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Notes -
The most fun/silly culture war argument in a while: STOVES!
Hey, did you hear the Democrats are coming for your gas stoves? Variations on that were the instigation of a bizarre culture war spat last week. Apparently some government official speculated about banning gas stoves because of health concerns, and that started the now-predictable cycle of "No, you're wrong!" bouncing around social media. I saw various reactions to this in different spaces and they were interesting in the way they were filtered through the various political lenses. In the US gas stoves are mainly a blue-state / higher-end restaurant phenomenon, so I found the conservative media response to be a bit baffling because it's not really their fortress under assault here. On the other hand saw lots of bourgeois PMC foodies declaring that you would only take their gas stoves from charred, dead hands.
I'm a hobbyist cook. I love trying new foods, experimenting with new recipes, and making food for friends and family. I'm the one who gets chained to the stove all through Christmas time (I like it though). So I found this a refreshingly fun (amid the inherent stupidity) culture war. My short opinion, having cooked with both gas and electric (rare to have gas in Canada); average gas stoves are better than average electrics, but among better ranges it depends what you want to do. I have a nice electric stove right now and I reckon I prefer it to gas because it is a lot more powerful which helps for high-temperature cooking (good for meat, Chinese food), and also is more constant at low temperatures (I make a lot of soft-scrambled eggs). But gas generally has much finer temperature control which is very practical for restaurant applications and to a certain extent rewards higher skill in a cook.
Gas does have real health/environmental implications. Yes, good ventilation goes a long way to preventing serious health risks, but it's not nothing. And gas is much less efficient energy-wise; not only does it shed a lot of heat in the energy transfer to the cooking vessel, it's in general less efficient than electric (but often cheaper depending on your locale). How much these considerations weigh against the legitimate reasons people have for preferring gas for cooking depends on the individual. But certainly people resent a top-down government intervention to force them to change their preference, and are skeptical of the reasoning presented.
But you know what this really reminds me of? The hot culture war debate of 20 years ago: incandescent lightbulbs vs. fluorescents. I've mentioned this a few times before here, but it's one of those culture wars that just disappeared, and I think many people would be genuinely forgetful or surprised if you brought it up to them now. It was a big thing at the time: as a kid I would remember reading the op-ed section of the newspaper and see endless letters to the editor about how using incandescent bulbs were our God-given right or you were a heartless rapist of the earth if you didn't immediately switch to fluorescents. The breakdown of that culture war was pretty simply liberal/conservative (should be obvious which side was which), whereas this one doesn't align people so neatly. But what the real comparison to the present is what ended the previous culture war: a new technology came along that made both previous ones (and their partisans) obsolete. LEDs ended up just being simply superior to both in every way. Progress ended the culture war.
Enter: induction cooking. It's electric. No particulate emissions. It's extremely powerful. It has fantastic temperature control. It's getting cheaper. You can have a traditional range, or just a hotplate: it's flexible and scalable. It's much safer, both for risk of burns and for starting fires. The only downside is that some existing cookware isn't compatible with it (you need ferrous metals in your vessel for it to work).
My prediction is that by the end of the decade induction replaces all gas stoves and most electrics. And twenty years later people will be bemused and embarrassed that we had such a silly argument over this.
Im guessing cast iron type pans are banned on induction stoves. Because they don’t work on electric either as I’ve learned and ruined the glass surface before and had to replace it. That’s probably an area that a lot of people would hate to lose.
Gas is sexy. I have electric now. Personally I find electric more convenient but prefer the fire.
The health risks I’m making a small gas is being vastly overrated. And is going to fall into the category of studies that don’t replicate.
I'm confused as to why cast iron wouldn't work on electric. I use cast iron for maybe >80% of my cooking (either my skillet or Dutch oven) and I've had no problems.
Cast iron is presumably perfect for induction because of how ferrous it is, but I've not had the chance to try it myself.
Glass surface. Cast iron usually coarser so high risks of scratching or cracking the glass surface. My electric stove manual said not to use them.
I think mine said something similar, but:
1: Who cares? It's a stove.
2: Glass is harder than steel, and certainly harder than cast iron -- I use old cast iron pots on my (cheapish) glass-top electric all the time (for around 15 years) and the top is not scratched.
Once the shitty electronics in my stove finally fail, I will probably get induction -- mostly because there is no gas at my house, and it's not worth getting a big propane tank just for the stove. But I think it will need to be close to the high-end of induction-stove prices, because the cheaper units probably do have issues that would make them net-worse than my current electric unit.
I do have a little plugin induction hotplate thing that I use sometimes for canning/simmering/outdoor burner -- the top on it is plastic and probably could be scratched in heavy use, but a) I don't care and b) I haven't noticed it being scratched either. I suspect that the low-end induction ranges are similar. The cast iron pans work very well in terms of cooking ability on this thing though -- I don't really have any straight aluminum cookware.
Thing is, my original stove was ~$600, low-end induction is more like $1600, and the unit I'd buy is around $3000 -- so 'better' doesn't really survive a cost-benefit analysis if we're being realistic.
I have wolf so the part is 600 if glass cracks. I got a few uses with a cast iron before it cracked. Now my coordination is a little sloppy but they will crack glass countertops.
Huh -- mine is like mid-low range Kenmore (so probably hecho en Mexico by Whirlpool or something); despite being in general kind of a piece of crap, the glass is fine.
Did yours crack in some specific incident? (like, dropping a pan on it or something)
I can't say that I'm super gentle, but I tend not to wave the pans around like a wok-chef. Not because the top is glass particularly, but I guess I could imagine cracking the top by banging it with a heavy skillet.
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I'm currently using an electric range because, uh, someone was throwing it out (for being the wrong colour!) and you can't beat free. But piping propane from an outside tank for my previous range wasn't difficult, and imo the results were a lot better. Hauling propane tanks from the truck to the storage alcove was a bitch though.
Probably going to get a big propane burner for a semi-outdoor cooking area I'm setting up. Seems like the best option to avoid having to vent half the house air every time I do a steak or stir-fry, and obviously not ideal to set up an induction burner outdoors. Ideally will save the indoor stove for low-temp, low-splatter stuff.
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