Induction Stove
by Wendy Vanhatten
When we built our new home, I wanted a gas range. I’m a cook and this is what I like to cook on.
Fast forward to not being able to get natural gas in our location…and I learned about induction cooking.
In the 1830s an English scientist Michael Faraday proved that if an electrically conductive material like wire is put in a moving magnetic field, an electric field is created in the conductor. Hence…magnetic induction.
This type of stove uses an electromagnetic field, the key principle where an electric charge creates a field around it. Like static electricity. Think of rubbing a balloon on your hair. Your hair rises. Right? What happen when you lift the balloon off your head? Your hair will continue to rise, even if the balloon isn’t touching it. The balloon is pulling on your hair with an active electric force.
Now to my stove… Instead of conventional burners, I have cooking spots on my induction cooktop. Wire magnetic coils are embedded in the cooktop’s glass surface, which create the magnetic pulses. This heats the pan…not the cooktop.
This means my pans have to be made of a material that doesn’t allow the magnetic field to pass through quickly. I discovered that iron-based materials are the best. If you don’t know if the pan will work, see if a magnet sticks to it. If it does, the pan will work.
Pans heat up quickly. Turn it off and it immediately stops cooking. Take the pan off the cooktop and you can touch the top. It’s warm but not hot. The pan is hot.
My verdict of induction cooking? I love it and won’t be going back to gas.
