I appreciate this discussion and glad to provide more information especially since I’m in the process of making these changes.
Here’s a video a partner made with Nite Yum of Nyum Bai making a dish:
I will also say for non wok cooking, induction can offer a high level of precision. The GE Cafe I’m looking to get has a temperature probe that can regulate to the degree so I look forward to making olive oil poached fish or sous vide without pulling out the circulator.
Here is also a comparison of commercial induction vs. gas stove.
From what I understand, it’s the same glass as they use for windshields so it should be very tough at least for the ranges. I’ve cooked on a flat portable induction using cast iron and no scratches yet so I’m not too concerned.
I’m not going to dive into the extinction of all human civilization as we know it vs a great tasting wok meal, but I do think our state of technology is sufficiently advanced to create an electric-based system which can deliver more BTU to a curved surface than gas does. I haven’t sat down and gone through any engineering think, but electricity is damn good at getting hot. Get natural gas out of homes and restaurants, and I bet we’ll figure out how to make them.
Funny thing, right? We can’t take out gas because no one makes a good induction wok hob, but no one is going to commercialize such a hob with gas being as prevalent as it is.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we’ll need more serious amounts of current flowing into the cooking area - high end kitchens might well need 30A 22V or similar, if there’s non-commercial code for that? Or multiple circuits?
At our house, we’ll probably do the box and service upgrade soon-ish (lots of reasons we haven’t yet, long sob story), but will plan for decommissioning gas. With the service upgrade, we can go after each circuit and different appliances bit by bit…
My understanding (I think I first read it in The Last Whole Earth Catalog) is that stir-frying itself first came into popularity in China due to overpopulation and a scarcity of wood. By chopping the wood into small sized pieces and cooking rapidly in a wok over a small stove, one could achieve a very high temperature while consuming little fuel.
I don’t want to stick my neck out too much by venturing into cultural issues outside my purview, but I do wonder if using gas under the wok is as essential an element of Chinese culture as is the ability to adapt to circumstances. After all, few Chinese restaurants (or home cooks), in this country at least, still use wood fires for cooking anymore. When gas cookers became ubiquitous , was there an outcry about the loss of traditional culture? I honestly don’t know, but it seems the question is worth asking.
Since this popped up again, I wanted to mention that I have been using my NuWave induction hob and it’s been working well. It actually heats up almost to quickly so I have to make sure everything is prepped before I start it up. Similar to an electric vehicle, there is little to no delay from pressing the button to getting it to searing temp so no need for preheating. I’ve been using my wok from the wok shop so it was already seasoned and the bonus is I don’t have to wear a glove anymore to hold the handle since there is no flame coming up the side. Much better sear and power output compared to my gas burner.
By the way, no less than Martin Yan had been using induction though in this demo, he uses a flat bottom wok: https://youtu.be/AWfxuBFu5ak?t=3088
This is almost certainly true and I’m glad to hear/see folks picking up induction for high heat applications like wok cooking since there was very little on it when I started looking some years back. That said, since this topic came up again it should be pointed out (again) that induction cooking wouldn’t account for wok hei as brought up earlier in the thread. As a home cook that hasn’t had much opportunity to generate wok hei on our setup (except for the torch method I’ve seen recently) I won’t miss it for my own use but to be honest there’s at least one restaurant I go to because their wok hei is so damn good and the food would be significantly different without it.
Is that worth keeping gas cooking around for? I also don’t know if I’d go that far but it seems like an important aspect of wok cooking we shouldn’t forget.
Just to update this, I happened to speak to Martin Yan at an event and he says he’s been an induction advocate for 12 years. In fact, he’s going to do an induction demo in Cantonese with my organization to highlight our induction rebate in early January. The most interesting thing he said to me was that wok hei is no problem with induction because the heat is high enough to generate it. I don’t know the science behind it but I’ll trust his word.
A late thought: although it might be likely that restaurants could lobby and get an exemption for gas-fired cooking, if gas use is eliminated from all homes, it would become much more expensive for those wanting to use it in restaurants (since all the infrastructure cost would be spread over many fewer users).
