How bad is my gas stove?

I wish this type of functionality was more widely available. There is absolutely no need for devices like this to be expensive.

Definitely an electric oven though.

Snideness aside, the fact that you have to concern yourself with what pans you buy for an induction stove is enough reason for many to not buy one. You can no longer buy any pan at a store, you must do your research first.

Throw out my current pans and buy even more expensive ones? You're not exactly selling me the induction here.

Anecdotally, the gas feels slower. It seems to take an age to bring things up to the boil compared to my old induction.

Also, cleaning up after spills is a pain compared to a glass surface.

If a crappy plug-in hob can boil water that quickly, it can cook that quickly too.

Next move I'm getting that sorted out - no more gas! (Mind you, companies are beginning trials here in the UK mixing Hydrogen with the gas supply, so there's a part of me that still wonders at the future benefit/end to end efficiency).

If it has a flat bottom, then it’s not a wok.

Personally, I hate cooking on induction. My parent have it and it never worked for me. I need to see/hear the gas to be able to control the heat properly.

Once they shut off the gas lines due to the energy transition, I’m going to run a gas pipe from the kitchen to my basement and just buy it in canisters.

High carbon steel pans (the kind used by kitchen services) have been brilliant. Every time I've seen an induction cooktop in use in a commercial service (for example, at my work place cafeteria at the "rice meal" station) they use high carbon steel pans.

The biggest problem: no cooking during power outages, which happen around 2-3x a year.

Gas isn’t even remotely worth the downsides but there’s a number of dishes I can make that are easier and higher quality to do on gas, like if I’m trying to sear a large pan full of meat.

Then we moved to a house with an old electric stove. The pans turned to pure magic. More non-stick than our teflon pans.

Then we moved again to a place with an induction stove and bam: the pans are shit again.

It is obviously me, of course. Heat is heat. But something about induction makes me unable to use carbon steel.

Absolutely unmatched for boiling water, and I'm very happy using it with a cast iron dutch oven for slow cooking and soups or stews.

I could never have that in my kitchen :(

Not tried a wok, yet, though.

On gas we have a wok ring that just sits on top of the burner.

This is the epitome of the current green movement. Proponents want an unnecessary luxury green product subsidized for higher income households, even though there are perfectly fine substitutes that are just as good for the environment at 1/5 the cost you just described. I just can't get on board with a movement like this.

For people using small burners in apartments, single ring plug in induction cooktops are available for about $100 with no other work required.

With gas it takes an hour.

No we shouldn't. Whatever you care about, like maybe CO₂, at those prices you can get a better bang for your buck elsewhere. For new installations it might make sense.

Gas is dangerous, lines should be checked every couple of years (pressurized or vacuum tested) and the rubber connection hose for the range should be replaced every five years or so.

For less than 8 hours of work I'm sure.. I'm in the wrong profession.

It could be worse, try doing this in an old building in NYC.

The alternative ranges produce zero. Combustion heating, cooking and driving produces NO2, electric doesn't. The article is specifically about NO2, it has specific adverse health effects.

> Every time I cook the indoor air pollution also spikes "

What kind of pollution are you measuring? My air purifier reacts to frying too and shows "high pollution', but it just measures particles in the air - it cannot tell apart cancerous coal ash from harmless pollen and frying oil getting in the air.

Yes, and the real problem is vents that do not exhaust outside. Even in code crazy California, it is perfectly legal to have vents that just blow the air around.

You regulate up or down in steps, and the controls sometimes have trouble recognizing your fingers if they are wet. There’s also no tactile feedback.

I’d much rather turn a knob.

Then it would be perfect.

Gas is nice mainly for things that are really temperature sensitive like searing meat, using a wok, etc. Of course when cooking stuff like that you want good ventilation for this because otherwise you end up with a lot of grease and soot all over the kitchen. So, the pollution of gas matters less if you have that set up correctly.

The main reason gas is so nice for cooking is how quickly you can adjust the temperature. Induction plates also respond really quickly of course. The old fashioned red hot spiral things, are much more tricky because they stay hot for so long; it takes a minute to reduce the heat; or to raise it. I have one at home and I'm used to it but it is still annoying. A neat trick is to simply move pans away from the heat to control it.

Induction plates don't have that problem. But I really hate the touch controls many of these things have. They are very fiddly; especially with wet hands and they also can get hot. I'd prefer to have some old fashioned dials. But in terms of instant, fine grained control, they are actually pretty good.

Gas stoves are great at bringing a pot of water to a boil. But they are not so good at very low heat, like leaving a covered pot to simmer. Most gas ranges don't go as low as I would like, and I need to watch the pot more carefully and stir more frequently than I would at home.

I'm sure most of my issues are familiarity. If I had spent my life cooking with gas, my techniques would have developed to work better with gas. But now that I'm set in my ways I will stick with electric.

Having bought an induction stove when refitting our kitchen, then replacing it with a different one a couple of months later, I can advise that the size of the elements matters. The 'linked zones' thing seems to be rubbish, and doesn't heat evenly (maybe it does on really high end stuff). I now have a three-element stove (60cm) - one really big one and two smaller ones. I don't think I've ever used 4 burners at once anyway...

I just wish there was an API for induction stoves; interfacing with a thermometer to keep a certain temperature, or for a set time, or even a removably physical control panel (i.e. knobs) that would let you put it away and keep the flat-top thing (which is actually really nice when you need the bench space).

One of the main issue with common domestic gas stoves is that the heat is not well distributed, and good pans don’t necessarily have a great thermal conductivity. This is a problem when what you’re hearing is not liquid enough to redistribute heat by convection. Another is that you don’t control the temperature of the flame, just its size. So temperature control is always finicky, particularly at low temperatures.

So personally I go for induction most of the time, and a barbecue when I need a flame.

A gas stove is a lot more powerful (10-60kW vs 1-3kW) but a lot of that heat simply escapes upwards.

I agree with you there. I've had gas for the last ten years, and recently moved to a place with induction. It's a significant change.

I had regular electric for a long time before I had gas, so there was an adjustment period there, too, but I got used to it pretty quickly. But induction is somehow very different from either of those two.

I've been on induction for six months, and I still have such a very hard time with temperature control that I cook at home a lot less than I used to. It has a thousand controls, but only seems to have two settings: surface of the sun, and off.

That said, I'm OK with the move toward eliminating natural gas in homes. I just wish I ended up with a regular electric stove top instead of induction. But it's an apartment, so you get what you get.

We bought a profesional induction plate, 4.5kW, 100$ on ebay. Performance wise, its ~4x better than the 4kW gas stove it replaced. The time required to heat 50L of water to 60C went down from 60min with gas to about 10-15 min with induction.

Instantaneously hot, and instantaneously cold. For us it opened a lot of new ways of cooking.

What kind of cooking do you prefer doing on a gas stove over an induction stove?

Obviously the same pots and pans don't work on both, but if you have a top of the line induction stove you know this already.

Induction took some getting used to, but outside of a few very specific things (mainly stir-fry), it's better than gas across the board for me.

This is a mis-framing of the relevant tradeoffs. Your options aren't a truncated life of joy vs. a longer life of asceticism. The tradeoff might instead be that one of your kids gets asthma and suffers with the condition for their entire life. Or maybe you get cancer and, yes, you die earlier, but it's not an instant death. Maybe you live with that cancer for a decade of treatment and remission and treatment again and ultimately an intense suffering like you've never experienced.

So instead of dying in your sleep at 80, you die of lung cancer at 70, which you were diagnosed with at 60, after a decade of struggling with the emphysema you discovered when you were 50.

You're not just rolling the dice on a shorter life weighed against a happier one; you're rolling for an increased likelihood of a much worse life (that's also shorter).

You're right that safety isn't always #1. But I hope you're thinking about the actual tradeoffs involved and not some kind of idealized version of them.

Sure electric instead of gas, bike instead of car, N95 instead of cloth, are all beneficial choices on an individual level, but it’s much more important for authorities to create incentives to encourage optimal behaviors.

Want to use a wood stove and understand the risks? Great! But maybe building codes are stricter to discourage using them in new construction and/or regulations require proper ventilation.

We shouldn’t expect every individual consumer to be an expert on indoor pollution, carbon emissions, and viral transmission. You’ll never get the kind of aggregate behavior needed for significant change, and the people most likely to suffer are those who don’t have the leisure time and ability to install NO2 sensors all over their house and contact friends who are experts.

If we can save and significantly improve lots of lives by improving appliances, that seems like a good outcome. I personally don't want resperitory problems - for myself, my family, or my neighbors - it makes it hard to enjoy all those other risky things I love.

> I cringe whenever a business sends me a notification saying, "Your safety is our #1 priority!" and proceeds to explain why I won't be allowed to do yet another thing I am accustomed to do.

I don't recall ever receiving a notice from a business telling me that I am not allowed to do something (other than for IP). Who is sending these notices? Can you provide an example?

You're going to be disappointed then. Closer to 40 years of living, 30 years of being imprisoned by your failing health.

I support your right to make stupid decisions but at least make sure they're accurate and informed stupid decisions.

This is called safetyism. It’s the notion that perfectly safe conditions are worth the immense tradeoff they require, like removing individual freedom and agency. But it is also the recent trend of claiming safety matters above all other factors to an absolute degree, and that everyone should be forced to value it as such. We see this manifested in political actions that are absolute (mandates, bans etc). There are other definitions for safetyism as well (https://quillette.com/2018/09/02/is-safetyism-destroying-a-g... ). But my point is that life isn’t one size fits all and our policies shouldn’t be either.

Thanks for sharing your experience of working with wood alongside your family. These experiences and their value are unknown to most city dwellers, and they default to assigning zero value on these things when they propose banning everything that isn’t part of their own life. I get what you’re saying about a wood stove. There is value in that ritual and tradition and life’s pleasures. I personally love a gas range for a similar reason, which is that cooking over a flame is culturally important to me. I also find it is simply far better than my induction top for most cooking (except boiling water, for which I have a $20 electric kettle anyways).

In the case of gas stoves and gas furnaces, it’s astonishing that people ignore that most new setups vent to the outside, which is required in many areas. Even if NO2 is elevated, my feeling is that not everything in life has to be 100% clean or safe, since life inherently comes with risks and it is up to each individual to make personal choices about what risks to tolerate for the benefits. Most people cooking daily with gas stoves live long healthy lives and don’t have issues stemming from NO2 exposure and very few are sensitive enough that a minor elevation of NO2 would cause health issues. This is only a problem for the most sensitive of people.

So are gas ranges really a problem or just an overblown fear by proponents of safetyism or climate activists used to justify top down gas bans?

Induction hobs are much better in thst regard, but they fail in other ways - eg with gas i can lift the pan slightly above to shake it ans mix the food, with induction the second i get a few mm above the surface, the pan stops being heated.

Its a massive change in process and feel... Its a bit like going fron riding a motorbike (extremely responsive) to piloting a canal boat where action and effect can be minutes apart.

I don’t think it’s a “problem” per say, but it’s different. The flame indicates temperature in a way most people understand. Have you used a wok? How about cast iron? There’s a lot of nuance to certain dishes and methods that don’t work as well on an electric stove. The flame itself rises and hits the pan in three dimensions and a more distributed way.

I’m not saying it’s not okay (I’ve used an electric stove for a few years). But it’s not “puzzling” why people would like a flame to cook.

I think there are some nice electric stoves that use infrared heating and are plenty powerful and reasonably reactive, maybe that's what you have. Induction, of course, is even better.

Maybe the problem is really about price and quality. A gas stove will always work, even the cheapest gas stove has good temperature control and power. Even a camping stove can do decent cooking. You can also put anything on top of it, including your cheap bent aluminium frying pans. Cheap electric stoves lack power, and electric stoves, induction in particular require good quality, compatible cookware to work correctly.

Another problem with cheap electric stoves (especially induction) is that a lot of them have absolutely terrible capacitive switches that work half of the time. I never had this issue with knobs on a gas stove, even the cheap ones.

I'd take anything over the awful "student house electric oven" I have now though.

The temperature is all over the map.

I had to simmer something at 180F and it took me 30 minutes to find the right power setting and a big pot of water to stabilize the temperature.

Gas furnace, stove, dryer and water heater are much nicer than the electric counterparts

https://github.com/seandlg/sds011docker

From the linked study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4909253/):

> Ventilation hood installation did not significantly reduce indoor NO2 concentrations in our study, and there was a trend toward higher NO2 concentrations in follow-up visits, although not statistically significant. The reason for the lack of efficacy of ventilation hoods is uncertain.

The research explains that the lack of effectiveness of hoods could be due to many factors (improper installation, lack of use), but at least at first glance it seems that a hood doesn't help with NO2.

As someone who has always preferred a gas stove over electric, this doesn't really align with what I want to believe =). But I also realize there are many times I preheat the oven and cook a frozen lasagna for 50 mins or boil water on the stove without turning on my range hood, so I definitely understand at least one reason that a gas stove with a range hood may not help in terms of reducing NO2 levels in my house. I tend to use the range hood if I'm cooking something really smelly or messy (ie frying), but don't think of it if I'm just baking something in the gas oven for a long period of time.

I know for my part I'm going to be buying an induction cook top for things like boiling water or frying foods where I really don't need gas. I have kids and don't really wanna add to risk of air pollutant exposure.

I wish residential vent hoods came with interconnects like commercial kitchens so they would come on automatically whenever cooking.

Don't know about NO2 or VOC.

Same with furnaces, heaters, etc.

I like my current setup - the entire boiler is outside and away from any windows.

From the paper linked[1]:

"the exposure of the non-pregnant models at the largest distance (300 mm from the cabinet) is always compliant with the basic restrictions for the general public even when including all body tissues for the current averaging."

And to consider the case of close distances...

"the exposure limits for the general public can be exceeded by more than a factor of 5 (distance < 50 mm; Fig. 5). When considering CNS tissues only, the basic restrictions for the general public can be reached for the child models (Thelonious and Roberta) at close distances from the cabinet edge when allowing for the overall uncertainty of this evaluation. The combined numerical and experimental uncertainty was assessed as 6.0 dB (k = 2; Supplementary Table V) or as 0.50–2.0 of the provided exposure with a confidence interval of 95%."

I read this as don't push your kids face onto the stove top, which is probably good advice no matter what cook surface you're using. It also reads to me as having the cooktop being further back as desirable, and not being directly inline with the edge of the counter.

As for pregnant mothers...

"The exposure of the mother and fetus models exceeds the basic restrictions for the general public by a factor of 6 for the mother and 3.5 for the fetus when standing at the cabinet edge, if considering all body tissues. Given the numerical and experimental uncertainty, the violation of the occupational limits can be regarded as likely for the devices with high B-fields. For CNS tissues of the fetus, the induced current density can reach the order of magnitude of the basic restrictions when taking into account the uncertainty. The combined numerical and experimental uncertainty for the exposure of the fetus was assessed as 6.4 dB (k = 2; Supplementary Table VI) or as 0.48–2.1 of the provided exposure with a confidence interval of 95%."

From this data, it seems to me that the best way to use these devices is to force yourself to 'reach' over the countertop rather than being directly up against the cook surface.

From the summary of the paper.

"The measured B-fields of 13 professional induction cooktops and the three domestic devices evaluated in Viellard et al. [2006] were evaluated experimentally. The field strengths are compliant with exposure limits for the general public when measured at 300 mm from the cooktops as specified by IEC 62233 [IEC, 2005]. The current densities reached the exposure limits according to the ICNIRP 1998 guidelines for the general public at 300 mm from the cooktop. The results were then scaled to the measured B-field levels of the professional and domestic cooktops. The findings can be summarized as follows: Most of the measured cooktops are compliant with the field limits for public exposure at a distance of 300 mm from the cooktop. Due to the high field gradients in the close environment of the cooking zone, most devices exceed these limits at closer distances. When considering the entire body of the exposed user for the current density averaging, the basic restrictions of the current density for the general public can be significantly exceeded and reach occupational levels. A generic worst-case cooktop which is compliant at the measurement distance specified by IEC 62233 can lead to current densities that exceed the basic restrictions for the general public by a factor of 16. The brain tissue of young children can be overexposed by a factor of 2 with respect to the basic restrictions for the general public if they come close to the cooktop. If exposure limits of the general public apply to the fetus of a mother in a working environment, the current density in the CNS tissue of the fetus can exceed the basic restrictions while they are still fulfilled for the mother."

There's pros/cons with any cooking devices, and it makes sense to consider the potential risks with any heat source. With that said, we are not talking about the induction burner spewing these fields across your entire kitchen, unlike say, with gas burners. From my point of view given your source's data, it is still a much healthier option to operate these devices properly than to subject the family preparing the meal in the kitchen with me to a poisonous gas.

Anecdotally speaking, my rental doesn't have a fume hood (yes in 2022!), and if the gas burners are operated my partner gets nauseous with headaches sitting in the other room. The benefits of induction are quite clear and until something better comes along, I don't see myself ever going backwards to inferior heating devices.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22674188/

Ok, but having just shopped for range hoods (and purchased a 1000 CFM Thermador hood) there are plenty of good hoods in the same price range by various manufacturers that do 800-1000 CFM. I'm not trying to say the Fotile hoods aren't good, I honestly didn't look at those. But I don't think there's anything particularly unique about the fact that they do 800+ CFM.

You're right though, there are plenty of underpowered hoods out there also, and one should definitely pay attention when purchasing, along with other factors such as source of make up air.

I've never seen a stove without a vent hood above it...?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/article/guate...

for taste charcoal/wood > gas > electric IMO.

See this EPA testing table for some measures of accuracy: https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox/evaluation-emerging-a...

See this EPA testing table for some measures of accuracy: https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox/evaluation-emerging-a...

https://ota.dc.gov/release/dangers-using-your-stove-home-hea...

As in, boiling the water? Wasn’t it very humid?

uHoo Smart Air Quality Sensor – 9 in 1 Indoor Air Monitor with Temperature and Humidity Gauge, CO2, Dust (PM2.5), VOC, NO2, Allergen Meter -to Breathe Easy and Boost Health with App https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076PV9X99/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...

For example, natural gas powers my furnace, water heater, stove, and fireplace, as is common in the midwestern US. It would be impractical, not to mention expensive and wasteful to upgrade my electrical system to 200A and replace each appliance. Utility costs would increase too, and I couldn't use my fireplace or range when the power goes out (a battery backup would solve this, for another $2k).

I heat my entire home with electric, baseboard heaters, and have 200A. And it gets to -40C where I live!

(Power comes from hydroelectric, and is cheap)

What are you doing?

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...

Transportation accounts for nearly 1/3 of the US's greenhouse gas emissions and has been the fastest growing contributor. The vast majority of that comes from light and medium duty vehicles so personal cars and trucks.

If we stopping building our cities to require driving and electrify where we can, we'll see a huge reduction in GHG emissions.

Accordingly Metro Vancouver wants to get people to stop heating their homes and water with gas.

If people think they "need" gas stoves that can be a barrier to moving them toward electric heating. If they "need" gas for the stove, might as well heat with it too.

Creating greater understanding of the health risks of gas ranges and that induction stoves are just as good if not better is good in helping make people more comfortable with the idea of shifting to electric next time they need to replace a main component of their heating system.

This is the big problem with climate change and how it’s presented. It’s far too ambiguous for any one person to be able to make an actionable difference. So companies that sell products (like induction ranges) execute a campaign that enables individuals to feel like they are making a difference while selling them a product

The irony is that the carbon cost to manufacture and distribute that new induction range will likely offset any amount of future carbon burned from simply continuing to use and repair your current range. If you’re in the market for a new range then yes consider induction.

But if your stove is working fine, the better action is to write to your elected officials and encourage them to make policies that have a far broader impact than how you make your eggs each morning.