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Comment by leoedin | Hacker News Reader

"no basis in reality". Do you cook? Gas is functionally superior than traditional electric resistance cooking. That's not some evil lobby, that's practical experience. You can instantly control the temperature without juggling multiple burners at different heats. That makes it better. I'd take gas over electric (resistive or halogen) all the time - and I've lived with both.

Induction is on par with gas in controllability - and although there are some downsides, the upsides (so easy to clean!) Make it worth it (imo). I'm not saying that because big induction paid me to either.

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Gas burners put out 3x-4x the power of an electric burner and have much lower thermal mass, so the acceleration in thermal power is much higher and the absolute thermal power is higher.

A large electric burner is 2400-3600 watts, a large gas burner can be 8-16 kw. I think induction could get better power delivery than gas with time.

You can get skillful with electric, you just have to see 30 seconds into the future and anticipate the thermal lag and overshoot when adjusting burner power.

Gas burners may be higher total power, but the heat transfer is surely pretty poor. Induction delivers something like 90% of the power into the pan. Boiling water (which is just an exercise in energy transfer) is much quicker on induction than gas.

In my experience living with an AEG induction stove with a peak single burner power output of 3.7kW - apart from I never did any cooking (apart from boiling water) which needed that level of power for more than a few tens of seconds. The gas stove in my current house felt underpowered in comparison.

No disagreement here, induction has way better power transfer to the food than electric resistance heating. I was only comparing resistance heating with gas.

I cook, and while I acknowledge there are benefits to gas, I can escape the feeling that what a lot of people end up comparing are crappy electric stoves from when they lived in cheap apartments vs higher end gas stoves that they/another homeowner bought for themselves.

My preference for gas has a lot to do with the fact that my pans, unless they're exceptionally heavy, never sit stably on the conventional coil-type electric stove burners. So the pan isn't level and doesn't heat evenly. Gas range grates don't tend to have that problem.

I've never owned an induction cooktop but I'd imagine the flat surface wouldn't have that problem (assuming the pans aren't warped).

Every gas range( Wolf, Viking, GE, Bosch, Maytag ) I've used seems to vary dramatically with temps at different settings.

The lowest setting on some ranges might be a High setting on others.

I used to be a cook in a a few michelin starred restaurants, so you can trust my opinion here.

Gas is far superior to electric heating elements because of the speed at which it can change temperature, and makes flambeing a cinch.

That being said Induction ranges are several orders of magnitude superior to gas. As are ovens with humidity and air flow control.

This is the case for every range, gas or electric. Every time I've moved I'd had to "recalibrate" my expectations and use of the stove to account for different temperatures and quirks.

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