Don’t induction pans have these thick bottoms, which are simply more mass that needs to be heated up? That always took longer than gas with a thin pan for me.
there is no such thing as “induction pans”. either a pan is made out of induction compatible metal or it isn’t. thickness of the bottom doesn’t really enter into it.
Yes but his point has some validity because you really need to use certain pans and pots with induction. When we got induction installed, we had to get rid of about half our pans, and only certain ones perform well.
The whole “instant responsiveness” with induction is true in theory but less noticeable in practice. If anything, I notice it most when turning a pan OFF. You do get a very fast end to the heat output. And there isn’t even any residual conduction after that moment because the top is glass. On a gas stove the iron gratings you rest the pan on will continue bleeding heat into your food for a while.
That doesn’t even make sense, why would a pan magically somehow not begin to heat up right away when it’s in a fluctuating magnetic field? That’s the whole reason it gets hot. With traditional electric, the coil takes time to heat up, which in turn takes time to heat up the pan. But with induction and gas, they’re both heating the pan right away as soon as they turn on, and stop heating the pan when they turn off.
Just read what he said more carefully. He’s got an impression that induction pans have to have thick bottoms and then even though changes to magnetic fields propagate at the speed of light you are always using a heavier pan and therefore you have a lot of pan to heat before the heat can then transfer to your food.
Honestly I think that impression is very dated at this point. The first induction stoves in the 80s and 90s were wacky prototypes that literally came with their own perfectly matched cookery because that’s what it took to make them work. But those days are behind us.
However it is still true that when we had to get rid of half our pans because they didn’t work with our new induction stove, generally speaking yes, we did throw out a lot of the cheap, thin pans that are aluminum based, and yes, we do mostly rely on cast iron, sturdy stainless steel sautee pans, and other heavier cookery now. So everybody has a piece of the truth here.
Anyway. If you don’t cook on induction every day, all you may know is the bit about how changes to magnetic fields propagate at the speed of light and yes yes that’s all true for a pure thought experiment. However in practice there is more than the physics ideal at play.
Any idea that the gas is heating it up faster is just placebo from seeing the fire and feeling the hot air it spews all over the room. None of this changes the fact they said a different pan on two different stove tops, obviously you cannot account for the difference in one variable (type of stove) when you change a different one (the specific pan). It’s like saying gas boils water faster because you always use a smaller volume of water when you use a gas stove.
Well yes and a lot of this whole thread is pretty absurd because many factors go into perceived speed. For one thing, induction as a technology has an obvious potential for energy to travel faster but that doesn’t mean any given induction stove can put out more heating energy per second than any given gas stove. Some fool here challenged me to post a shootout video of 2 pots of water boiling and I was like, which gas burner do I get to use? The huge 5th one? He was like, show me gas beating induction with the same volume of water, same pot, and I was like sure, I’ll just use an aluminum pot :D Jokes aside, there is no way to set up two “equal” gas and induction burners for a shootout because they are apples and oranges.
Then there is the difference between “time to first useable heat” and “time to boil the whole pot of water.”
Then there is the “speed of use,” and there is a whole subthread here about the awful capacitive touch controls that induction stoves use and how much faster it is to just walk up and turn a gas stove’s knob. Similarly, you will sometimes have an induction stove turn off on you if your pot gets misaligned, which is very easy to do. In that case, you don’t reach “my meal is now cooked” faster, or at all.
Throughout all of this we have people who’ve never been near an induction stove but know some basics about the technology and they are rigidly convinced that they are “right” because physics is on their side. But like I said, the experience of using the damn thing is complex. But people LOVE to be confidently right with the weight of science behind them and machine gun all comers with their certainty. It’s been amusing to watch.
Some fool here challenged me to post a shootout video of 2 pots of water boiling and I was like, which gas burner do I get to use? The huge 5th one? He was like, show me gas beating induction with the same volume of water, same pot, and I was like sure, I’ll just use an aluminum pot :D
That was me, and no, that is not what you said, you just said this:
No. You’re welcome to think what you please.
I still want to see it. I honestly don’t really care which burners it is. Use the largest one you have that works with induction for both the induction and gas. Use the most powerful one for each test (unless it’s something like your pan is more narrow than the power burner so the flame doesn’t actually hit it). This is also why I have asked for details about the stove tops being used in such a demonstration, because yes, I’m aware different models have different outputs, because as much as you’d like to believe I am a fool, I’m not one.
I’d also be interested in seeing an empty pan with an IR thermometer pointing at it (maybe different spots, or the golden footage would be an actual thermal camera, but that’s not something I’d assume people would have laying around). Because something many people are saying is that gas is quicker at getting it to some level X of heat, but some other level Y (where Y > X) is faster on induction.
Based on your tone and closing remarks, it sounds like you believe this is just me trying to win an argument. No, it’s something I’m genuinely curious about. There are at least two people here (you’re one of them) that are disagreeing with things that I’ve known to be well understood, so I’m just asking for demonstrations to see why. Maybe y’all have unusually weak induction stoves or unusually strong gas stoves. Maybe it’s just placebo. Maybe it’s just different gut intuition about what the term “fastest to heat” mean. Maybe the sources I have seen are wrong or over simplifications. Yes, I know it’s sort of like comparing apples and oranges, but it honestly feels more like comparing honey crisp and red delicious. These are both tools to apply heat to food. The way they do it is very different, yes, but it’s still just applying heat. And applying heat is something we can actually measure. It’s not something subjective. And yes, I am aware there are differences in how easy to use and how healthy they are, those are more subjective in a sense, and it’s not something I’m trying to figure out. I am only curious about claims about which is faster at heating things. That’s it.
If I had the luxury of having both at my house, I’d record it myself and share if people were interested. But as it is, I can only ask people who have the belief that gas is faster in some way to show evidence of it.
I guess? If you’re talking theoretical? But i actually cook, then it doesn’t really matter that a pan would theoretically be faster if it was able to be produced thinner?
I’m not talking about a theoretically different pan, you said you’re using a different pan for the gas stove than the induction one. If you’re changing something between the two, then it’s obviously different.
That always took longer than gas with a thin pan for me
Don’t induction pans have these thick bottoms, which are simply more mass that needs to be heated up? That always took longer than gas with a thin pan for me.
there is no such thing as “induction pans”. either a pan is made out of induction compatible metal or it isn’t. thickness of the bottom doesn’t really enter into it.
If you’re using a different pan, that’s an unrelated variable that skews the results.
Yes but his point has some validity because you really need to use certain pans and pots with induction. When we got induction installed, we had to get rid of about half our pans, and only certain ones perform well.
The whole “instant responsiveness” with induction is true in theory but less noticeable in practice. If anything, I notice it most when turning a pan OFF. You do get a very fast end to the heat output. And there isn’t even any residual conduction after that moment because the top is glass. On a gas stove the iron gratings you rest the pan on will continue bleeding heat into your food for a while.
That doesn’t even make sense, why would a pan magically somehow not begin to heat up right away when it’s in a fluctuating magnetic field? That’s the whole reason it gets hot. With traditional electric, the coil takes time to heat up, which in turn takes time to heat up the pan. But with induction and gas, they’re both heating the pan right away as soon as they turn on, and stop heating the pan when they turn off.
Just read what he said more carefully. He’s got an impression that induction pans have to have thick bottoms and then even though changes to magnetic fields propagate at the speed of light you are always using a heavier pan and therefore you have a lot of pan to heat before the heat can then transfer to your food.
Honestly I think that impression is very dated at this point. The first induction stoves in the 80s and 90s were wacky prototypes that literally came with their own perfectly matched cookery because that’s what it took to make them work. But those days are behind us.
However it is still true that when we had to get rid of half our pans because they didn’t work with our new induction stove, generally speaking yes, we did throw out a lot of the cheap, thin pans that are aluminum based, and yes, we do mostly rely on cast iron, sturdy stainless steel sautee pans, and other heavier cookery now. So everybody has a piece of the truth here.
Anyway. If you don’t cook on induction every day, all you may know is the bit about how changes to magnetic fields propagate at the speed of light and yes yes that’s all true for a pure thought experiment. However in practice there is more than the physics ideal at play.
Any idea that the gas is heating it up faster is just placebo from seeing the fire and feeling the hot air it spews all over the room. None of this changes the fact they said a different pan on two different stove tops, obviously you cannot account for the difference in one variable (type of stove) when you change a different one (the specific pan). It’s like saying gas boils water faster because you always use a smaller volume of water when you use a gas stove.
Well yes and a lot of this whole thread is pretty absurd because many factors go into perceived speed. For one thing, induction as a technology has an obvious potential for energy to travel faster but that doesn’t mean any given induction stove can put out more heating energy per second than any given gas stove. Some fool here challenged me to post a shootout video of 2 pots of water boiling and I was like, which gas burner do I get to use? The huge 5th one? He was like, show me gas beating induction with the same volume of water, same pot, and I was like sure, I’ll just use an aluminum pot :D Jokes aside, there is no way to set up two “equal” gas and induction burners for a shootout because they are apples and oranges.
Then there is the difference between “time to first useable heat” and “time to boil the whole pot of water.”
Then there is the “speed of use,” and there is a whole subthread here about the awful capacitive touch controls that induction stoves use and how much faster it is to just walk up and turn a gas stove’s knob. Similarly, you will sometimes have an induction stove turn off on you if your pot gets misaligned, which is very easy to do. In that case, you don’t reach “my meal is now cooked” faster, or at all.
Throughout all of this we have people who’ve never been near an induction stove but know some basics about the technology and they are rigidly convinced that they are “right” because physics is on their side. But like I said, the experience of using the damn thing is complex. But people LOVE to be confidently right with the weight of science behind them and machine gun all comers with their certainty. It’s been amusing to watch.
That was me, and no, that is not what you said, you just said this:
I still want to see it. I honestly don’t really care which burners it is. Use the largest one you have that works with induction for both the induction and gas. Use the most powerful one for each test (unless it’s something like your pan is more narrow than the power burner so the flame doesn’t actually hit it). This is also why I have asked for details about the stove tops being used in such a demonstration, because yes, I’m aware different models have different outputs, because as much as you’d like to believe I am a fool, I’m not one.
I’d also be interested in seeing an empty pan with an IR thermometer pointing at it (maybe different spots, or the golden footage would be an actual thermal camera, but that’s not something I’d assume people would have laying around). Because something many people are saying is that gas is quicker at getting it to some level X of heat, but some other level Y (where Y > X) is faster on induction.
Based on your tone and closing remarks, it sounds like you believe this is just me trying to win an argument. No, it’s something I’m genuinely curious about. There are at least two people here (you’re one of them) that are disagreeing with things that I’ve known to be well understood, so I’m just asking for demonstrations to see why. Maybe y’all have unusually weak induction stoves or unusually strong gas stoves. Maybe it’s just placebo. Maybe it’s just different gut intuition about what the term “fastest to heat” mean. Maybe the sources I have seen are wrong or over simplifications. Yes, I know it’s sort of like comparing apples and oranges, but it honestly feels more like comparing honey crisp and red delicious. These are both tools to apply heat to food. The way they do it is very different, yes, but it’s still just applying heat. And applying heat is something we can actually measure. It’s not something subjective. And yes, I am aware there are differences in how easy to use and how healthy they are, those are more subjective in a sense, and it’s not something I’m trying to figure out. I am only curious about claims about which is faster at heating things. That’s it.
If I had the luxury of having both at my house, I’d record it myself and share if people were interested. But as it is, I can only ask people who have the belief that gas is faster in some way to show evidence of it.
“I was like” = “my reaction was” not “I said”
I guess? If you’re talking theoretical? But i actually cook, then it doesn’t really matter that a pan would theoretically be faster if it was able to be produced thinner?
I’m not talking about a theoretically different pan, you said you’re using a different pan for the gas stove than the induction one. If you’re changing something between the two, then it’s obviously different.
Oh, no, it takes more careful reading than that to understand what I said
I think 90% of the people swooning about induction here don’t actually have it in their homes.
I mean, I don’t have it in my home either, that’s why I’m curious if my experiences from a decade ago are outdated.
But I DO have gas and people here saying it’s the slowest way with such confidence makes me think they are AI bots.