Cities try to phase out gas stoves but cooks are pushing back
wsj.com
wsj.com
This push to be perfect is never ending, but always attacks the common folk, and rarely the multi-national megacorps. It's always with a justifiable pro-environment angle, which means any common folk who fight against it are painted as immoral, or uncaring about the planet.
This is just the next lowest hanging fruit, but I'm getting annoyed at this point.
This is death by 1000 cuts.
Cities don't have gas hooked up to homes in the part of country where I live, so that's how people do it.
Tens of millions of Americans living in rural and exurban areas have been cooking like this since before we were born. This is what we’d call a “solved problem.”
Natural gas run directly to the home is a solved problem. Yet we're having this discussion.
Nowhere in the US is even close to having an energy mix where this is not the case. Why take steps backward and pollute more? Shouldn't we be trying to make strides to reduce emissions?
> the average efficiency of gas heating rose slowly to 86% over the last decade, so that carbon emissions from producing 1 kWh of central heating [using natural gas] fell to 215 grams of CO2 in 2019. However, simple [resistance] electric heaters averaged only 207 grams of carbon dioxide per kWh by the end of 2019
https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Carbon_emissions_o...
For new buildings the effect is probably even greater, as you are probably going to choose a heat pump (2-5kW heat output for 1kW electrical input) over resistance heating.
The US averages around 400g CO2 per kWh, so yes maybe resistance heating doesn't make sense, but heat pumps for sure do.
Solar panels are built in China, powered by coal and slave labor.
My point is there is no such thing as a free lunch, and a lot of "green" tech is very much not-so at this point.
Put another way, what is the alternative you are proposing for the energy source to manufacture the first wind turbine (at cost and can scale)? You might be able to manufacture a couple of wind turbines with some horses and man power but it will never be cost competitive with fossil fuels unfortunately.
Those also produce CO2 (effectively by burning sugar, more or less), and IIRC generally more of it per unit of useful work than a good fossil-fuel-powered engine.
I think hydro and nuclear are the realistic clean options. Solar and wind are not going to fix our problems.
Which is why almost no houses in heating-dominated climates use primarily resistance heating.
Gas stoves are more collateral damage than culprit, in my opinion, although the indoor air quality issues are a compelling health concern.
But again, it's more of questioning the scale. How big of an issue is leaks in the natural gas grid? I'd like to see some actual numbers as to the damage that is done. Promote electric space heaters as primary option, sure. But this smells like all hype and little bite
We don’t know exactly how much leaks, but the estimates have been growing and most sources cite 2-4%. Given the 80x multiplier on methane as a GHG compared to CO2, that’s potentially a really big problem.
One of the reasons to be aggressive here is that building codes are upstream. You won’t see the impacts on the market (reduced gas consumption, strong demand for induction stoves & electric space heating) until many years after this change, and it’s precisely those shifts in demand we need to drive further advancement in electric stoves and heating to make them even better quickly.
This is leakage from between our recieving gas and it being metered to the customer. On the customer side, there's another estimated 2-4% loss.
Get your appliances serviced regularly!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-20/a-giant-f...
It’s not a helpful comment. If you have something to say… say it. If you don’t like the HOA rules don’t move to the HOA neighborhood. It’s hardly a Texas specific problem.
Not my house, I wouldn't have moved to that neighborhood, but my mom didn't have a whole lot of time at the time but of course that doesn't matter we must all embrace the free marketplace of ideas because no other solution is possible here I know I know... Bored now...
The funny thing is that my conservative friends complain about exactly this sort of mindset in California. And I tell them to move to Florida or Texas instead of perpetuating their own misery but they rarely do. One of them seems to have killed himself last year over this. I conclude that I do not understand people and why they can't just do the simple obvious things because you're right that my mom shouldn't have moved there but there's a story behind how she ended up there and you've completely neglected that. Maybe my late friend has a story too.
I find this unnecessarily political, but I also find the more "conservative" minded people to be more supportive of independence, including solar. Not sure how many HOAs are in your experience, maybe it is a lot more than mine.
While the protections have been extended and clarified by subsequent legislation, its worth noting that this policy (the Solar Rights Act) was adopted in 1978 in California.
HOAs can be pretty evil that way.
I also live in Plano. This law was passed many many years ago, so if the HOA is really saying that they should change their tune if you point them to that relevant passage.
Texas's power grid went down in part because natural gas plants couldn't get the necessary gas.
Are there 2 unique gas distribution systems? Was there no gas, or was it just super expensive spot price and no one wanted to pay for it?
I get the impression this isn't typical, but for me "gas" usually means a 150-gal propane tank, filled asynchronously, often by truck rather than gas main. A benefit of this, like most asynchronous systems, is that no amount of disfunction in the backend will have any immediate effect on local usage.
Actually, that is a specific thing that this method does help with: if people stockpile in a given month, it has no immediate effect on me, because my gas tank still has gas left in it. It might cause non-immediate problems, but a lack of local buffers doesn't help with that, and I've at least bought weeks or months of time for those problems to clear up.
But yeah- in my neck of the woods, anywhere outside the city has a propane tank on the property somewhere.
I'm sure lots of people used an oven or a range as emergency heat, but a point in favor of keeping those going is not a point in favor of natural gas space heating.
Quite a few. Older through the wall gas panel type gas heaters work without power. Often found in low-end apartments and trailers. Newer ones tend to require power, mostly for a fan, but sometimes for "cloud connectivity".
Gas production fell by almost half.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46896
Researchers found that frozen wells caused natural gas production to fall by 85 percent in the days leading up to Feb. 16, with up to two-thirds of processing plants in the Permian Basin experiencing an outage. Researchers looked at a sample of 27 natural gas processing plants, and found that as many as 18 of them had zero output at the worst of the storm. Natural gas producers are not required to weatherize their equipment in Texas.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/UT-...
The desperate scramble to power up natural gas facilities again exposed a major structural flaw in Texas’ electric grid: Oncor and other utilities didn't have good lists of what they should consider critical infrastructure, including natural gas facilities — simply because natural gas companies failed to fill out a form or didn’t know the form existed, company executives, regulators and experts said.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/18/texas-winter-storm-b...
Moreover, this very similar situation happened 10 years ago already and that had natural gas curtailments to retail customers. So, no, not a good backup solution.
My point was why don't we fix the very obvious and low hanging fruit like cargo ships that run on sludge, fix that first before you tell me and millions of others that "we don't know how to use electric stoves"
For the rest of us, it would be an enormous disruption. If we were forced to get rid of gas stoves, the individual and aggregate economic cost would be huge.
And while you might get used to an induction stove, nobody gets used to an electric one - those things really are rubbish.
> unless you're entire cooking knowledge is boiling a pan of water
If your entire cooking knowledge is boiling a pan of water, just get a damn microwave and stop ruining things for everyone else.
0: Quoted in full because it disappeared while I was writing my answer.
Good for you? The most Chinese thing I make on a regular basis is frozen orange chicken (from <checks freezer> Foster Farms, apparently), so I don't really care.
In any case, I've yet to encounter a electric stove that's fit-for-purpose for anything more sophisticated than boiling water. That's not to say they don't exist, but someone else, somewhere else having one is rather irrelevant to me.
> induction stoves are far more common in China than the US, which one would expect not to be the case if they couldn't be used to make Chinese food.
FWIW, I'm pretty sure most uses of "Chinese food" on eg HN refer to American-adaptations-of-Chinese-food, similar to how "pizza" generally bears little resemblance to the traditional Italian dish, so this doesn't mean much either way.
> Of course most people trot this argument out as a talking point
I appreciate the implication that I'm not most people, I guess?
I have no idea what those people know, care about, or want, and I don't see how my comment has anything to do with them; it certainly doesn't make your point. My point is that electric stoves are not suitable for (almost) any kind of cooking, presumably but not specifically including Chinese.
I never said that.
0 > If your entire cooking knowledge is boiling a pan of water, just get a damn microwave and stop ruining things for everyone else.
1 > 0: Quoted in full because it disappeared while I was writing my answer.
2 > Good for you? The most Chinese thing I make on a regular basis is frozen orange chicken (from <checks freezer> Foster Farms, apparently), so I don't really care.
3 > In any case, I've yet to encounter a electric stove that's fit-for-purpose for anything more sophisticated than boiling water. That's not to say they don't exist, but someone else, somewhere else having one is rather irrelevant to me.
4 > FWIW, I'm pretty sure most uses of "Chinese food" on eg HN refer to American-adaptations-of-Chinese-food, similar to how "pizza" generally bears little resemblance to the traditional Italian dish, so this doesn't mean much either way.
5 > I appreciate the implication that I'm not most people, I guess?
Which of those reads like "electric stoves are even worse at cooking chinese food (in particular) than they are at cooking most types of food" to you?
It was this sentence that I was replying to.
Aside from anything else, this whole exercise smacks of making people believe they're helping the planet so they continue to consume, consume, consume with wild abandon - all the while providing a huge cash injection for companies selling stoves. Some quick maths, just for fun: there are 122,800,00 households in the USA, and around 35% of them have gas stoves (42,980,000). I don't know about the US, but here in the UK the cheapest (and therefore not great) induction stoves are around £300/$411, and for anyone mad enough, electric stove tops are around £100/$140. Let's assume average replacement unit cost is around $300, with fitting around $100. Cost to replace all gas stoves is around $17,192,000,000 - and that's assuming everyone buys the cheapest stove tops available.
If we really wanted to do something that would actually make a difference, how about banning bunker oil?
Again, I have a gas stove for the first time with my home now. I don't find it that much better and I don't really like the hazards associated with it. I cook frequently. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I'd learned to cook on gas and then went to electric, rather than the other way around, because the issue people have seems mostly to be not accounting for the temperature not being easy to change on the fly.
A much less egregious but still valid one is buying a sports/lower mileage ICE car today, and driving it less (e.g., using public transit for commutes, and the sports car for weekend rides). This can have a lower carbon footprint than a long distance everyday commute in an electric car. The fixes that properly account for these things are trivial technically (any econ grad can tell how), but do not have any political support.
I do not expect the political landscape to ever appreciate these things. Therefore, I will alter my consumption pattern according to my own understanding, and not according to the whims of Capitol Hill.
> City carve-outs for gas cooking aren’t unreasonable, said Sara Baldwin, who works on electrifying the building sector at environmental policy firm Energy Innovation. But eventually, she believes that buildings will need to be fully electrified, including stovetops, to meet ambitious emissions-reduction goals, presenting an existential threat to the gas industry.
So it's not quite "blaming gas stoves for climate change". The claim is there's a need to transition away from gas stoves _as a consequence_ of getting rid of gas hookups (which are presumably mostly used for heat), which would have a noticeable impact on emissions.
Further driving that point home, the next sentence is:
> “The gas industry really wants to make the household stovetop a wedge issue and use that to animate people against electrification as a whole,” said Charlie Spatz, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental advocacy group.
So they know that a storm is brewing over gas stoves, because there's inherent resistance _and_ there's an large industry trying to use/abuse that fact in order to preserve their profits.
To me, the reason the article focuses on gas cooking instead of gas hookups in general is for that exact reason. Gas cooking has a small impact on climate change, but the claim is it's a necessary sacrifice to get rid of the bigger problem of gas hookups and distribution, and it seems like it'll be a tough sell for opinionated people who are being amplified by a large industry trying to extract as much profit as possible on the way out. It could have spent more time on that claim that it's a necessary sacrifice though.
The emissions from gas heating are drastically higher than electric heating, and eliminating gas heating would absolutely have an impact on emissions. However, gas heating is significantly cheaper than electric heating, and I wish the article had spoken more about how environmental groups plan to deal with lower income residents switching from gas to electric. In Massachusetts, for example, a house that spends $1,200 in a winter on natural gas would spend over $6,000 on electric resistance heat (unless you have a newer electric heat pump, which is much closer to competing with the price of natural gas)
I live in an area where those low temperatures occur seasonally, but heat pumps absolutely can improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, even here, especially if tied to non-air-source heat pumps, or just massively increased renewable energy production (including base load sources like geothermal).
The capital/installation costs are the real problem, and it will take some toothy legislation and expenditure to get it done.
Where I live in Michigan, I could use a heat pump for some time in the fall and spring, but there's no way it would replace my gas furnace in the winter. I'd be curious to know if the cost of getting a heat pump would be worth it at that point.
[1] https://homeinspectioninsider.com/heat-pump-work-subzero-tem...
Even with an air-source heat pump, as long as it's smart enough to defrost itself as appropriate, etc., you can definitely get a Coefficient of Performance greater than 1 even at below freezing outdoor temperatures. You could run it the majority of days even in winter, and while your current electricity prices may make it not competitive with current natural gas prices, it would be _efficient_. If natural gas externalities were priced in, it almost certainly would be cheaper to run a heat pump except when COP goes all the way down to 1, where yes, you would need an augmented/alternative heat source -- no denying that.
But if you have central air conditioning, which is pretty common in the Midwest, reverse operation is a heat pump. In practice, many A/C systems don't do that, but the capital cost between a central A/C only system and a central A/C + heat pump system is minimal. A/C + heat pump should really be the default, and supplemented or augmented for the few weeks when COP is too low, and for longer while the economics are the way they are.
One augmentation is that you can get non-air-source heat pumps. At least for buildings with several units, it _should_ be cost-effective to get a ground source -- just dig below the frost line. That's almost never something you can easily just hire a crew to do, so unfortunately it's not a practical suggestion right now, but if/when that market failure is dealt with, it'll be a good option for many, as you wouldn't need a secondary system.
Not trying to convince you to buy a heat pump by the way, the economics of it do matter a lot. I would like to sell people the efficiency argument though.
Just buy it from Quebec at 0.05$/KWh. They have been willing to sell it at that price for decades. Bonus, completely green. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_%E2%80%93_New_England_T...
>Nationwide, fossil fuels burned for energy in businesses and homes sit at 13% of annual carbon emissions, according to 2019 data from the EPA.
>Gas stoves’ contributions to emissions are negligible compared with the gas used to heat homes and water. Less than 3% of natural-gas use in homes comes from cooking on gas stoves, according to a 2015 residential energy survey from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
3% of 13% comes to just under 0.04% of carbon emissions. Yup, definitely making a big difference.
Edit: 0.04% of residential carbon emissions in the US only.
60% of US electricity is generated from fossil fuels (1). 40% of that is from Natural Gas. 20% from Coal which produces almost twice the carbon as Natural Gas.
60% of that energy is lost in conversion (2). So, converting from natural gas to electricity would actually increase carbon emissions in many parts of the US.
So, where should we start? I'm not an expert, but just this quick analysis says decreasing the amount of fossil fuels used for US generation would be a much better choice.
Also, at least in my country, the network connection fee to the gas network is often higher than the gas used by appliances, (warm climate) and residential cooks don't realise they're subsidisng the cost of our business gas users.
However, unlike for a home gas boiler where the efficiency is maybe 90%, direct efficiency for gas stoves is poor. Basically you set fire to the gas, the fire is near the pans you're using for cooking, so they get hot. It's simple, but it is not at all efficient. This also produces waste CO2 (and some CO but hopefully not much), which is poisonous although not that poisonous, right where you are standing, whereas your gas boiler vents the waste gas to the outside air.
In contrast induction has much better efficiency and of course produces no poisonous gases itself (though cooking foods does release a variety of volatiles you shouldn't really breathe, especially pan frying)
So while "Burn gas in your home" to heat water is definitely a net efficiency win over "Burn gas in a power station, ship the electricity to your home, then use that" to heat water, the same does not follow for stoves where I suspect it's either a wash or a small win for electricity.
Large boilers need to die. Small "instant heaters" at or very close to each faucet is the correct way. Way way way less energy usage.
Sadly the electrical water heater units usually don't have access to the 240v line and are limited to 120v, 10A or something measly. People then complain their water doesn't heat fast enough or get hot enough for a given flow and then complain/swear off small instant heaters =/
A centralized system avoids having multiple circuits with potentially high loads like this. Not to mention the likely gigantic heat exchangers required to transfer 9kW!
Yes, but the plan is a more clean grid in the future. If you are building a new home now then this calculus (hopefully) will not hold in 20 years. If we've got a clean grid but everybody is still using gas to heat their homes, we've still got a huge problem.
Unfortunately it's the bourgeois that loves those things and they vote.
Do we really need to shed such a cornerstone of humanity in order to remain being human on this rock?
Unfortunately, Carbon taxes have been become political poison and red meat for the republican base, so we use methods that are less effective, more costly, and more annoying.
Not only do I agree with this thing about electric efficient stoves, but I think we push our lifestyles much more in favor of environment, like not really "I have respect for the environment, and I drive an electric car", but more "I have respect for the environment, and I ride a bicyle" this means more to me (electric cars are still a large source of pollution, from their components: plastics, electronics, to the batterires, their maintenances..)
I work in earth science, I know how bad methane is a greenhouse gas. The comment on top is absolutely right in that the line has to be drawn somewhere for a sensible approach though. Your bike example, the factories making these bikes still pollute, steel is a major source of pollution actually. So we should all walk!
You see, there is no end to it once we get started and don't have a plan.
It's a compromise, but those compromises should be more toward environment, less toward personal comfort (like hearing they use gas stoves because it makes something taste a little better, is a bit ridiculous). My footprint is very small, not 0% (electric cars showing "100% electric, 0% pollution" is not honest, I see the good intent behind, but let's not lie), I've one bike collected from garbage, the other is second-hand, even replaced tyres from thrown-out wheels. This compromise is good because it's also give me a good health, immune system, things like covid is not really a concern for me, at least far behind road accidents
There's already a significant difference between this kind of basic bike and a full blown competition bike with all sorts of electronics devices. And the difference with a car is another level, just considering the weight of it (all kind of road kills it does, road damage, ..) and all services needed to maintain to fuel those cars, all the hidden indirect pollution, that's what people don't consider.
If people reduced all their footprint by a half, we would in short/mid term pollute twice less globally, so it's defnitely worth trading some lifestyle habbits for environment friendly ones
I grew up in a developing country without heating or aircon. I remember having frostbite on my feet some winters. Most of the food we ate was brought from the local farms straight to the market. No shipping stuff around the world, no cooling etc. I also biked everywhere and still do. If you're from a first world country, just by existing there and living the most basic life you're already responsible for so much CO2 it will be hard to ever catch up. So please give up everything and revert to monke before preaching to me.
But seriously: Moralizing doesn't help. People need better education so they understand energy issues, which they currently don't. Instead everyone repeats believe the science™ or such mantras, but they never actually look at the science. Once they have an understanding, as societies we need to figure out rules that work for most people, not just edge cases. It's good you ride your bike and I do to, but it's not a solution for everyone, some people will still need to drive cars. On the same note the push to make all cars electric is idiotic. The other day I saw they introduced electric highway patrol cars in New York, who on earth would think that to be a good idea?! I work in earth science and the amount of myths people believe about energy and climate related topics is insane. The lack of understanding makes them easy targets for misinformation by the energy lobby, the car industry and other actors with ulterior motives.
I don't preach for my way to optimize things which is a bit extreme, just for a more achievable end result: cutting by a half our footprints. People can take more pblic transports, train, avoid planes, consume more local food, consume less overall etc..
I suspect a lot of restaurants will move to bottled gas for cooking while using electricity everywhere else. That way they can still get the flame seared taste or the feeling of control they don't get with an electric or induction cooktop.
I don't think ecology is the main drive here. It's more of a safety/convenience thing. No need to care about gas lines, a lot of new houses are fully electric (heating, stove). Also, no more grandma forgetting to shut down the gas and exploding half the building.
Also, afaik, gas stove are pretty bad for indoor air quality
Gas cooking is the last hurdle culturally to dumping citywide gas lines entirely. This is just a theory.
The citizens never fight back. They are pretty easy to convince that they are doing the right thing (see every Tesla owner ever [don't fight me guys, I'm joking])
However the writing is on the wall for gas in domestic use. At least where I live it's more of a pain to install - requiring the specialist gas guy to do it rather than an electric stove that anyone can just plug in. Then the gas fixtures require regular safety review every couple of years. Between moving/renovating houses and helping family replace stoves over the last 10 years or so I've seen that stores have gradually stopped selling gas units. You have to order them specially and the selection gets smaller each time. They only sell electric by default now. Eventually I can see there being a kind of de facto ban just from you not being able to get gas anywhere, or it being so much hassle that you really, really have to want to get it. It's pretty much the situation now. And if you are renting the place is almost guaranteed to be electric because gas requires more effort to fit, and has more that can go wrong.
Also the power moves up and down in steps, induction alternates between on and off to deliver an average amount of power. With gas knobs you have more fine grained control. When you want to fry something, with induction you often have 2 power options: the “fry, cook, fry, cook” option and the “fry just a bit too hard” option. I have debuyer pans, made of thick metal, acting as a buffer, which helps a bit.
Stepless controll, with physical knobs would help a lot.
Induction stoves are great for cooking water though. And for cleaning.
There still are issues, like the automatic pan warm up feature control logic overshoots with a carbon steel pan and undershoots with a cast iron one. Pan detection takes a couple of seconds every time it's triggered which makes it annoying to use lifting the pan as a way of temperature control.But overall I'm pretty happy.
A separately installed control panel with physical knobs would be appreciated though. Wouldn't want knobs on the main cook top as having a flat surface makes cleanup so much nicer.
Most professional (restaurant) stoves solve this by having the knobs on the front face instead: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/RYNEEX/gas-hob-stove-and-grill-in-...
This is my biggest problem with the induction burners I've used. Basting meat in butter requires tilting the pan, lifting it off the burner. Cooking eggs softly involves moving on and off the heat. Whatever auto setting on things I've used don't allow for "off for a bit, and then back on for a bit" use.
My induction plate has 9 clear steps, and I usually use 1200/1800.
YES. The worst is my new Bosch dishwasher. It has capacitive touch buttons.
Seriously. Who thought it would be a good idea to use buttons that don't work properly with wet fingers...on a dishwasher.
It sounds like I should proactively add Bosch to my list of companies that demonstrate dedicated leadership in the race to the bottom. I will still consider their brand and products, but more as a cautionary example than as a viable option.
It’s a high end unit today but the technology will trickle down.
A colleague of mine (who likes cooking with gas) recently had to set up a new kitchen and chose the Miele professional induction field, he is very happy. It features old-style mechanical controls for the power and behaves exactly as one would expect a cooking stove to behave:
These are horrible indeed, and it gets only worse if liquid is spilled in the vicinity of those controls - who in their right mind would design a cooking surface that cannot handle spills?
The control knobs arranged in a linear fashion may be listed as an example of bad design in "The Design of Everyday Things", but little did Donald Norman know in which direction stove design would be heading!
At least in Germany you are not allowed to connect your stove to the Herdanschlussdose[0] as a layman.
[0]https://herdanschliessen.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Herda...
[1] eg https://www.siemens-home.bsh-group.com/de/produktliste/bakin...
[0] - (perhaps it's not the case in the US - but we should avoid calling them 'electric' which can work through conduction, i.e. it gets hot and ferrous pans are not required, and often do have knobs - at least in the UK if someone says 'electric' they mean the 'red ring' kind)
Fire cooking is just much better for certain dishes. Stop with this electrifying and digitising everything.
It’s constantly turning itself off and beeping at me because it thinks someone is touching it or that something has overflowed its pot or that it’s Tuesday. Touch interfaces— outside of the phone form factor— need to die a fast and fiery death.
[1] https://www.fisherpaykel.com/au/cooking/freestanding-cookers...
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13/647621382/multiple-explosions...
And while that's an extreme example, fire departments in areas with natural gas tend, from what I've seen/heard to go out on a lot of "gas leak" calls over the course of a year. Sure, some are false alarms, or very small leaks that are quickly and easily mitigated, but any one of them could turn into a catastrophe. And it's not exactly rare for that to happen. Not common-place, but it happens more often than anybody would really like. And when gas explosions happen, they tend to injure/kill multiple people and destroy lots of property.
This is not, of course, to suggest that electricity is without danger as well.
Where I live, and hopefully most places, the distribution network runs at high pressure - causing a nice loud hiss when someone backhoes into it, which surprisingly never seems to cause a fire - but with each house individually regulated.
One hopes that the house regulators have a "fail closed" mode on input overpressure, but I don't actually know.
You move a wet pan, and it activates the buttons as well. Absolute garbage.
I use the induction cooktop for slow cooking, boiling, and pressure cooking. Everything else gets put on gas if I have room. Nothing beats gas for output and control.
I could certainly do just fine on radiant or, god forbid, coils. But the gas and induction together are a huge luxury that I feel grateful for every time I use them.
One under-appreciated advantage of a gas range is how evenly it heats pans of lesser quality. Because so much of the heating on gas is accomplished by the flow of hot "exhaust" gas across the entire bottom of the pan, a thinner and less thermally conductive pan will still heat much more evenly than it would on an electric coil or induction hob.
EDIT:
I'm definitely on board the energy efficiency bandwagon. I have a four kilowatt solar array on my house, and I drive a twenty five year old Honda minivan because of the mileage and low upkeep.
If I thought gas cooking was a low hanging fruit on the efficiency tree, I might be more willing to give up the luxury of it. But from what I've seen it's not. It's rather like the highest gas-powered fruit on the tree.
Do you really like radiant better than electric coils? To me it takes too long to heat up, has poor temperature control, and hurts you if a pan isn't fully covering the burner. It seems like it's made for people optimizing for their stove to be "easy to clean". What am I missing?
Now, what happens if you took it out, cleaned off the thermal paste and did the same experiment? :)
I do prefer halogen/radiant for the ease of cleaning, but you're right that the temperature control usually sucks.
Gas is of course great, and I haven't really tried induction yet although doing so is on my todo list to get away from radiant.
Here in Europe induction is everywhere, so maybe finding good cookware is easier than the US. Last year I got a 8cm (3") pot for boiling milk and beans from the supermarket for €15 that works perfectly on induction.
I also ended up buying the Bialetti induction Moka but for a place that turned out to actually have the evil Ceran electric top… still worked obviously. It’s expensive but AFAICT the only one that’s induction friendly and also has the standard Bialetti interior shape, which I find much easier to clean. Also it’s gorgeous.
However, I do get a pretty serious caffeine high off the larger dose.
> Nothing beats gas for output
Yeah, maybe if you have a huge wok burner? my induction boils water substantially quicker than any gas stove I have used.
The largest gas hob I've ever used is 20,000 BTU/hr. It will heat up a saucier faster and more evenly than any electric or induction hob could hope to, but that's partly due to the pan's narrow base, and to the way I use it. It doesn't often sit on a hob for very long.
That's not the reason why, here see a magnet being inductively slowed in a copper tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BeFoz3Ypo4
For almost all induction cooktops, cookware must be made of a magnetic ferrous material in order to be compatible. This is why induction-compatible aluminum pans have a disc of magnetic steel impact-bonded to the base.
Tangentially, I had the same complaint about paper straws when they started banning plastic straws. You are forced to drink fast, or you end up having a flimsy straw that can't suck, so you're forced to get another one. Bad alternative solution to plastic straws. Electric stoves are a less viable alternative to gas stoves, but they are definitely better than paper straws...
And electric ovens completely beat gas ovens.
My house came with some fancy-pants 48-inch gas oven+range unit from an Italian company whose name I can't pronounce - the cool (er... hot!) and unusual range-top features are nice and it is a good gas range, no-doubt, but the gas oven just lacks all the neat mod-cons and features you can only get with an electric oven, like better temperature regulation, self-cleaning, etc... While my friends and associates with induction ranges (especially the ones you don't see sold in Best Buy) won't stop talking about how great they are while I'm dealing with another stovetop flame-out, aieee.
Right now, I wouldn't willingly give up any of them but, if I had to, I would cede the gas cooktop for the Breville induction burner, or, rather, several of them, or, better yet, a multi-burner induction cooktop of Breville quality.
The two biggest issues would be:
• Certain favorite pans of mine are not induction friendly, and…
• The extra electrical circuits that would need to be added as the Breville is power hungry
What I wouldn't give up are the electric ovens.
https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/commercial/cmc850.ht...
2. little portable induction cookers are common in china but most people aren't doing stir fries on them. people use them for hot pot at home, and maybe to boil or steam things. they're not the primary cooktop of choice. also something that ties into all this is that eating out is vastly cheaper and more affordable in chinese cities, and even low wage earners in cities might do it for literally every normal meal. those restaurants aren't cooking on induction.
Larger ones need 240VAC at 30amps.
Don't forget that "Hobbs" can also refer to one's kettle
What are your Burrito shells made of??
Much like how a significant amount of humans are able to consume and digest alcohol, having mitigated some of the worst effects over thousands of years.
as for paper straws I have purchased a number of steel straws but they are pain to clean
You certainly can. For example early cars couldn't go every place where horses could. And only recently cars started to become autonomous which horses could do since forever (my great-grandpa supposedly had a horse that drove itself back to home while grandpa was sleeping on the cart).
And of course horse produces manure which is useful in farming. Cars still lack that feature :)
In Tucson Arizona, I saw a guy riding a horse down a busy street. It's pretty amazing how out of place it seemed, even there. The street he was riding on was historically used to race horses (much like people race cars on public roads today.)
There are old ordinances still in place which don't allow parking of horses in front of public buildings like court-houses.
Where can carriages go that cars can’t?
If not, then the lack of ban makes the "feature parity isn't necessary" argument even stronger.
Cars shit exhaust. I think there are products/research where yo can capture the exhaust with some filter you apply, and then can send the gathered matter back to the facility. Not sure if it's useful for anything though.
https://www.sporkful.com/tag/induction-cooking/
Then you’ll be cooking with gas. :)
At which point you just stop using the straw and drink normally.
The straw controversy was bizarre to me. I can't remember when I last used a straw and it's not often that I see them, aside from chain restaurants selling overpriced novelty drinks (e.g. starbucks).
Juice boxes, coffee stirring straws, and soda cups from fast food and convenience stores make up many of them.
I mean, sure, it adds up, but how about we ban the plastic cups first?
This stuff isn’t rational.
I am somewhat entangled in Tiki culture, and (mostly-)rum-based mixology. Drinking through straws changes drinking speeds and makes the whole experience slower and arguably better.
I switched to stainless steel straws. Those are way better than paper straws which start to disintegrate after 10 minutes, and probably last for a lifetime.
TLDR: There's no way people are giving up straws in movie theaters.
A straw is one of the most basic accessibility and safety devices in the world.
Maybe... don't drink while you're driving, that's a whole lot safer.
You had a point about those with disabilities though. The workaround there is to buy your own straws and keep them with you.
* - couldn’t help myself
The only downside is that you can't heat aluminum with it. I had to replace my moka pot with a stainless steel alternative.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/gas-stoves-hazardous-as...
Basically a chain of incorrect assumptions, and ones I didn't even properly express
I have no idea, but I'd be interested to learn the answer.
BTW in my experience, natural gas infrastructure is no more reliable than electricity. In winter 2011, our gas was shut off across Northern New Mexico for a week, due to high demand with record cold temperatures, and the need to retain pressure in the pipeline so it could function at all. Wood saved the day then, and seems to me a more distributed and robust emergency solution. Wood is super dirty of course, so it seems plausible that retaining gas residential hook ups as a backup to the electric supply, could be better for the environment by reducing wood use. Have the cities that are banning natural gas done this analysis?
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/natural-ga...
The only reliable solution is to have a backup that’s not reliant on infrastructure. I.e everyone should have a camp stove and a couple of bottles of propane for it or an alternative self reliant solution that’s good for 3 or so days.
But I can’t imagine professional chefs being told they have to switch to electric or induction. You can’t effectively cook in a wok with induction, since the sides of the wok don’t heat up nearly enough.
https://nuwavenow.com/NuWaveWok
No idea how well the concept would work in a commercial asian kitchen though.
Maybe a good equivalent replacement:
https://www.plantbasedpros.com/product/cooktek-605501-drop-i...
edit: @ 2000 dollars
But I don't expect the flames themselves actually interact with the food in a meaning way compared with the hot metal.
Maybe not as much as the hot metal, but they absolutely can (and should, under the right circumstances). See how these noodles are tossed over the flame? https://youtu.be/oX62hKkcb6s
Tossing is to interrupt cooking to prevent burning not to cook with direct heat from flames. To the extent it might do some slower cooking from the heated air when tossed, that’ll still happen from radiated/convected heat from the pan heating the air when the pan instead of flames are the heating element.
- explosions
- indoor air quality
- gas infrastructure costs something to maintain, and for new developments, create
- fire hazard
- burn hazard
With that being said... I hate electric fixtures so much! I know instant feedback is impossible, but do the electric alternatives really have to be this slow? It's as if everyone gave up on improving the concept 10 years ago and it drives me a little crazy...
The induction stove, with special pots, was like tech from the future. I was only doing basic cooking but it was blazing fast and precise.
I never gave this any thought. I don’t cook much.
But something about this inductive stove impressed me.
I agree, it feels somehow very modern. Until I burn something because I entered the wrong number on the touchscreen. Or maybe that's modern too?
ewww
Reducing natural gas infrastructure will also reduce methane leaks, which is also a potent greenhouse gas.
I'd be fascinated to see emissions figures related to restaurants and home cooking from gas. It'd be shocking if it were more than a rounding error.
Now uninstall the heat sink, clean the thermal paste off of both surfaces, and repeat the experiment.
Induction is more efficient in the way you describe.
Cooking has gotta be less than %0.5 of total domestic ghg. We would do so much better and avoid needless political hassles by increasing solar wind geothermal and hydroeclectric, electrifying fleets, and controlling centralized industrial and agricultural sources.
2) No, we are not running out of copper.
And I was obviously being a little facetious, but copper is becoming more expensive and mines are having to expand to meet demand.
My understanding of how they work is that they are dam simple and reliable.
Gas cooking is a really tiny fraction of residential greenhouse emissions. Natural gas accounts for most of of the greenhouse emissions from commercial and residential[0] sources, but commercial & residential represent less than 15% of the total domestic US contribution. If you consider how often somebody is using the gas range vs their water heater or household heating, this is a really really small number.
Globally, the numbers look similar[1]. I'm not sure about how much gas is leaking from the grid, or what the cost of the hazards associated with the gas supply is, however the second source cites fugitive emissions as %3.9 and pipeline transport as %0.3. Its a little unclear to me exactly what the proportion of cooking is, but it is undoubtedly very small.
Greenhouse minimalist is certainly a valid position to stake out, but personally I see the buy in easier to achieve in the other, larger, more centralized sources. There is also the possibility of delivering non-fossil fuel gas, while a bit jokey, there are diverse sources and the technology is mature[2]
However you or I feel about energy diversity should probably be disregarded currently as its not an issue at this time, but I feel confident that we likely can keep cooking with gas if we handle the other stuff and even if we don't. Also, consider the unneeded political difficulty introduced while garnering consumer action instead of tackling the largest and most easily managed contributors.
[0] - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/06/how-the-foss...
The two things that stop us from removing the gas all together:
- A few pans that we haven’t replaced with induction compatible ones
- The gas stove came with the house and works OK
If the house hadn’t come with gas induction would be fine with us- works great.
Side question: do induction stoves have proper power levels yet? I used an induction stove a few years ago at a short-term vacation rental, and it could only toggle between on/off. If I set it at 50% power, it would cycle between being on and off, rather than staying on 100% of the time but at 50% power. My non-induction electric stove does the same thing. Is this an issue that is solved with higher end models?
No matter how stupid they may be, just because advertising campaigns say something, doesn't make it false.[0]
0: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qNZM3EGoE5ZeMdCRt/reversed-s...
Heating homes with natural gas (which the article clarifies is the source of the majority of the emissions) is currently far more efficient than with electricity.
If everyone in NYC switched to electric heat, the grid would certainly fail.
Additionally the grid uses a lot of natural gas for energy production.
Once all the electric production is green, and we have lots of extra capacity, it might make sense to look at reducing natural gas service to homes.
Until then, doing this will actually just make more emissions.
The reason is that the heatpump moves heat (from outside to inside) which is more efficient than generating heat directly.
Obviously there needs to be a plan to upgrade the grid to deal with electric heating, cooking, cars, etc.
Not to mention cost of heating in the winter would balloon to comical heights. Housing costs would also increase, but to a less degree, since utilities are a part of housing costs. Resistive heating is absurdly electricity intensive.
What is it that feels good? Is it nostalgia? Is it literally just visible fire feels dangerous and powerful?
My most often-used pans are small, not very flat, and aluminum. Any one of these traits disqualifies them for induction use. I use these pans-- a small garlic pot and a saucier-- literally every day. I could use other pots, but I'd be slower and less efficient.
The jumpers I use to saute things are induction-capable, and large enough to be responsive and efficient on an induction cooker, however they're still useless on either induction or electric, because an electric or induction hob only heats a pan when it's making contact with the surface. The moment I lift it to jump a meatball the cooker stops cooking. This is especially true for induction cooktops, which will typically de-energize if you take the pan off the surface.
You can mitigate this somewhat by using a heavy saute pan or skillet, which will maintain its temperature longer when it's not in contact with the cooking surface. But sauteing this way is a lot slower and more painful that using a light steel or aluminum pan. And at some point, I'm not strong enough to handle a heavy pan safely anyway.
My gas range is controlled by simple knobs. I use it by feel, and I always know how much power I'm using because I can see the flame and feel the heat on my face and hands. My induction cooker has a touchscreen and gives no feedback. I adjust it by guessing what number to enter, and then waiting for the food to make sounds. I am much less connected to the induction hob, and I'm therefore slower, less efficient, and I fuck things up far more often than I do on gas. Same problems with radiant electric.
The vast majority of the indoor pollution from cooking comes from the food, not the gas combustion.
Getting burned by handles sucks, and is probably unavoidable if you cook long enough on any surface. As Marco Pierre White says, "handles are for burning". If the pots and pans don't get you, the oven door eventually will.
I don't ever, ever, fucking ever use any cooktop as counter space. That's just asking for a catastrophe when a hob is accidentally turned on.
I feed a family with these tools, so I don't feel that the difference is merely one of convenience.
I'm with you on everything else, but this is a luxury. My glass-top stove has more surface area than all my counter space combined. It sucks!
My only gripe with induction is most of them have terrible touch sensitive unless it's even remotely damp buttons. The next one I buy, I will try to have knobs instead.
Nobody wants to bust out a screwdriver just to clean the stove.
It sucks, and it's a huge change. But it's unavoidable, and the longer we wait the worse it will be for everyone.
Go after the fucking businesses for their waste. There are a dozen boats that produce more carbon than all the gas stoves in the world.
Many places (and just about everywhere without a basement or attached garage) have water heaters closed up in tight spaces. A heat pump heater won't work there, but if you add some vents to the door so it can exchange air with the rest of the house, they're just fine. Or, depending on where you live, you might consider venting it to the attic - if you have an attic that runs hot, "extracting heat directly from it into the hot water and then cooling the attic" is a good use of time.
My justifications are primarily ease of cleaning, followed by speed & power.
I am putting in a jennair unit that can pipe 5kw through the air into a single pan. If you do the math, you will find that to be far more than a single gas burner puts out in a residential setting. Calrod and other radiant doesn't come close either.
If I was big into wok cooking or other edge cases I'd probably keep the gas range, but 99% of the time I'm just trying to boil water or heat a piece of iron as fast as possible.
Works for you then, but asking professional cooks to switch to electric is ridiculous. If this gets pushed through next everyone will wonder why the restaurant food tastes so bad all of a sudden. And then 30 years later NPR Hidden Brain will do a piece about how back in the day people used to cook with gas and that it enabled cooking methods that made the food taste amazing.
I agree with this specific point, but I do not agree with the justifications presented. The notion that gas somehow enables food to magically taste better does not sit well with me.
I do agree that there are certain cuisines that are more ideally prepared with an indirect heat source, but any skilled chef should be able to produce excellent outcomes regardless of pedantic concerns around their tools. The cooktop is just a source of heat energy at the end of the day. The way you manage that energy is part of the artform. Blaming tools for bad food would be like blaming visual studio because production went down.
This will cost a fortune compared to current gas prices, but will allow everybody who is really set on using gas to keep doing so.
Same thing of course for petrol for classic cars, etc.
Technically we can do it, it is just a matter of blocking the sale of fossil gas (or taxing the hell out of it to make it more expensive than the green equivalent).
The compromise was a mixed solution. You can get pretty good looking mixed cooking surfaces with 4 electric hobs for things like boiling, and 2 gas hobs for where we think it makes a difference (mainly wok style, some teas, and frying).
This has the added benefit of giving us a back up should anything happen with the power supply. Also feel like at least we're moving in the right direction enviromentally.
Having read the article though - I wish the end result had been different. The gas industry usingt his as a "wedge issue" sounds about right.
p.s. Am using Siemens and touch controls are fine.
If you want to ban anything, ban the installation of new gas / oil furnaces, but that is going to only increase demand on the grid and delay the removal of coal power plants.
I don’t really think banning residential or even commercial gas makes a whole lot of sense. Focus on removing coal/oil/gas power plants first. Natural gas will still make a great backup to renewable sources of energy production, but ideally it is emergency use only.
I get why people are skeptical and think it is simply the government is reaching for more control.
Here is the line of reasoning:
Why am I not allowed to have a gas stove, but I can see huge amounts of pollution from factories and power plants being dumped into the environment? If it were an actual problem wouldn't politicians focus on the bigger portions of pollution? Wouldn't they focus on the things that wouldn't affect average people?
It is easier to demonize these people as "anti-science", but they have a valid point. Look at this past year with COVID, virtually all traffic and personal emissions stoped and we only saw about a 10% drop in emissions.
When I built my house new in 2018 I installed a 500 gallon tank for the heating system + cooking. (Though the house is primarily heated with a wood stove)
Obviously, people break that all the time, but a compromise that requires people to do so seems bad.
Part of me wonders how hard it'd be to come up with an electric stove that simulates a gas cooker.
Also in the UK (where I am) gas is still cheaper than electricity - hoping that will change soon though.
I have only used one at a holiday house, and I swear it was the most temperamental thing in the world. A few drops of water or oil and it refuses to work.
Could just be that I am using an early model (this one was bought 10+ years ago, it has a touchpad for controls instead of knobs which also blows)
Another plus, when a mess happens, I can actually wipe up with a wet rag literally as I’m cooking, even under the pot.
EDIT: anyone who downvotes is welcome to provide a stat and make a fool of themselves
Also, I read on HN a month or so ago about gas stoves making indoor air quality worse. So there is some upside there too. And if we remove gas stoves then people will probably not care to have gas brought in just for water heaters, and maybe we can avoid an entire type of infrastructure.
"Cooking with nat gas is ~ 3% of gas use which is about 0.001% of US fossil fuel use which is about 0.001% of global fossil fuel emissions. Banning gas cooking is farcical virtue signaling if you truly want to decrease CO2 emissions."
so that random WSJ comment is pretty hard to believe.
Natural gas heating is the largest greenhouse gas source in my province and many other jurisdictions. Not providing natural gas hookups to new construction is one way to reduce that. The loss of natural gas cooking is a side effect.
But if you really need a gas stove you don't need a hook up, you can use a bottle and nobody will stop you. Carbon taxes might make it expensive, but nobody will stop you.
Four decades of research…
similarly, most natural gas is used for power generation and industrial processes. in the US, only ~15% is used residentially, and most of that is for home heating, water heating, and clothes drying. about 1/3 of our national energy use is derived from natural gas, so you're on the order of 1% (or less) of national energy being consumed by natural gas cooking. it's a tiny problem in the energy pollution mix.
we'd be much better served in this regard by focusing all our efforts on reducing carbon pollution from electricity production and transportation, which accounts for well over half of the problem, not a tiny slice like gas cooking because it's a "small sacrifice".
False. Wearing masks is a very simple, safe way to reduce spreading your infection to others [1].
Please stop spreading misinformation.
1. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-abou...
You'll have to do better than that. Yes, outdoor use was probably a waste of time. I would also say it was worth doing until we had data. But then, what else? Outdoor use is just a fraction. How do you get from that to 99%?
And if you live with someone it's pretty hard to avoid spreading sickness with just a mask.
What percentage of transmission do you think happened between friends and family that don't live together?
And you didn't even mention the workplace, which I would expect to be a huge issue and also a big chunk of mask use.
It's possible that the things you're saying are right but you need a lot more evidence of transmission rates in different situations.
in a similar vein, at the office, only large meetings are really a potential problem (for which you can mask or teleconference), but not appropriately-spaced meetings or sitting at a desk with appropriate distance to the next person. for retail workers in potentially close contact with a large number of the public daily (time elongated through multiple people), then a mask can have mitigative effect, but patrons can just distance from each other.
[0]: note also that the virus decays as a function of time, on the order of minutes outside the body.
Maybe we shouldn't approach this with blanket bans because people have different preferences and lifestyles. A ban that is easy for one person to swallow might not be so easy for another. Perhaps we could just price stuff in, so that people can decide? Although, I suppose that would just disproportionately affect poor people..?
You can buy precut pineapple in a plastic jar, on a plasic plate, packed in a cardboard box covered in plastic, on a pallet, wrapped in plastic,... and on the other hand we ban plastic straws.
Now we're literally burning coal in some places, heating water, running the turbines, creating electricity, losing a lot of that power in the wires, to heat a metal disk/spiral, so we can cook, and cook worse than using eg. gas directly.
Who are you to say that my mild inconveniences are more mild than yours?
A few years old. I broke my previous one on accident.
> Your computer?
I got it for free from a coworker and I really don't know how old it is. I think it is from 2016 or so.
> Your car?
1991.
> Have you updated them in the last 5 years?
No,
> Do you play video games?
Yes, on my computer my coworker gave me. Seems to run everything just fine, even though its 5 years old!
> On anything newer than a PS3/Xbox One? Or are you a true environmentalist still gaming on a SNES?
See above.
> Watch films?
Sometimes?
> Ever take a drive to clear your mind?
No.
> Ever drive somewhere you could have theoretically walked, or taken public transit?
Sometimes, but only in a pinch.
> Do you buy all your books pre-owned?
Yes.
> Ever purchase the "collectors edition" of something with some included trinkets/posters/box set?
No.
That is the point of my post. It’s really not that hard to consume less if it is important to you.
There is a ton of free, nearly free, and cheap shit out there that works just fine. It’s not that difficult to use it. I’m not behind economically, my friends think I’m a little weird but whatever- almost everyone I know gets it.
Every time you commute to work, you produce more CO2 than my gas stove does in months.
Every time you fly on a plane (which I do only if I absolutely have to), you produce more CO2 than my stove will in its entire lifetime.
Transportation is an area where changes in behavior can make a significant difference in energy consumption and CO2 production. Gas cooking is probably not.
For example, capture from landfill ?
Blackening: You could do this on anything. I used to work in a cajun/creole place and we had one burner reserved for a cast iron skillet that was on at all times in case someone ordered a blackened whatever. This could be done just as easily on induction
Grilling/Broiling: IDK how you do this without a gas line or charcoal while maintaining timing and flavor. The direct flame required for the cooking also allows for smoke/char that you're going to have a hard time recreating with a heating coil "grill".
Smoking: You can get an electric smoker...but you still need to burn some sort of wood for the smoke. When you get into larger BBQ joints that are doing 50+ shoulders/briskets/whatever a day, IDK how you possibly convert from wood-fire to a fully electric system.
Wood/coal fired pizza ovens: Same as BBQ smokers, there's a difference between this and an electric coil in flavor imparted that changes the end result.Obviously you can make a giant electric pizza oven and have great pizza come out of it, but you literally can't make a Neopolitan pizza without a woodfired oven.
Gas is better for energy security. Gas is better for the city and your families energy security when the power fails.
Gas is culturally better.
Gas might/probably introduces unacceptable levels of pollutants into your home. It might hurt your family.
So you can get rid of it everywhere and heat the earth and decrease security.
Or just get induction yourself. As good as gas for cooking except for the culture bit.
Interesting game theory.
induction: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ikea.c...
resistence: https://www.centurylife.org/is-induction-more-efficient-than...
I definitely agree that cooking on a resistive electric coil is awful and will grudgingly use gas over that.
It's also possible that we live in different parts of the world, and the word "coils" is used to refer to induction stoves where you are.
1: https://www.us.schott.com/innovation/boiling-point-putting-i...
Induction stoves don't do that, that's older resistance stoves.
> being able to dynamically adjust the heat
You can do that on induction, again you seem to be thinking of resistance.
> being able to sear bell peppers against an open flame,
That's a real but perhaps not so meaningful difference. Heat is heat; yes, the low and slow to adjust heat output of resistance stoves compared to gas makes this a big advantage over resistance stoves, but other than induction needing a suitable pan instead of a bare burner, there isn't as much of an advantage here with gas over induction. (OTOH, for any significant recipe I’d do searing in an oven, and I’m not sure the broilers in the electric ovens pared with insuction stoves are uo to snuff compared to gas broilers.)
> I’m almost certain I will never go back to an induction stove for cooking.
From your complaints, I’m almost certain you’ve never used an induction stove in the first place, only an electric resistance stove.
Considering that many individuals are cooking with poor quality, old, and warped pans - gas will be a better cooktop for them.
> gas will be a better cooktop for them.
Nobody should be buying thin, cheap aluminum pans. They heat unevenly and both get too hot too quickly on the flame and lose heat almost immediately if they're of a burner. Solid bottom steel pans will always be the standard because they're lighter than cast iron but hold temp and work well.
/chef rant
It was always nice when I'd get a job somewhere that had good stoves/pans.
You're right about cheap stainless pans. They're the very worst. Stainless has even lower thermal conductivity than cast iron or carbon steel.
Quick question: Other than for omelettes/pancakes, what's the appeal of non-stick for you? Is this a health issue (cutting down butter/oil) or an ease of use thing? I only ask because I'm (PERSONAL OPINOIN, YMMV) not a fan. I find them much harder to clean/care for and am all too familiar with the fact that often the NS coatings degrade into really bad things which then get pulled into the food. Just looking for your opinion, not trying to start a flame war or say you're wrong.
Mostly it's just ease of use, especially cleaning. These particular pans, if still hot, can be cleaned by simply running cold water over the hot pan, then wiping it off. Nope, this doesn't warp the pan, I've been doing it for years. On the occasions when the pan isn't hot enough for that, one or two quick passes with a soapy sponge, and it looks brand new. They can also go in the dishwasher, although I personally don't do that.
The nonstick coating they use is some proprietary one, not Teflon. It's PFOA-free and durable enough to be used with metal utensils. I don't think any of it gets into the food.
I probably sound like a shill at this point, but seriously, I just love these things. I would certainly prefer to not spend ~$100/pan, but after trying one, I ended up with four of them.
I don't believe I've ever measured the amount of oil/butter in which I fry in my life, but I am aware of the opposite end of the spectrum lol. I assumed this was probably the difference in our pan preferences: my solution to sticking is "add more fat".
I also tend to make a lot of pan sauces, and non-stick kills that a lot of the time (no fond = sad sauce).
While the coating is PFOA free, if you're using metal utensils, SOME of that plastic is coming off. Technically fried/burned food is a carcinogen, so IDK what your tolerance for this risk is but for me non-stick has always felt unneeded and knowing that some of this plastic is winding up in some of my food sometimes.(I'm weird though and find washing dishes meditative, probably due to my years in restaurants)
Interesting to get others opinions on this stuff. I could talk knives/pans/kitchen tools for days.
Point is it's an unknown tool, not a new one. It would be like asking a French chef how to use a wok and cleaver instead of saute pans and a chef's knife.
It usually is worse, and still keeps getting worse with every subsequent iteration. But there will always be some pious Gnome or Firefox UI developer to tell the user they are wrong.
I'm sure if the government made a law that all acoustic pianos must be replaced with digital ones, there'd be a ready supply of people crawling out of the woodwork, who could not tell a piano from a typewriter, to tell professional pianists that "digital pianos are better, you just need to get used to it!"