would not be an option. Again, as you point out, it works fine, but heating appliances are only about three quarters as powerful. FWIW...this probably saves energy too.
@@DanielBrotherston this is the largest reason why a wholescale switch to electric is a non starter. Most places only have 1 maybe 2 240v wall connections (in the residential area) 120v is fine to operate a gas valve and can be run anywhere. Adding a new 240v run to every kitchin is going to be a royal pain.
@@PhantomDragonX Few homes have unused 240v connections (I don't know where you get 1 or 2 connections). But converting to electric isn't a non-starter. Installing an electrical connection will be 500-1000 dollars depending on the specific conditions. This is not an unreasonable investment when we are talking about a 1500-2000 dollar appliance that will be used for 20 or more years. In older buildings where the electrical supply is insufficient to supply electric stoves (some older apartments may only have 40 or 60 amp service) this can be a problem, but it's yet another advantage of induction. My induction cooktop has 1.5 and 2 kW burners. Because they heat the cookware directly they are far more efficient than even electric resistance stoves so they don't require as much energy. A cooktop with 2 2kW and 2 1.5kW burners could be supplied by a 60 amp service.
Interesting video. The results were surprising. I've used both gas and electric. As a renter, I just adapt to what is available. I would like to point out there are heat vents on both gas and electric ovens. The vent pipe is generally under one of the back burners.
Yeah, if you really need to quickly change heat on a pan, pick it up and move it off the burner, stir it, etc. "Remove from heat." This is what I saw some professional chefs do (on professional gas stoves) and recommend over the years, so I tried it, and it works well for me (with all kinds of stoves) though I often use cast iron cookware so there's plenty of "thermal inertia" just in that.
I push mine to the back burner that is still ice cold :) That pretty much stops whatever is going on in the pan or pot. :) Just push it off the hot element and it's fine. Hearing that people have all kind of trouble adjusting to cooking on electric is so weird to me. I've use both and I never noticed any differences in how I used them. Maybe in my brain it just came natural to watch over what I'm doing carefully.
Old electric stoves had so much thermal inertia themselves that their response was slow. People then got a) used to gas and b) conditioned that gas was “better”.
@@superslammer Not a bright idea. For safety reasons one should always use the plates in the back first and only if those are not sufficient go for those in the front.
@@Theo_Caro You are less likely to knock over your pot and spill it all over yourself. Personally, I just make sure to always turn the handles inwards. But using the back burners is, for sure, an added later of security. Ive seen people use the front burners with the handles pointing straight out. Fucking. Idiots. And I've seen the consequences. My little cousin recieved extensive burns on his face, neck, and torso because his parents were idiots and when he was 2 he reached up and grabbed the handle of a boiling out of water. I can't even count the number of reconstructive surgeries that poor child had to go through. Stay safe. ☺️
50:30 or so: Simmer isn't an issue, but one thing that is an issue on my (actually) traditional style electric stove top (the one with big ol' lumps of good ol' IRON on it), is that there are 6 settings for power, 3 doesn't fry stuff properly and 4 eventually gets too hot, so I have to bounce between them. Especially noticeable when making something like pancakes etc.
that moment actually reminded me of those old stoves. I haven't seen one without infinitely adjustable dials that was younger then I; And *my* kids are about to the age where I'll be getting a grandbaby soon. But then, I don't make a habit of wandering in other peoples homes
It sounds like your problem is you have a particularly shitty stove. They usually have an analog control with far more settings than that. I have had a similar style stove in my last several places I've lived and I have fine control over temperature and things like pancakes are no problem.
@@manitoba-op4jx analog controls are literally cheaper with modern components. Poitmeters are just dirt cheap and analog, and point to point control requires making application specific switches that cost thousands just for the molds. They where great in the days of hand wired control boards terrible in the days of circuit boards and cheap ASICS. Odds are the stoves you've seen while shopping have tactile clicks on an analog dial for sight free control. Id find it very hard to believe any modern manufacturer has discreet settings on thier dials.
It's been my personal experience that induction can rival gas for responsiveness. My preference is definitely for induction over other electrics, over gas. I am speaking as an Australian living in Queensland if electricity/gas supply or particulars of different models make much difference.
It definitely can, but you need to be careful that the element is big enough for your pans, and that your pan has a large enough sensitive area to induction. Improperly sized either way can cause very uneven heating patterns in the pan, which is horrible for cooking. Cheaper induction stoves often have smaller burners, which limits you to smaller pans for many applications.
In the ‘Kettle, gas stove’ section of the video, I was initially surprised to see the CO2 readings go down, but then it occurred to me that the convection of the burning gas around the kettle sending it upwards would draw in ‘cleaner’ air from the surrounding volume of air in the kitchen towards the burner (right past the CO2 meter), and the CO2 meter would effectively be sampling the cleanest possible air. It’s visually great to see the CO2 meter in real time, but I suspect that placing it in the center of the room might provide a more valid result.
Another quiet interesting and informative video by you. From my POV here in Germany it is very funny to hear how controversial the gas - radiant/resistive - induction topic is discussed. When the gas and the electricity costs you an arm and a leg, your priority lies on efficiency. So as we build our house gas wasn't an option, we bought the newly introduced fancy ceramic cooktop for our kitchen. Now we are planning to change it to an induction one, even with some problems you mentioned about your kitchen ware. But our high energy prices (they even were that way before the war in Ukraine) force you to set other priorities. 😒
Yeah. Here in the US gas was once a lot cheaper in many places than electricity, so there was that complication. But nowadays, gas is largely obsolete for most cooking purposes. But the culture has not fully caught up to it.
I call bs. Our old house had a new gas stove and our new house had a new electric stove. It didn't take a week for us to notice how much longer cooking took from cold start to finish with an electric stove. So we bought a gas stove. From a cold start, water and soups took 3min to start boiling with Gas, 4.5min with electric. Bacon would start sizzling in 35sec with Gas, 60sec with electric. This vid 👎
unfortunately it's really expensive to be poor in the US compared to other places I think even. people in the US have high energy prices as well. The problem is none of us have enough money to go buy an induction cooktop
Here in Austria almost everybody has an electric stove and we people just pull the pot off the hot plate on a cold one if things get too much heat. We do that without thinking, we are used to that high thermal capacity of the plates. So as you said, this is definitely something you can learn and I think you can get used to that quite quickly. However, I have to admit that I also burn my food sometimes when I do not react fast enough or when all plates of the stove are used.
This is so critical! People in the US tend to consider gas stoves as the gold standard for cooking if you consider yourself a skilled home cook. But my opinion is that they feel this way because the cooking techniques they’re using are tailored for gas stoves. I haven’t used a gas stove since I was a teenager living at home, so my adult cooking skills are adapted for standard electric ranges (most rentals here seem to have electric, and I opted for electric in my home now), and I do just fine. The argument for gas stoves tends to lean toward “it’s just better for cooking” which is bonkers to me because it’s the human doing the cooking , the stove just provides the heat source. Heat is heat. If you can heat it up you can cook on it, you just have to work out how.
I either have lighter pans that I can easily lift off the electric element to immediately cut the heat source, or heavy bottomed ones that have their own significant thermal mass anyways. Move them to an unused element if I actually want to drop the heat, or just wait half a minute for the electric element to equalize to the lower desired level.
I smiled as I watched your latest video. I went through much the same discovery about electric stoves, after having a gas stove for 20 years and then going back to electric after moving to a different home. I also found that electric can be about as fast, or in some cases equal to a gas burner with much less heat going into the surrounding air (kitchen) along with the combustion gas by products. I also purchased a portable induction burner to try that out as well. They are fast and efficient, with even less heat going into the surrounding air. I am on the fence about possibly changing out my conventional (coil) burner electric for an induction range at some point in the future, due to similar concerns about longevity issues and their high cost for a relatively small efficiency upgrade (I've read between 10-20%). So, bottom line, I came to the same conclusions you had. : ) Great video, keep up the good work.
This is a long (but hopefully worthwhile) one: I’ve always loved your videos and your analysis, and this video is no exception. However, as someone who grew up with gas stoves and uses them for various types of cooking, I feel the need to bring up some major points. The main issue I find with your execution was the gas power level being used for the size of cookware. It looked like the flame extended to the very edge of the cookware, which is not the optimal way to heat using gas. Ideally, the flame would extend to only a bit before the edge, say 3/4” to 1” radially inward. This is because very little heat is generated from the “root” of the flame as it travels laterally due to the pressure of the gas, so the center of the pot is not being heated until you get closer to where the flame bends upward (it may appear to be heating from the center since the pot’s base distributes the heat to an extent). If you instead drop the power so the flame ends well before the edge, not only is the hottest part of the flame more central radially around the pot so the base can distribute heat more evenly, you also recover the exhaust heat as it cools and continues to move out from under the pot’s base (which is more effective than attempting to recover this waste heat along the vertical sides of the pot, which only burns your hands). To me, the concept is similar to that of an auxiliary low-pressure steam generator to recover the remaining thermal (and potential) energy from a primary high-pressure boiler’s output. For a stove, the result is a much more efficient process, and many of the other drawbacks you mentioned--burning hands and handle, high gaseous velocities so you can’t smell your food, super hot exhaust resulting in no apparent steam--are greatly minimized if not eliminated. Now, clearly there’s an optimum flame size and it takes some experience given your cookware and stove, but at least time isn’t the factor here like calibrating your brain for the thermal inertia factor of electric stoves (more on that later!). And this effect is reduced even further if you use an open burner (I don’t since they’re rare) which has flames spread evenly throughout the base, thus requiring even lower power settings and thus more efficient cooking. The biggest issue with closed burner gas stoves is that the only heating happens at the “fire ring” and further outward; open burners essentially overcome this by heating the base more evenly, closer to that of an almost-perfectly uniform electric stove. The other large factor you mentioned was CO2 output. Your range hood may not be great, but it’s even worse when you have a well-sealed house with very little inlet air available. I was taught from a very young age to turn on the fan and also crack a window to allow air to enter the room to ensure good circulation. This was in a moderately-sealed relatively large house, but now I live in an EPA-dream sealed apartment and you can really notice when a window is open vs not. This isn’t something that should be done just for gas cooking (although gas necessitates it); any cooking releases particulate matter that will make your home smelly and greasy over time without proper ventilation. Of course, power control is the best way to prevent oil splatter and smoke, but that’s another personal issue. Some other issues you mentioned: thermal inertia. It’s not hard to train yourself to recognize the signs of about-to-boil liquid. But many types of cooking--not even just ethnic foods--require precise modulation of temperature. For example, when browning or searing meats (especially delicate ones like thin cuts or fish), the only indication you have of doneness is the color, and that can come down to the seconds. Training yourself to know how close-to-done you are for a variety of the things you cook sounds like a tremendous waste of food at best and an impossible endeavor at worst. Another interesting consideration: power loss. When we moved across the county when I was young, we had a power outage nearly once per month despite the location still being relatively suburban. So while the washer and dryer and electric oven quit and the computer’s UPS beeped relentlessly, Mom was always able to get some food on the table for dinner with our gas stove. Some newer “smart” (dumb) gas stoves may not work without power, and lighting a gas stove with a match maybe isn’t the safest thing in the world (for some more than others), but at least if you did use a generator, the load would be marginal, and you could definitely get away with a portable generator. Compare this to an electric stove where even whole-home generators would suffer a greatly reduced capacity by powering an electric stove, if the capacity allows it to power the stove at all. Another small issue: using the cooktop to put things. Yeah, the grating on the gas stove isn’t ideal, but I do it all the time anyways even though I probably shouldn’t. Plus, it’s probably not the best idea to put things on the cooktop in the first place since somebody could mistakenly turn it on. The last issue is cleaning: ok you got me on this one, cleaning a gas stove sucks and a glass cooktop would be the dream. However, electric coil stoves are arguably even worse that gas stoves (especially since food is more likely to make a mess due to the whole thermal inertia issue). And if you cook complex dishes or multiple at a time, you don’t want to be bothered with wiping a hot glass cooktop between using different pots if something spilled a little from one (or risk a more painful cleanup later). And just for icing on the cake, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss and analyze the technical and practical considerations of the gas vs electric conundrum. The main issue is when politicians tell you what you can or cannot do based on their ill-informed interpretation and personal agendas. I could get into why NYC’s ban on gas appliances starting next year is ludicrous considering all the other pollutants I breathe in this city, or why the indoor air quality isn’t even as big of an issue with our older buildings, air gaps in window A/C installations, and open windows during winter months due to heat *we can’t control* (talk about inefficiency!). Or how banning gas heating would then require more expensive heat pump or electric furnace/boiler installations, thus driving up the rent price for more expensive tech or utility bills in a city already experiencing a housing cost crisis (and which rung of the economic ladder do you think would be most affected?). Ultimately, if you own the house or building, the decision should be left up to you on what’s best. Overall, I think your methodology was sound, the execution could have been better. I hope you are able to respond to my points because I think the gas vs electric debate is worth discussing, but I still can’t wait for your next video.
The induction cooktops don't have the 'burn in oil' thing very much. Maybe a little, but not a whole lot. And they have instant power change, so that makes things really nice.
@@HelgastJon It really is, changing over from halogen takes a bit of getting used to. The instant reaction and the much quicker boiling forces you to quit some habits like chopping veggies while waiting for water to boil. But man, having to cook on a regular stove in between feels like time traveling back to the stone age.
Love my induction cooktop. I got it 3 years ago at Lowe’s as a return item for $400. Best single kitchen upgrade I’ve ever done. Boiling 4-5 qt of water for pasta used to take 15-20 mins. It now takes less than 5. Plus its just as responsive as gas.
In an area that has frequent power outages with a gas range you can still cook. Plus, when they outages have happened during the Winter the ovens on the range could provide some heat for me and my pets. However, don't leave the oven on supplying heat for more than a couple of hours at a time. A friend of mine has an electric range and he is always having to replace elements, he even has extra elements in his house. When you were boiling the water on the gas range, you had the burner cranked up to full flame. You were probably losing 40 to 50 percent of the heat up the side of the pot. On my new GAS range, I have 2 high power burners in the front and a lower power in the back left and an even smaller burner on the back right. When I first got the range, I timed the front burner at full blast then time the front burner turned down to where the flame was not going up the side of the pot and the burner turned down boiled the water faster. You said it was easy for you to convert from gas to electric. In a lot of houses and my house the cost to convert is several thousands of dollars. This is to upgrade the electric box, service run the line to the plug and bring in a plumber to cap the gas line. Then you have to have permits and inspection by the local government. The cost and convenience of getting a pot to boil a little faster is not worth it to me and to a lot of people. Which I suspect is one of the reasons why people are against it. If I want to make a cut of tea or coffee I boil the water in the micro wave and I almost never use the oven. But I do miss the rotisserie I had on the old range. You said you put the range on a 50 amp circuit and the range was only getting abut 14 1/2 Kw sounds like something is wrong with the breaker or the hookup. You should be getting more current than you are. I'm not sure if I misheard you or you misspoke. To switch from gas to electric is a learning curve. We learned how to use Microwaves, that is not the big problem if people read the instructions. The reason why 58 % of the households have electric is because of cost difference between the installation of gas and electricity. Gas is more expensive to install. The house with gas and a house with electric cost the same for you and me to purchase but, the electric house cost less to build. So, the builder makes more money. My stove burners work without power. I turn the knob to the on position and use a match. How ever the oven will not work. Now the reason your portable induction cooktop is slower is because they are limited to 1500 watts. With all I have said here, If I were to move or by another house I would not have a problem with having an electric range. But I don't think I will be moving anytime soon. I have lived here to long to move, 62 years.
Just something to think about: You have an extractor over the stove to vent to the outside, though you say "It doesn't work very well". So, do you have a fresh air inlet in your "Very well sealed house." other than the HVAC? I get that sealing up the house is important in the Midwest, because weather (I live there too). So, you might want to consider a fresh-air inlet that brings air directly from outside to allow your extractor and bathroom fans to work better.
This is exactly what I was going to say. It's fine and all to have all these exhaust fans but they need air coming in from somewhere or the exhaust fans mostly won't do anything besides make noise. The solution is a fresh air intake with a heat exchanger, which will provide the fresh air and also help regulate humidity.
Brand new American homes have freshair intakes that are very efficient and allow you to draw in clean and condition outdoor air. Older HVAC systems didn't have this but you can add on and I would argue that and fixing the range vent are way more valuable than replacing a good working range.
The best thing about a gas stove in my area is that they still work when the power is out. All you need extra is matches or a lighter. Also would venting your stove hood be a better solution?
Yea there are valid benefits to a gas stove, and it will almost always be a better choice to upgrade ventilation rather than throw out a perfectly functioning gas stove.
For people in the future who are engaging in the comments section before finishing the video, Alec talks about the power outage situation starting at 51:25
@@perpetualcollapse My brand new (1 year old) smart gas stove works without power :) Considering my power went out 5 times for more than 6 hours in the last two weeks. Very useful. Also generators don't like electricity hogging electric stoves.
Having grown up with electric stoves my whole life, the only instance where I'm kind of pining for a gas one is wok, where you'd need to *really* turn up the heat. Beyond that, the idea of an open flame on the stovetop feels a bit risky to me :)
I'd also love to have a wok stove. Only thing is - if I had it, I don't want it in my kitchen. I'd want it in an outside kitchen, there's a reason why East/South-East Asian cultures often have outside kitchens. A good replacement for a wok station on your electric stove is a cast iron skillet (or as Uncle Roger calls it "white people wok"). I use one for my stir-frying, and as long as you cook stuff in batches, it works great!
This was the most avant-garde piece of video I have ever seen! Watching an image on the side of a cooking pot. How cool and unique is that?! More avant-garde, please!
When I moved from having a gas stove to an electric one, the big mental hurdle I needed to get over was learning that you start with it on high to bring water to a boil quickly then adjust as needed from there vs a gas stove where I'd adjust the flame to fit the size of the pot instead of putting all the way up to start
My absolute favorite stovetop was a standalone single "burner" unit that used a ceramic heating element which transmitted its heat using infrared radiation. It gave very precise controls and made it a breeze for me to learn the temperature ranges needed in the various steps of making a delicious tikka masala sauce.
My partner loves gas cookers for the on/off property of them but I have had 19 years of electric hob experience before we moved in to our first house. I wholeheartedly agree that if you learn the thermal inertia an electric cooker is much better in just about every aspect. Where I work, they have a crazy high power induction hob system with a boil option. That thing will heat a large pot of water in only a few minutes. I daren't imagine how many watts that it pulls!
where I live is common to use the old-school wood stoves(the ones of cast iron an enamelled white) but adapted to use gas, so I know about thermal inertia, we turn them on just to cook, but they heat the house all day
Decades ago, I switched to electric stove. I hated gas pilot lights that constantly blew out or had to be adjusted to light the burner. After fanning the burner trying get it to light; still, the burner wouldn't ignite, I had to turn the burner off to let the leaked gas dissipate before trying again. Don't even get me started on gas stoves with electronic ignition starters!!! Then, I moved into an all-electric apartment that introduced me to electric cooking. I loved how incredibly easy to was to turn on AND temper a perfect cooking temp! Through the years, I've gone from coiled to ceramic cooktop. Now, induction cooktop is the absolute best!!!!
I bought one of those portable induction cooktops for cheap and it’s great. I almost always use it instead of the old electric cooktop and I also take it camping paired with an inverter on my Bolt EV.
same here. I got an portable induction cooktop from Ikea out of curiosity. I've genuinely been blown away with how well it performs. If I need just one burner I use the portable unit. Now I'm genuinely considering swapping my cooktop to induction when the time comes
The thing that anoys me most about these electric/ceramic cookers is that where I live, most models have touch operated controls which can get too hot to touch and if the surface gets greasy you can no longer turn off the stove! It would be great if models with knobs were more popular
This is true. I refused to buy a range that had button style operation of top burners. It took me a while to find an induction range with actual knobs. Sure, they are electronically controlled, but they look, feel and work like gas knobs. Best of both worlds.
Woks on an electric range; my wok came with a semi-conical stand. It goes over the burner and supports the wok. It is also supposed to help to concentrate the heat from the burner onto the round bottom of the wok. (I'm not sure how, since it has large-ish vent holes, but it does keep the wok in steady contct with the element.) These stands might be available as optional extras wherever you get your wok.
Nice. I bet the holes help it not get toooo hot, and promote a small amount of passive convention within the inner area. I wonder how well induction would do with that setup. Cheers
I mostly had electric except for a short stint in a "fancy" house that had a gas cooktop. I didn't really like it but did notice that pot size makes a big difference. If the flame is coming out around the pot, all that heat is just blowing by. I could turn it down and get the same (and sometimes better) results by setting less gas pressure to allow the flame to go right up to the underside of the pot. Still, I was not impressed. I think it makes all the difference in a restaurant but for home it was no bueno, especially on a windy day where if the window was open it would blow the flame to one side.
My grandparents had a gas stove with these tiny 1940s burners. No flame jets, just a ring of blue bubbles. They did an amazing job getting heat into the pot. Boiled water twice as fast as my electric. When I got a gas stove of my own, the burners were bigger. Everything besides my frying pans seemed to small for the burners, and it boiled slower than an electric. Haven't gone back to gas. But I think some of the bias towards gas are from older gas stoves with older thin pots.
i personally have electric ones like alec, but these jet style burners seem to be extremly inefficient because they shoot the flames outwards. who wants the heat around the pot ? IMHO the jet style burners are designflawed. with an improved design the transfer was waaay better. perhaps the burner designers have a cartel going on with the gas suppliers. like "if can make the gas troughput 30% higher we will pay you xx million $" and designers went: yeah no problem, we'll make the burners less efficient by 30% by just shooting out flames where nobody can make use of them." and there it went from the high efficiency tiny blue bubbles to totally ineffient radial blowing fllames that make the handles glowing hot and heat up the kitchen. winter and summer. if i had a gas stove i'd design better gas jet cups.
See 'open burner' vs 'sealed burner'. The burners you remember are 'open burners'. They can run a little hotter and direct the flame upwards toward the bottom of the pan, but are harder to clean. Sealed burners have a cap on the top that prevents stuff falling onto the burner. They are cheaper to manufacture. The flame usually shoots out sideways so it hits the pan differently depending on the gas flow rate. Most of the new gas stoves I see are sealed burners, but higher end stoves often have open burners because there is more money available to pay for the increased manufacturing cost and because they control where the flame hits the pan better. I would suppose that at least some of the people who like gas better than electric have been using open burners as it has fewer performance drawbacks as compared to sealed.
I love this video. I've had trouble letting go of my gas stove top, but this helped me be more logical. My wife forced the change from gas, and as hard as it is to say, I guess she was right.
I have been using an induction stove for like five years and I can't imagine wanting to use anything else. Slower, stinkier, putting more weird oily yellow substance on everything in a radius of a couple of meters... Nah, I'm good without burning explosive fossil fuels in my home.
28:20 Love how the cat warns you that you left the burner on. 38:35 Could because the pot is not properly sized. It probably has a safety feature to turn off the burner if no pot is present.
I think that on/off power cycling as you heat the water on your hob is not power limiting, my cooker does exactly the same. I think it is a thermal limit on how hot the ceramic surface is allowed to get to prevent it cracking. This is only a theory of mine, the reason I think this is that with most of my (stainless steel) pans if I switch the ring onto full it will eventually start to cucle on and off, more so as the contents of the pan heats up. I also have an old aluminium wok that I use for stir frying, when I use this wok the ring just stays on, it does not cycle on and off at all. I think the aluminium is more conductive, so the heat is conducted away from the ceramic surface and it never gets hot enough to start cycling on and off. As stainless steel is less conductive I reckon the ring gets too hot and starts to cycle. Another thing I have notices is that that thermal cycling when set to full, it sounds different to the normal temperature control, I reckon there are two different thermostats, one on your heat selector dial thingy, and one that cycles to prevent the ring overheating. I am looking at replacing my cooker as it is getting very old and less reliable now, looking at induction but if I go that way my faithful aluminium wok will have to retire as it is not magnetic, Oh bum!
That may be part of it, but for what it's worth the back burners both do this even when completely covered. And the front-right also did it when I used the smaller setting, although it did make it a bit longer before cycling. It's definitely a thermostat being tripped by temperature - I'm just not convinced that it's required to protect the cooktop and that it's being used as crude power limiting device.
Something I just have to mention that seems bewildering to me, is the prices of your home appliances. My wife is from the US, and her mom needed a new drier, I told them to look for a heatpump model, because they save a lot on electricity, you can put it anywhere because it has a condenser etc. On the Lowes website, they have about 200 driers, of which only SIX had a condenser, of which only THREE had heat pumps. The cheapest was a thousand dollars. I checked on my local (EU) white goods retailer, we have about 250 driers, of which 120 have a heat pump, and the cheapest can be had for about 400 euros. It does not make any sense to me. To reiterate, I heard you talk about why you steered away from induction, because of the price of the combo. I went looking at Ikea, just to get a reference, and what I found was surprising. They don't even sell regular electric cooktops anymore. You can choose induction, or gas. Nothing else. And the cheapest 4 zone induction comes to 299 euros, and can pump out a nice 6kW. (Add in an oven for 199!) You are getting absolutely railed over white goods in the us, it's ridiculous. And a damn shame.
corporate greed in America is completely out of control. we don't have good laws regulating what companies can charge, so they easily come up with excuses to raise prices. and they get away with it, because not many people are in a position to say 'i just wont buy it then'
A huge advantage to a gas cooktop is that you do not have to look at either your dial or your flame when adjusting heat. You can do it quite accurately by ear. That’s right. You can judge your flame height by sound. Another advantage is that if you turn it off, it’s off. With electric the element takes time to cool. If you are cooking more than one item it is extremely difficult to move pots around to take them off the heat. Finally, my wok is my go-to pot. No electric cooktop I’ve used can get hot enough. My double wall ovens are electric. Only my cooktop is gas.
I have an old (1990ish) electric stove (but high end when it was new) and it boils water very fast. It'll boil that pot in 12 minutes at 5/7 power on the dial. It has metal "burners" and not a glass top and it will happily run them at max power forever.
So, I figured I'd do an experiment too. I have a very similar looking IKEA pan you see. So by the markings on th pan, 4 US quarts, starting temperature 3°C, time to boil similar as shown in the video 10'23". That's on the front left burner on my induction cook top, which on Boost is 3100W. Also, I remembered you wondering why there aren't combination cook tops, with induction and radiant elements, I don't know if there still are, but there were. The cook top installed in my house when I moved in had two induction burners and two radiant burners. It was faulty, so I switched to a fully induction unit.
My parents "upgraded" to a gas stove. Their pans, which they cooked on electric for decades, were in great shape before but with gas the Bakelite handles got burnt and worn. Also, I never burnt my hands on the handles until I cooked on gas; didn't expect them to get so hot by the waste heat.
Modern cookware (made since the early to mid '90's) is not really made for gas stoves. Cooking with gas generally requires heavier and/or a higher quality of cook ware. If you learn to cook on electric then move to gas, you have to totally rethink how you do things in the kitchen, whereas moving from gas to electric is much easier.
Great video as always focusing on the tech, but its worth noting in some places (like here in the UK) if you have access to a gas supply you would be nuts not to use it, and its because of the price of gas versus the cost of electricity. Right now, my gas supply is 7p per unit and the electricity is 28p per unit (approximately). Boiling the kettle on gas is indeed a little slower but it is A LOT cheaper. and as someone that cooks a lot, a gas hob is just nicer to use honestly but thats a very secondary consideration.
I'm rarely using all of the burners on my stove at the same time, so an alternative to "just pick it up" - I slide it to an element that is off and cool. Edit- I love my wok and I've never owned a gas range. Maybe I'm missing out on a magical experience, maybe my wok is made of a material traditionalists wouldn't use, but I do not have a problem cooking in a wok on an electric cooktop.
I've had both electric and gas. I prefer gas. Gas allows more precise heating than electric does. Once you get the hang of using gas, I think you'd prefer it. Don't much care for working with induction stoves.
Woks will still work on electric burners but there not much point to using one. If only the bottom is in contact with the heat you may as well be cooking in a pot
@@rdizzy1 yep, though im not sure how often a wok is really better than a pan or pot anyway. On gas it increases efficiency but you are already getting higher efficiency anyway
I grew up in a house with a mom that loved to cook, so we always had a fairly high-end gas range despite being pretty poor, and I loved using it and loved to cook on it. After moving out I have _only_ had the old-style metal coil electric ranges, and _always_ the 'landlord special' variety where they get an even cheaper model than the lowest end you can buy in a big-box store, and have _hated_ cooking on them. But I'm sure it's _way_ more to do with the difference in price than electric vs gas. The thermal inertia has been very hard to adjust to after spending 20 years on gas, but also these cheap coil tops are _so wobbly_ that my pans never sit flat and getting oil not to pool in a corner away from my food is impossible. I also have a very bad habit of taking food off a burner to remove it from the heat quickly, then like an absolute dunce forgetting to turn the burner off because I cannot hear that it's still on like I could with a gas burner, and even with hot surface indicators since I spent 20 years not needing them they simply do not catch my attention.
I have never tried a coil top. I have used smooth top radiant electric stoves. They are actually quite nice. The first time I had one, not long after using it, I burnt myself trying to clean it after ignoring the hot surface indicator (not too badly, thankfully, because of fast reflexes and the damp paper towel I had between my hand and the burner). I have never ever ever repeated that mistake since.
@@unconventionalideas5683 Thankfully I've never actually burnt myself on these (my self-preservation remembers to check the hot surface indicators for _that_ at least) it's just when I'm cooking dinner I'll pull a pot, make my plate and walk away with the burner still on, then an hour or two later when I bring my dishes out I'll notice and go "dammit"
