Induction cooking is made easier to comprehend if you ever paid attention to the percentages of heat that were outlined in range manuals, and the old Frigidaire Range drip trays, for the 5 heat electric surface units.
High is 100%
Medium Hi is 50%
Medium is around 30%
Low is between 20 & 15%
Simmer is around 10% or less.
Most people who go from gas to induction say that it is too hot and burns everything, but they are dealing with incredible speed, using settings that are too high and are not familiar with the percentages of heat except as flame height. With induction, the heat is happening right in the base of the pan. You are not transferring heat from another source to the pan. Several years ago the food section of the NYT did an article about having chefs try an induction unit at home and those were the problems they encountered. You don't pan fry at 80% power. A medium flame would be a 3 or 4 on a 10 power level display and people cannot at first realize that so much cooking can be done below 40% of high heat, but a lot of that is possible because of the extreme efficiency of induction cooking. You are not losing heat to burner grates or coils that are not perfectly flat under the pan because all of the heat is being created in the pan. Another nice feature that I like on one of mine is that after you have set the cooking power for the operation, you can set a timer for how long it is to cook before shutting off; nice if you have something else to do while brown rice simmers. Deep frying is amazing because the oil is hot in a couple of minutes.
Fagor is a large producer of commercial induction cooking equipment and a few years ago reported that sales were very good in commercial kitchens. The virtual elimination of waste heat made management happy because less heat filtered into the building from the kitchen. The kitchen staff was happy with the cooler kitchens and the cooks were happy with the speed and responsiveness of induction.
High is 100%
Medium Hi is 50%
Medium is around 30%
Low is between 20 & 15%
Simmer is around 10% or less.
Most people who go from gas to induction say that it is too hot and burns everything, but they are dealing with incredible speed, using settings that are too high and are not familiar with the percentages of heat except as flame height. With induction, the heat is happening right in the base of the pan. You are not transferring heat from another source to the pan. Several years ago the food section of the NYT did an article about having chefs try an induction unit at home and those were the problems they encountered. You don't pan fry at 80% power. A medium flame would be a 3 or 4 on a 10 power level display and people cannot at first realize that so much cooking can be done below 40% of high heat, but a lot of that is possible because of the extreme efficiency of induction cooking. You are not losing heat to burner grates or coils that are not perfectly flat under the pan because all of the heat is being created in the pan. Another nice feature that I like on one of mine is that after you have set the cooking power for the operation, you can set a timer for how long it is to cook before shutting off; nice if you have something else to do while brown rice simmers. Deep frying is amazing because the oil is hot in a couple of minutes.
Fagor is a large producer of commercial induction cooking equipment and a few years ago reported that sales were very good in commercial kitchens. The virtual elimination of waste heat made management happy because less heat filtered into the building from the kitchen. The kitchen staff was happy with the cooler kitchens and the cooks were happy with the speed and responsiveness of induction.
