Induction Cooking Is Gaining Acceptance With Professional Chefs

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Induction cooking is a new concept for most people. Until now, most food preparation by professional chefs has been done over a methane or propane flame. Cooking with electric burners is too slow and controlling the heat of the pots and pans too imprecise for top chefs. The single most prominent feature of most commercial kitchens is an enormous 6- or 8-burner gas stove.

In recent years, restaurants and professional chefs have bitterly opposed state or local laws that prohibit gas stoves. Government overreach! Woke mind virus! An attack on democracy, they claim. Those sorts of arguments led to the defeat of an effort by Berkeley, California, to ban new methane gas installations, even though the latest research indicates cooking with gas releases contaminants into the air inside the kitchens of our restaurants and homes.

New technologies often get pushback from those who oppose change. The automobile was despised by many who were used to horses and mules. The electric guitar almost caused a riot at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Microwave ovens would interfere with human hearts, and cell phones caused brain cancer. And please, let’s not get started on solar and wind, which some say are spawn of the devil!

What is induction cooking, anyway? For the answer to that question, we turned to Wikipedia:

“Induction cooking is a cooking process using direct electrical induction heating of cookware, rather than relying on flames or heating elements. Induction cooking allows high power and very rapid increases in temperature to be achieved: changes in heat settings are instantaneous.

“Pots or pans with suitable bases are placed on an induction electric stove which generally has a heat-proof glass-ceramic surface above a coil of copper wire with an alternating electric current passing through it. The resulting oscillating magnetic field induces an electrical current in the cookware, which is converted into heat by resistance.

“To work with induction, cookware must contain a ferromagnetic metal such as cast iron or some stainless steels. Induction tops typically will not heat copper or aluminum cookware because the magnetic field cannot produce a concentrated current.

“Induction cooking is among the most efficient ways of cooking, which means it produces less waste heat and it can be quickly turned on and off. Induction has safety advantages compared to gas stoves and emits no air pollution into the kitchen.”

Whatever the kerfuffle about induction cooking in certain circles, Bloomberg reports that some top level professional chefs are beginning to embrace the new technology. Ikoyi, a Michelin two-star restaurant in London, installed a four-unit induction cooktop over two years ago. While head chef Jeremy Chan says he still loves the emotional experience of cooking with gas, he chose induction for its safety, efficiency, and practicality.

It gives him confidence that his chefs can follow his recipes absolutely to the letter. The precise settings on the induction stove mean Chan’s recipes can be carried out to exact specifications by his staff, with no room for interpretation as there would be with instructions like “a low flame.” Chan said, “There’s less human error. You can be more precise in a more foolproof way. You can just say set it to, say, 3.5. There’s nothing to interpret there.” He now cooks on an induction cooktop at home. “As much as I love [gas], I’m never going back to it.”

There are no definitive statistics on how many professional kitchens have switched to induction cooktops, but the industry experts Bloomberg spoke with said they are seeing an uptick in demand for induction, but not necessarily for environmental reasons.

“They are really interested in the performance benefits of electric over gas,” said John Cunningham, chief executive of the Foodservice Equipment Association in the UK, which represents manufacturers of stoves and ovens. Some of its members now sell more electric than gas equipment. Though, across the industry, gas is still the leader, he said.

Induction Cooking At Home

One feature of induction cooktops is they do not need a lot of electrical power to operate. In fact, many one- and two-element units can be plugged into a conventional 120-volt wall outlet. But residential stoves all have an oven for baking and broiling. The oven requires a lot of electricity when in use, which may require a 40-amp 240-volt outlet or higher.

If a family wants to replace a conventional gas stove with an electric stove, adding the wiring needed can be an expensive proposition. In some cases, the entry panel in the home may need an upgrade, which could make the cost of switching to electricity too high for some. How do induction stove manufacturers handle that situation?

Channing Street Copper Company has an innovative solution. Cofounder Sam Calisch told Fast Company it has developed a range for residential use that includes a lithium-ion battery. The battery is charged by electricity from a standard wall outlet. It then provides the power for both the four-burner cooktop and the oven when required.

Calish co-wrote a book with Saul Griffith called Electrify that advocates for electrifying everything in order to reduce atmospheric pollution and address global warming. That book brought him to the attention of Democrats in Congress who were working on the Inflation Reduction Act during the Biden administration.

The new stove is called Charlie and was designed to meet the need for a conventional 30-inch-wide, 4-element residential range that was more efficient and less polluting than a typical gas range without the need for expensive electrical upgrades. Because it has a battery, Charlie can reduce demand on the electrical grid, because when in use, it draws power from the battery, not an electrical outlet.

The battery also means Charlie can continue to cook food for up to 5 days during a power outage if just the induction units are used, or 1 day if the oven is used. The oven heats up four times faster than a traditional gas oven and the temperature can be more precisely controlled.

When designing the stove, the company found what customers disliked most about induction appliances was navigating touchscreens and digital controls, so Charlie has good old fashioned knobs, which people are more familiar with. Automakers are also finding many drivers prefer traditional knobs and switches in their cars rather than controls activated from a touchscreen.

Charlie is fairly pricey at $5,999. It currently qualifies for a 30% federal tax credit, but be sure to check with your accountant first. Virtually all such tax credits are being eliminated by the failed administration currently in office. Still, for commercial landlords interested in converting from gas to electric, avoiding the cost of expensive electrical upgrades to multiple apartments in older buildings may offset some of the expense of the stoves.

The practical benefits of cooking with electricity include less carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen inside the home, but those are not the reasons most people would cite when considering an induction stove. The thing that really gets people’s attention is the precision control of cooking temperatures induction stoves make possible.

“The first time I made a grilled cheese on our stove, I was shocked,” Calish says. “I’d never made a grilled cheese that uniform and perfectly golden brown.” When he makes falafel, he says the oil stays at exactly the right temperature, never getting too hot and filling the kitchen with smoke.

Is an induction stove the right choice for everyone? Of course not, just as an electric car is not the right choice for every driver. But as the word spreads, more people will decide they want that level of precision when cooking and the objections will begin to fall away. And, of course, as with all new technologies, prices will begin to fall as more units get sold and economies of scale kick in.

20 years ago, a digital TV cost $5,000 or more. My wife and I paid $2,000 for one 5 years later. Today, they can be had for around $300. The curtain falls, time passes, and change happens. Induction cooking technology will prevail eventually not because of some woke mind virus but because it is a better way to cook.