Opinions on induction hobs

[vivienz]

We're a very long way off planning the kitchen yet, but I like to start my research early.

 

Does anyone have any experience or particular opinions on induction hobs?  Our new place doesn't have gas and I do like the easy to clean sleek look of induction hobs.  I've used gas hobs fuelled by bottled gas plenty of times and found them to be perfectly satisfactory, but don't really fancy having to lug bottles of gas around.  My sister in law is a chef and expressed a very positive opinion about induction, but she hasn't actually cooked on them and I think she largely felt that she ought to have a firm opinion, given her day job.

[Tennentslager]

Ooh vipers nest...not for me, not for cooking.

Yes easier to clean but not as good as gas for a responsive heat. I cannot at all get the hang of only having the heat directly above the ring...for that matter, the induction rings are too small. 

It's a personal choice but for me gas every time???

[PeterW]

Love induction and used it when it first became commercially available in a fully electric commercial kitchen. Very controllable and easy to use. 

 

Downside of the glass hobs is scratching them - they are tough but they can and do mark. If you have any Le Cruset or similar then get a sheet of 400 wet and dry paper and stick it to a flat board and just run the pan over it in circles to take off the bits that scratch. 

 

 

[Mrs H]

We don't have gas either. I looked at induction hobs but didn't fancy getting rid of all my pans and replacing with iron. We bought a Bosch ceramic hob - It looks like an induction hob but you can use any pans, and it's cheaper. It's far better than the old fashioned electric rings and heats up really fast. 

[Construction Channel]

I am fairly interested in this, I have already got a nice gas hob i was given, but installing gas brings a load of issues.

It'll be good to see what everyones opinions on the electric options are.

[joe90]

I came across induction when doing a cookery course and found them great to use and even more controllable than gas BUT er  indoors wants gas, period, and that means lugging bottles for our site, hey ho ?, 

[jamiehamy]

I love it - however our current 4 ring hob is too small when using large pans, so in the new house, I've specced a Miele 6 ring induction hob. It is slightly different to gas I agree, but it's easy to adapt. It's brilliant having timers on each ring, which will switch them off when time is up, having an alarm if there is a spill over as well as the fact it's so easy to clean. 

[Construction Channel]

6 rings you say.........thats already 1 better than the gas hob  

[jamiehamy]

'That's 6 more than I have' sighs Faye... 

 

This is the baby itself http://www.pauldavieskitchensandappliances.co.uk/miele-3-powerflex-zone-induction-hob-km6366.html

[CC45]

I was a gas man but since we put induction (head of domestic services doesnt like the thought of gas in the kitchen - Lifes too short to debate it so I gave in) in I'd never go back.  Easy to control, sensitive adjustments and a doddle to clean & just a fat cable to put in.

 

Mad not to.

[Construction Channel]

£1500  

don't get me wrong, that is a hell of a hob, 

But £1500  

[Onoff]

Missus loves it. Rings a bit small though so you have to be careful how you position things.

[jamiehamy]

5 minutes ago, Construction Channel said:

£1500  

don't get me wrong, that is a hell of a hob, 

But £1500  

I know... Appliances alone are £8k for the kitchen so have to reduce that slightly! But we cook a lot so want something good.  

[vivienz]

11 minutes ago, jamiehamy said:

'That's 6 more than I have' sighs Faye... 

 

This is the baby itself http://www.pauldavieskitchensandappliances.co.uk/miele-3-powerflex-zone-induction-hob-km6366.html

Mmmm...nice.  I'm sure I can lose £1500 somewhere in the kitchen budget.  Hubby will have little or no say over the appliances given that he could burn water doesn't cook much so it's nice to have real life opinions on the kit.  Off to ponder the joys of double ovens now.

[AliG]

We are now on our third induction hob.

 

They respond very quickly to the controls.

 

They are massively easier to clean than gas hobs.

 

You can use it as a stand for hot dishes from the oven.

 

Pans just need to have a magnetic base. We mainly use non stick pans with a stainless steel base.

 

They can scratch.

 

Plenty of them have larger rings, they are just a bit more expensive.

 

They switch themselves off when you take the pan off them.

 

No one has mentioned that they are considerably more efficient than gas hobs. The energy almost entirely goes into the pan. As mains gas is cheaper than electricity though, a gas hob is still cheaper to run. A bottled gas hob would be very expensive to run.

 

Gas hobs are cheaper but you will have the cost of a gas safe installation.

 

I wouldn't consider anything other than an induction hob.

[Onoff]

We had a result on ours when Comet closed down. It's a pretty unknown make, Electra Elecheib. Israeli brand made in Turkey. Should have been I think £300+ but down to £199. I found a discount code that I still remember "HOB15" so a further 15% off. 

 

Schott Ceran glass, easy to clean. Super fast. Has a pause button. Cools down super quick. Switches off if pans boil over.

 

Only pita is it WAS going in one place as depicted by my Tippex'd bin liner mock up:

 

 

Then "we" decided it was moving to the left:

 

 

 

[jack]

55 minutes ago, Tennentslager said:

Yes easier to clean but not as good as gas for a responsive heat.

 

What brand have you used, and how long ago?  We have a 1 year old Siemens and the change in heat is as instantaneous as gas on ours.  You change the setting and the temperature changes immediately.

 

56 minutes ago, Tennentslager said:

I cannot at all get the hang of only having the heat directly above the ring...for that matter, the induction rings are too small. 

 

What size have you used?  The large "ring" on ours is 24cm.  I just made 7L of yoghurt (don't laugh) tonight in a 9L saucepan.  The base of the saucepan is about the same of the ring.  

 

Our hob also has two adjacent square sections that can be controlled independently or together to give something like a 20 x 40 cm area.  I have a cast iron plate that we use on that for bulk bacon, steak etc (I put it on a silicon mat to prevent scratching).

 

56 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Downside of the glass hobs is scratching them - they are tough but they can and do mark. If you have any Le Cruset or similar then get a sheet of 400 wet and dry paper and stick it to a flat board and just run the pan over it in circles to take off the bits that scratch. 

 

Agree with all that.  We have a hand-me-down Le Cruset casserole dish from my wife's grandmother.  It works brilliantly, but we now have a permanent mark on the glass where the dish was taken out of the oven and placed on the hob temporarily.  

 

There're also fine scratches already showing along the edge of the shallow bevel along the front edge.  Oh, and we found a chip along the front edge a couple of months after moving in.  No idea who did it - theory is that one of the kids dropped a heavy glass and either hasn't said anything or didn't notice.  Might have been me or my wife I suppose.  Siliconed the chip in back in place, but I can still see it.

 

 In our house, the hob is on our island, so front and centre for all visitors.  I wouldn't want a big chunky (and possibly crusty) hob in the middle of an island.  

 

That said, black glass does tend to show every mark and splash, so you do need to clean them pretty much after every use.  Takes about 20 seconds though, so no big issue.  I used to hate cleaning our gas hob because it was so fiddly (and I'm a messy cook, so it needed a lot of cleaning).

 

One thing I do prefer about gas is the ability to agitate food in the saucepans while it's cooking, like flicking a frying pan with your wrist to mix things above a gas flame.  You can't do that as easily on an induction hob because you risk scratching the surface, plus it turns off as soon as the pan is picked up.  

 

Induction certainly isn't perfect, but having had several gas and electric hobs in the past, I'd never go back.

 

 

 

  

[Declan52]

I have a neff induction hob and find it great to cook with. No more scraping caked on burnt food if it steams over. Heats up very fast same goes when you reduce temp. Plus very kid safe as it never gets red hot like a ceramic hob. And when you lift the pan off it turns of after a few seconds so you can never leave a ring on. Would never go back to ceramic.

[ryder72]

Induction every day of the week.

 

Much faster, better control, more efficient.

 

The only downside (if one can call it that), is the need for magnetic pans.

[SteamyTea]

Going to put my 'Chefs' hat on now and be really blunt.

A decent induction hod is so much better than any other method of cooking.  They are more controllable, easy to clean, and at work, the lack of excess heat produced in the kitchen is a real bonus.

 

The new pots and pans do not have to be expensive, my set at home cost about 20 quid and work fine (if you are worried about sticking/burning, learn how to cook).  Lidl are selling a pretty good non-stick frying pan at the moment, makes frying eggs easy.  Think it was about £15.

One advantage with induction pans is that they do not need to be heavy, makes a difference when you have to juggle them all night.

If you are going to spend £10,000, £20,000 or even £30,000 on your kitchen (in your new self build that may cost you £150,000 or £300,00), then £50 on a new set of pans is lost in the noise.

 

As for features, the one I like the most is the temperature setting.  Set something to say 140°C, and that makes frying easy, or at 80°C to let something simmer.  I notice that this is not available on some models.

The next best feature is the power setting, but takes a bit of getting used to (a gas hob is fixed temperature with variable flame size, an old electrical hob is variable temperature with fixed size, an induction is generally fixed power with pulsing to control mean power).

Personally I dislike noisy timers at home (though at work we can't get ones that are noisy enough), so make sure you can vary the volume of these if they are fitted.

I also dislike knobs and buttons, so some method of touch sensitive control is good.  These do seem like a bit of Voodoo and take a while to trust them, but makes cleaning easy.  And if you do have to quickly remove a flaming pan, you can just slide it sideways off the heat, nothing to get in the way.

 

If you fit anything other than an induction hob these days, you are quite mad.

[lizzie]

Induction every time! I had cooked on gas all my life then sold the house to build our new one had half a year on induction in a rented house, moved to another rental and am renting now in a house where I am back to cooking on gas......its a swanky 7 burner range cooker very good quality but give me back the induction any day. I never thought I would give up my gas and would have had gas in the new house without hesitation if I had not had that in between experience with induction.

 

I got a very nice set of induction friendly prestige pans at tesco, very reasonable.

[Tennentslager]

Well, I am prepared to be a convert...only used my sisters a few times. It's 5 years old and the biggest ring is smaller than her frying pan so my salt and chilli chicken wasn't cooking at the edge of the pan.

The touch controls took a bit of getting used to as well. Power level 9 was not enough but the next one up was 'P' which was too fierce. Also was using a frying pan instead of a wok as twas a stir fry. However, everyone enjoyed the dinner in the end?.

Sounds that from what @jack and @SteamyTea say these grumbles have been sorted by better hobs.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Tennentslager

[Crofter]

My requirements are somewhat different to most people's, given that I may never cook a meal in my new kitchen! So what I need is

- idiot proof

- easy to clean

- looks nice

 

And that is it.

I've used induction hobs before but had to be shown how they worked. Is this a common thing? I cannot be bothered explaining to a different set of guests every week how to boil an egg. MiL has a swanky Neff one with a removable puck thingy, that is definitely a no-no! At the moment I'm leaning towards an unbranded £100 ceramic touch control hob, and if it gets scratched then it's not a disaster to replace it.

 

Btw on gas running costs- we used to run our range cooker's hob on 47kg propane bottles. Got nearly two years out of a bottle, costing around £50, so I don't think running costs need be a big concern.

[jack]

10 minutes ago, Tennentslager said:

Also was using a frying pan instead of a wok as twas a stir fry. However, everyone enjoyed the dinner in the end?.

 

Ah yes, that's another limitation.  You can't use a wok (well, not properly - I do like a bit of a shake and a bang on the hob when stir-frying!)

 

I haven't really found a solution to this.  We don't make that many stirfrys anyway.

 

Perhaps @TerryE's solution of having induction with a gas ring is a good compromise for those that like their stirfrys?

[TerryE]

Just now, jack said:

Perhaps @TerryE's solution of having induction with a gas ring is a good compromise for those that like their stirfrys?

 

All commissioned and working IMO, the main design issue with this is that we have standard 2×2 induction hob, a 120mm separator bar in the worktop and then the 2×1 gas hob.  This makes for quite a wide worktop footprint: you need roughly a 98cm gap in your top cupboards above the hobs (where the extractor fits.)