No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. You’re looking at one of the marvels of new technology in today’s kitchen – the induction cooktop. With induction cooking, the element located under the glass heats up cookware, yet the actual glass surface has a cooler temperature. This new induction kitchen technology offers a smarter, safer, faster cooking experience in the kitchen, yet many homeowners are still unaware of how it can help them. Plus, it’s available in both cooktops and ranges as well.
For many years cooktops and ranges offered a set of four coil burners for cooking. Even today coil burners are still manufactured and easily available in a wide range of cooktop and oven styles. In recent years manufacturers have moved to a glass-ceramic surface that places these traditional coil burners below the surface of the glass. The move to glass-ceramic cooktops and ovens has made cleanup easier and has created more safety when moving a hot pot or full skillet to different burners. While the glass surface improved the cooking experience, the actual safety issues related to hot surfaces still exists. Before we explain how induction creates a safer cooking environment, first let’s explain the greater details of how induction cooking works.
An induction cooktop has unique copper elements under the glass-ceramic surface that use electricity to produce a magnetic field. The magnetic field reacts with the iron in metal cookware – including cast iron and magnetic stainless steel pans – and transfers the heat to the cookware. The bottom-line performance of induction is based on your cookware. If your cookware has a stainless steel, iron, or metal base, then the induction element below the glass will react with your cookware and make the cookware hot. An easy way to see if your current cookware will work is to do the magnet test. If a magnet will stick to the outside bottom of your pot, it’ll work. Now let’s dig into the greater benefits of induction cooking.
It goes without saying that one of your greatest concerns in the kitchen is safety. The frustration with the older coil burner styles is that they’re sometimes difficult to detect when they’re still on. Coil burners continue to be a good cooking surface, yet too many safety issues still exist. Induction cooktops create a better safety environment for the family because the glass picks up heat from the pot, but cools quickly once the pot is removed. The cooktop remains cooler, and most units automatically turn the burner off if the pan is not returned to the same burner within a certain time frame. Now that’s safety!
An additional bonus that most homeowners don’t know is that induction cooktops are faster at cooking. The induction element technology heats up the pan faster and with less energy. Since the induction technology only heats the pan, you won’t waste energy heating up the traditional coil elements that are larger than your pan. The best example of the induction’s speed is the time it takes to boil water. With induction your time to boil water is reduced by at least 40%; you can boil water in 90 seconds. Food gets to the table faster, so you can spend more time enjoying the food and less time waiting for food to cook.
The main reason homeowners choose gas ranges over electric is that gas ranges have better control; they can turn on and off instantly whereas electric can’t. Many times this means bringing in a gas line. A great benefit of induction cooking is that an induction cooktop offers the same benefits, but without the cost of bringing in a gas line. Plus, with an induction cooktop, cleanup is quick and easy because it’s not the glass surface that provides heat to the pot. When food spills, it doesn’t burn to the cooktop, which makes for a fast clean-up.
Induction delivers a smarter way of cooking based on new, yet proven cooking technology. You also gain a safer kitchen with burner surfaces that remain cooler and cool quicker. Plus, faster cooking saves you time. Induction cooking technology can deliver the greatest benefits you and your kitchen has ever seen. Watch a video to learn more about induction technology.
A wide range of induction cooktops and ovens are available from many manufacturers. If you want to see a live demonstration of these cooktops in action, just visit the new Friedman’s showroom and they’ll give you the surprise of your life.
