The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

What are the views of the experts?

Thanks
--
John Alexander,

Remove NOSPAM if replying by e-mail

John wrote:

The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

Induction all the way; better even than gas. Though you can't use ally
pans (but the decent pans aren't.)

Ceramic hobs are the work of satan.

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

In article , Huge wrote:
On 2011-08-04, John wrote:
The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

What are the views of the experts?

Ceramic hobs are utterly deeply crap. Induction hobs are merely crap.

Breaking up frozen mince and chipping burnt bits off are amongst the
things you should not do whilst the pot is on a glass-topped cooker of
either sort ...

Nick
--
Serendipity: http://www.leverton.org/blosxom (last update 29th March 2010)
"The Internet, a sort of ersatz counterfeit of real life"
-- Janet Street-Porter, BBC2, 19th March 1996

On Thu, 4 Aug 2011 18:40:56 +0100, John wrote:

The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

With ceramic hobs the heat transfered from the heating element
through the glass and into the pan. The glass gets FING hot. It's not
without reason you can get ceramic hob cleaners and scrapers.
Anything that gets onto a hot bit of glass burns and sticks well...

Induction the heat is generated in the pan base, the glass will still
get hot but nothing like the searing temperature of a ceramic one.
You must have magnetic pans for a induction hob, remember aluminium
and stainless steel are not magnetic. Stainless pans that work on an
induction hob have a lump of ordinary steel in the base.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"John" wrote in message
...
The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

What are the views of the experts?


Good explanation here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_hob

Huge writes:

On 2011-08-04, Scott M wrote:
John wrote:

The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

Induction all the way; better even than gas

[Derisive snort]

Depends on the type and what you use it for. If you want to cook
something at a low temperature and you have an induction hob
with a temperature sensor, its much easier than with gas.
Generally, Id rate them about the same as gas, but the good and
bad applications are different. No doubt there are induction
hobs that are utter crap, but then thats also true of gas (poor
spread of flame, over-high minimum setting, biggest burner too
feeble). (I have a 3kW single ring one €” Buffalo €” from Nisbets
that I use mostly for sauces, rice and stock. It has a shut off
timer which is useful for the last two, but I think the current
model from Nisbets lacks that feature)

Certainly ceramic hobs are horrible.

--
Jón Fairbairn
http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html (updated 2010-09-14)

On 5 Aug 2011 10:37:16 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2011-08-05, Jon Fairbairn wrote:
Huge writes:

On 2011-08-04, Scott M wrote:
John wrote:

The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

Induction all the way; better even than gas

[Derisive snort]

Depends on the type and what you use it for. If you want to cook
something at a low temperature and you have an induction hob
with a temperature sensor

Ahhh, that's likely what makes them usable. I bought a 1.8kW single ring
Kenwood one to see what they were like (*)
Exactly what I did. Quickly passed it on to my mother who recently
became a widow and only needs to cook for one now.She liked it so much
she purchased another two ring one for when she need to do a bit more
and coupled with a combination micro and something called a Remoska
(sp?) she swears by has allowed her to remove the solid fuel Rayburn
we all grew up with. At 80 years she found stoking and emptying it a
bit of a chore and there are no Lambs to thaw out now.

..
heatup speed is deeply impressive (to the extent I keep boiling things
over because they come to boil much faster than I expected), but the
simmer performance is dismal, since it works by cycling full power off
and on, so instead of a steady simmer you get "boil/silence/boil/silence".
Never lived in a place with gas so I cannot compare with it but hated
the electric hobs I have experienced in the past with the poor
controllability and the Induction we purchased is very controllable.
Possibly it is working by the on off method when the settings get down
to the lower end of the 0 to 9 scale of each the rings. Cannot
remember the power of them off hand but there are two medium power
,one low and one High. simmering seems successful particularly on the
low power one. A feature which I find useful is the ability to couple
the power of the medium rings or the high and low together into one of
the pair.
Very useful to boil up our large 6L kettle quickly or get the pressure
cooker up fast.
As others have said you need the correct cookware,you do see metal
disks advertised which are intended to make other cookware work .
These do nothing more than get hot and act as a hotplate.
I experimented with a steel disk rather than pay out the £20 for one
as it may have saved purchasing a new jam making pot. The hob sensed
overheat and shut down. In have no reason to think a purchased
converter would do any better so my advice is don't bother trying one
if it were a consideration.
OTOH I horrify the OT by saving washing up and occasionally just put a
eg an opened tin of baked beans in the middle of the small ring and
have no trouble gently heating up the contents and a set of supposedly
stainless steel serving bowls heat things up beautifully when placed
on a rings.
Certainly ceramic hobs are horrible.

The Induction hob is the first one that have had that is really easy
to clean. The glass never really gets hot enough to bake things to it
unless you are careless with your utensils,sugar stuck on the exterior
base of a pan is one to look out for. Gas would just burn it off but
the heat from a pan on the induction will melt it enough to become a
sticky.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet. Most manufactures advise that
people with pacemakers might have too seek further advice to check
that the pacemaker isn't interfered with.
Not sure if it is real issue or a 1 in a million chance but it easy to
dismiss when your life doesn't depend on such a device.
An older colleague years ago would step out of a room when a Microwave
was operated.


G.Harman

Huge wrote:

simmer performance is dismal, since it works by cycling full power off
and on, so instead of a steady simmer you get "boil/silence/boil/silence".

Decent ones (eg deDietrich) have stepped power output for the top half
of the setting and PWM (of the lowest setting) below. Beats the gas hobs
that don't go low enough to keep the flame alive.

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

On 5 Aug 2011 21:38:20 GMT, Huge wrote:

BTW, did some stir-frying on my induction hotplate this evening. Bloody
brilliant. Much better than gas ...

What even one of
these?

http://www.allfoodequipment.com.au/p...ldstein-model-
cw-1

Note the gas consumption 54MJ/hr that's about 13kW.

One need serious heat to stir fry properly. When I was in china blown
coal fired version of the above where being used the underside of the
pan would glow red...

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 5 Aug 2011 21:38:20 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2011-08-05, Scott M wrote:
Huge wrote:

simmer performance is dismal, since it works by cycling full power off
and on, so instead of a steady simmer you get "boil/silence/boil/silence".

Decent ones (eg deDietrich) have stepped power output for the top half
of the setting and PWM (of the lowest setting) below. Beats the gas hobs
that don't go low enough to keep the flame alive.

BTW, did some stir-frying on my induction hotplate this evening. Bloody
brilliant. Much better than gas ...

I stir-fried on my Bosch ceramic hob two or three days ago. Really
enjoyable, tasty and I'm still alive. Where's the problem?

--
Frank Erskine

"Frank Erskine" wrote in message
...
On 5 Aug 2011 21:38:20 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2011-08-05, Scott M wrote:
Huge wrote:

simmer performance is dismal, since it works by cycling full power off
and on, so instead of a steady simmer you get
"boil/silence/boil/silence".

Decent ones (eg deDietrich) have stepped power output for the top half
of the setting and PWM (of the lowest setting) below. Beats the gas hobs
that don't go low enough to keep the flame alive.

BTW, did some stir-frying on my induction hotplate this evening. Bloody
brilliant. Much better than gas ...

That would be a gas ring and not a wok burner?


I stir-fried on my Bosch ceramic hob two or three days ago. Really
enjoyable, tasty and I'm still alive. Where's the problem?

Heat transfer is the problem.
You can't use a proper wok and have to use a flat bottomed one.
The flat bottom means you need more fat to fry in.
The bigger the ring the more flat bottom you need, eventually you are just
using a frying pan.

"John" wrote in message
...
The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

What are the views of the experts?

We've had an Induction hob (Aeg) for just over 2 years now an find it
fantastic. We much prefer it to others we've had, including convention
electric, "solar glow" (or some such name), and gas. I wanted gas but the
Boss wasn't keen. The Boss won and we went with the Induction. Don't tell
her I said so, but she was right ;-)

You do need the right pans. I like Le Creuset and it is great for those.

We've not had problems with the Aeg hob but we've been less impressed with
the other Aeg appliances bought at the same time. I'm not sure I'd buy Aeg
again.

Brian

"Dave Liquorice" writes:

On 5 Aug 2011 21:38:20 GMT, Huge wrote:

BTW, did some stir-frying on my induction hotplate this
evening. Bloody brilliant. Much better than gas ...

What even one of these?

http://www.allfoodequipment.com.au/p...ein-model-cw-1

Note the gas consumption 54MJ/hr that's about 13kW.

One need serious heat to stir fry properly.

Indeed. I have something similar¹ thats only 8kW, but I find it
to be enough for most domestic wok-ery.

However, what should have been mentioned in this thread is that
induction cookers are more efficient. I measured the energy
taken to cook a pan of rice on gas and the same on the induction
cooker. The induction hob used about one third of the energy of
the gas hob. Of course, the losses between the power station and
pan mean that one doesnt save energy by using induction instead
of gas, but

(a) if you are stuck with electric (as the OP is), this is a
significant saving

(b) you can divide the power needed for a wok cooker by three,
so for example
http://www.nisbets.co.uk/products/pr...ductCode=CC792
or
http://www.nisbets.co.uk/products/pr...ductCode=CD407
(cheaper by a mile!) are only 3kW, but Id expect them to work
pretty much as well as my gas burner. (Note that these are
induction hobs shaped to fit a wok; a flat one wouldnt be
useable).



[1] the one burner one of these
http://www.imperialrange.co.uk/downl...s/hotplate.pdf
with a wok-ring and burner.

--
Jón Fairbairn
http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html (updated 2010-09-14)

Frank Erskine wrote:

I stir-fried on my Bosch ceramic hob two or three days ago. Really
enjoyable, tasty and I'm still alive. Where's the problem?

Ah, but has the hob cooled down yet?

I always liken ceramic hobs to nuclear power stations. Takes ages to get
them going and even longer before it's stopped generating heat!

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

"John" wrote in message
...
The cooker is dying and SWMBO is looking at a replacement. It will
remain electric and so the question is induction hob or a ceramic/glass
hob.

What are the views of the experts?


I am very pleased with the Bosch induction hob I installed a few years ago.
I like the way that it does not radiate heat and turns itself off when you
remove a pan. My only complaint is that it did not come with a timer built
in, so that I could set it to run at full power for 5 min and then at a
reduced level for the next 15 min.

The one we have has 17 power levels. 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3 ...... 9 Two of
the 'rings' also have a boost setting.

Michael Chare

On 8/10/2011 6:01 AM, Owain wrote:
On Aug 5, 3:40 pm, wrote:
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet. Most manufactures advise that
people with pacemakers might have too seek further advice to check
that the pacemaker isn't interfered with.


My mother has a pacemaker. I could buy her an induction hob and report
back :-

Naughty boy.
It may not be all that dangerous for an ordinary pacemaker, which is
designed to kick in when the heart rate slows too much - but there are
some people who have 24/7 devices, to replace the function of the AV node.