I would agree with many commenters here about induction stovetops.
I used to have one, living in Russia, and now I have a gas one in the US (wasn’t much choice here TBH). The induction was clearly superior. It cooked faster, had a timer, and was much easier to clean.
I should add that I had the cheapest induction one we could find back then.
However, banning gas stoves, and even talking about banning them, is clearly stupid now. We shouldn’t ban stuff willy-nilly. We should have an extremely high bar to ban anything, not like “Hey somewhat had a paper that probably says something is somewhat dangerous”.
I guess eventually, gas stoves would need to be priced out, or something, though. Once a majority of our electricity comes out of renewables.
P.S. I do agree that those old electric stovetops are just awful. I don’t understand how come so many places still have them. And I did see good electric (non-induction) stove tops that have reasonable response time and can boil water faster than gas ones. Not sure how come you don’t have them everywhere. Are they that new? I wanna see some explanation here. Because I’m confused!
I wasn’t aware that improved electric stovetops existed. Every example I have seen simply uses an exposed electric element, with variation only on size. The elements get easily hot enough to set fire to paper, and are a significant burn hazard. They also have a crevice underneath that will accumulate very difficult to clean grease stains and carbon buildup.
There are a type that use a glass surface with the elements underneath—where I live now has them—but these perform even worse. They have to reduce power to prevent from overheating the glass, so they are the slowest form of cooking I have ever seen. And there still is a burn hazard, and the extremely hot glass solidified buildups.
The new electric stovetop I tried were with glass/ceramic/whatever on top, and they didn’t feel too slow. I didn’t have that at home, so I don’t have a lot of experience with it, but I got an impression that it was quite usable. The info about electric being faster to boil came from YouTube videos, so I could be mistaken. I assume they are mostly talking about medium to small pots, since on them gas are far less efficient. Here is one vid: https://youtu.be/CcAJ3_-Hou8 (timestamp: 1:05 ). P.S. I also googled some videos where gas got water boiling faster than electric, though they used a large pot. Would like to see that test on a medium pot.
If you have a glass top, would it matter if it solidifies buildup, it should still be easy to clean (on an even surface), comparing to gas stovetop?
I agree that electric with open coil should be nightmare to clean. Probably worse than gas.
I could see why electric stovetop might be a fire hazard. I’m not sure why bigger than gas though, maybe because it keeps being hot for a bit. Does it stays hot enough to set paper on fire quite long?
As near as I could tell, the glass type are either slower, or at worst they can’t be faster than the naked coil electric type.
Yes, electric stoves are actually faster than boil water than gas. Their biggest problem is there is lag—there is thermal mass in the element, so there is a delay between changing the power level and the system responding. Gas and induction heaters have less lag.
The glass has less buildup than the open coil electric type or gas burner type, but more buildup than induction because the glass gets much hotter.
Gas is probably the worst fire hazard, but electric still is a fire hazard. Induction has the least fire hazard.
I would agree with many commenters here about induction stovetops.
I used to have one, living in Russia, and now I have a gas one in the US (wasn’t much choice here TBH). The induction was clearly superior. It cooked faster, had a timer, and was much easier to clean.
I should add that I had the cheapest induction one we could find back then.
However, banning gas stoves, and even talking about banning them, is clearly stupid now. We shouldn’t ban stuff willy-nilly. We should have an extremely high bar to ban anything, not like “Hey somewhat had a paper that probably says something is somewhat dangerous”.
I guess eventually, gas stoves would need to be priced out, or something, though. Once a majority of our electricity comes out of renewables.
P.S. I do agree that those old electric stovetops are just awful. I don’t understand how come so many places still have them. And I did see good electric (non-induction) stove tops that have reasonable response time and can boil water faster than gas ones. Not sure how come you don’t have them everywhere. Are they that new? I wanna see some explanation here. Because I’m confused!
I wasn’t aware that improved electric stovetops existed. Every example I have seen simply uses an exposed electric element, with variation only on size. The elements get easily hot enough to set fire to paper, and are a significant burn hazard. They also have a crevice underneath that will accumulate very difficult to clean grease stains and carbon buildup.
There are a type that use a glass surface with the elements underneath—where I live now has them—but these perform even worse. They have to reduce power to prevent from overheating the glass, so they are the slowest form of cooking I have ever seen. And there still is a burn hazard, and the extremely hot glass solidified buildups.
The new electric stovetop I tried were with glass/ceramic/whatever on top, and they didn’t feel too slow. I didn’t have that at home, so I don’t have a lot of experience with it, but I got an impression that it was quite usable. The info about electric being faster to boil came from YouTube videos, so I could be mistaken. I assume they are mostly talking about medium to small pots, since on them gas are far less efficient. Here is one vid: https://youtu.be/CcAJ3_-Hou8 (timestamp: 1:05 ). P.S. I also googled some videos where gas got water boiling faster than electric, though they used a large pot. Would like to see that test on a medium pot.
If you have a glass top, would it matter if it solidifies buildup, it should still be easy to clean (on an even surface), comparing to gas stovetop?
I agree that electric with open coil should be nightmare to clean. Probably worse than gas.
I could see why electric stovetop might be a fire hazard. I’m not sure why bigger than gas though, maybe because it keeps being hot for a bit. Does it stays hot enough to set paper on fire quite long?
As near as I could tell, the glass type are either slower, or at worst they can’t be faster than the naked coil electric type.
Yes, electric stoves are actually faster than boil water than gas. Their biggest problem is there is lag—there is thermal mass in the element, so there is a delay between changing the power level and the system responding. Gas and induction heaters have less lag.
The glass has less buildup than the open coil electric type or gas burner type, but more buildup than induction because the glass gets much hotter.
Gas is probably the worst fire hazard, but electric still is a fire hazard. Induction has the least fire hazard.
Yeah, everything you say makes sense, and I agree.