Hacker News Reader

The unresponsiveness of controls drive me nuts as well. Greasy or wet fingers makes it hard to use the controls. This is solvable with physical knobs.

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.

I think that's largely a function of how much the manufacturer is willing to spend on hardware. I have a Bosch Series 8 cook top and it has enough power levels and fast enough PWM cycle that I can't detect the pulsing even with a light weight carbon steel pan.

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.

> 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-...

That's not an option for cook tops integrated into the counter, which is the majority over here. But basically that is what I had in mind.

If you have the oven below the cook tops, you can place the controls there. This is basically how most home ranges look like in Germany: https://imgur.com/a/U2JK6cB

That's how they look in Sweden as well, if you're a bit on the fancy side (which everyone seems to be these days)

> 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.

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.

Definitely not all induction stoves are like that - in my previous appartament I had an induction stove from Bosch, and the frequency of alternating "on/off" was high enough that it was not noticeable at all. It also had 20 power levels and a frying temperature sensor - worked really well. But now I moved to an older house, which one of the cheaper induction stove from Samsung, and that one is terrible - it has exactly the property you describe.

For me, the surplus gas controls meant that only the 100% setting was reproducible, and i ended up almost always using it.

My induction plate has 9 clear steps, and I usually use 1200/1800.

> Greasy or wet fingers makes it hard to use the controls.

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.

You think that’s bad? I have been upset at Rubbermaid for months, because I bought some $6 buckets that cannot pour more than a trickle without spilling their contents everywhere. That brand used to be a favorite of mine, but I now plan to avoid buying any of their products for as long as I can remember that they hire obviously incompetent industrial designers.

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.

My last dishwasher had the analog buttons go bad twice, so when it was time to get a new one I went with the capacitive touch button one, just for that reason (no moving part to break there). Been about 12 years, not a single problem, and the buttons work all the time. Granted, I know a well spec'd/designed hardware button can last a lifetime, but that one didn't even get close, so for me the capacitive's been a pretty good choice.

The fine grain control issue is very solvable. The induction hot plate I use has 100 steps, and is perfectly adept at gently reducing balsamic to a glaze, for example.

It’s a high end unit today but the technology will trickle down.

What hot plate do you use?

Vollrath 59500P Mirage Pro - tried several disappointing consumer models before biting the bullet.

Not all of them...

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:

https://www.miele.de/haushalt/proline-1548.htm

Starts at 1000 euro for 2 heaters. You buy a complet gas stove for that money including a oven.

Yes, Miele is always expensive and this is their professional line. On the up side, they are made to last. Their washing machines for at least 20 years, I would guess their stoves even longer, as there are no big moving parts.

Miele used to be that. I have a Miele stove and oven. The oven's humidifier killed the controller (I have the version where the stove controls are above the oven, I hate controls on the cooking surface) which was north of 400€. I used to be all-in on Miele, now it's giving me a pause. Proper engineering encases stuff in IP67 if it can't stand humidity. At Mieles price-point I'd expect everything being IP67 cased.

Got AEG CCM66400BX (~850 USD at today rate) with mechanical controls, which was my primary requirement.

> awful unresponsive touch controls

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!

It's a terrible design. My cat turned on the stove by walking across the capacitive touch controls.

One of my mum's cats worked out how to push the capacitive button that lifts the range hood out of its nook in the bench. Pretty fascinating because he'll sit there pawing in the general area of it till he raises it, sits there for a bit admiring his work and then leaves.

Mine just doesn't go on when there's no pot on it, and requires more than 1 button press anyway...

I've got an oven and induction cooktop freestanding unit[1] that has big chunky knobs to change the induction power levels. Would never bother with gas again.

[1] https://www.fisherpaykel.com/au/cooking/freestanding-cookers...

I made the mistake of letting a 3rd party pick out my appliances. Never again. They bought me an expensive induction stove. I love the induction, but the damn touch controls make me want to take a sledgehammer to the thing.

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.

There are induction cooking plates with knobs, e.g. Gorenje IC634CLB.

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...

Electric ovens often just plug into a standard power outlet but stoves typically have a high voltage setup. However, if we're talking about your own stove in your own home, you're absolutely allowed to connect it yourself in Germany. You better know what you're doing, though.

Yup. Bosch/Siemens has them too[1], presumably so do the other major brands. I had to look for it when buying, but I didn't have to look for it very hard.

[1] eg https://www.siemens-home.bsh-group.com/de/produktliste/bakin...

My only complaint about my induction hob [0] is the opposite - that touch panel is way too sensitive, can't cope with being wet (even just slightly having been wiped) and beeps at you if you spill something or put something down across the controls, giving you about 3s before it turns off, loses settings including timers, and must be bone dry before you can try to reset. That might be a feature, (emergency shutoff there's a spill?) but it's a really bad/unreliable/over-sensitive one.

[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)

At least in talking to friends in the US, we generally say "gas", "electric coil", "Electric flat top", and "Induction" if it was important to draw a distinction. I haven't encountered anyone who said "Electric" and meant "induction". Granted, induction hasn't really caught on here yet. Lots of older people I talk to don't even know what I'm talking about. My friends who are in a position to buy a stove are generally buying induction, though.

I’m in the US and I usually just hear “gas” or “electric”, but I live in an area where gas is cheap and common.

One nice thing about electric though, is you don't get stuff like this:

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.

That was an unusual setup (at least I hope it's unusual) where the gas piping under the street runs at working pressure (for the furnaces) with no local regulators at the houses. So a central fault (accidental cross connection to high pressure) caused a catastrophe.

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.

Yes those touch pad control on the 'modern' electric stove are horrible. And some electric stoves when have liquid on the surface it just turn off.

Fire cooking is just much better for certain dishes. Stop with this electrifying and digitising everything.

That's exactly why I sought out an induction model which has a "scale" control where all intensity levels (1-12) are available with a single touch. This issue in foreseeable, and we should vote with our money for usable devices.

YES!!! I had the displeasure of having to use one with those exact shit touch controls for a bit less than a year and it made me so furious I swore to never use an induction stove again. The thing was absolutely impossible to control and even when you managed to dial it in, it was unresponsive as hell so I found myself moving the pot between two coils to avoid spewing pasta all over the kitchen.

Why not just buy an induction top with knobs or ranges, for quick control?

Oh my god my place now has touch buttons for the oven and it is so bad. Who thought this was a good idea??

You move a wet pan, and it activates the buttons as well. Absolute garbage.

I can't believe how it's impossible to buy an induction hob with knobs. I'm almost at the point of building a control panel myself.

The writing is on the wall, period, it's just a matter of time. As renewable usage increases, industrial and power grid use of natural gas is going to decrease. Period. That's the whole point. The reason natural gas is so cheap is that we use so much of it; when that starts to change, it'll be prohibitively expensive for restaurants to cook with it. It might get replaced with something other than electric, but fossil-derived natural gas is going away, and cooking is no exception.

That, and if I put anything else on the cooker temporarily it beeps in a really annoying way.