This is not induction?
It is an induction heating element. You are not familiar with induction?
No, I am familiar with induction heating. I was just asking if this is an induction heater. Initially you replied you donât know (previous message). Now, you have confirmed that it is indeed induction.
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My apologies for rude response.
It is cool. Donât worry about it. I just wanted to clarify that that I am familiar with induction, but I was not familiar to your portable heater. So my question was toward your heater. I guess I should have just google it. Afterall, Amazon did say it is induction.
I just read through this thread again and am surprised at the number of people who cite safety as a characteristic of induction cooking. Most house fires are related to electrical issues. Add a connection for portables (the plug) and induction is by no means a safer alternative to the other options.
Remove a pot and the induction burner turns off. Safer than forgetting to turn off a gas or electric stove. Try putting a piece on paper on an electric burner and see what happens. You can place a paper towel under a pot on an induction cooker. So, yes, induction is safer in my opinion.
I donât understand why induction hasnât caught on in the US. I think itâs superior for its speed and precision. Appliance companies probably are happy with the profits on conventional electric and gas stoves.
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I used an induction hot plate while kitchen was under construction and I found that my coppers on gas are faster and WAY more responsive. It all comes down to the properties of SS. Which I hate and will never go back to.
However the induction setup would probably hold a poach temp longer than the coppers on flame. But then again poaching a chicken breast is a quick thing, innit?? (I use the thermo-well in my Chambers for stock.)
Am I being stupid?? What am I missing??
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Opinions are not facts. Facts are facts. Insurance industry statistics show that electrical faults are the largest cause of house fires. Correcting for market penetration gas is safer than electric, including induction. Portables are a greater hazard than fixed appliances but electrical is your biggest risk at home.
Well, be careful about extrapolating and interpreting data. Yes, most fire incidents are due to electrical, but also most appliances are electric based not gas based. So this is very important to take into account and for normalization. Many house appliances are running 27/7 by electricity like our refrigerators and our computers, and our TVâŚetc However, there are much few gas appliances. Electrical stoves are very popular. At the end, it may or may not matter. Many of the cooking fire is start from over heating (un attending) oil busting into flame.
Think of this way. More people are killed by fast food everyday than by atomic bombs â far more. But is it really true that having one more McDonald joint is more dangerous than an additional nuclear silo?
Finally, most of the fire is not due to appliance failures (like gas leak or electrical sparks), but rather from overheating the oil/grease:
âThree quarters of the deaths resulting from range food or cooking material fires were
caused by fires that began when fats, cooking oil, or related substances ignitedâ
If so, induction has an advantage here. While, induction has the same risk of over heating cooking oil and grease inside a pan as a pan heating on a gas stove or an electric coil stove, an induction stove has far lower risk is igniting oil spilling over the pan because the stove itself is cool. So spilled over oil wonât be ignited like gas stoves or electric stoves.
Look at this. Induction cannot even melt chocolate outside of a pan (let alone igniting oil)
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This discussion is important! Everybody - google How To Put Out A Kitchen Fire right NOW.
Iâm sure induction is safer because spilled grease wonât catch fire from the surface.
But the thing is, most kitchen fires start in a cooking vessel full of burning fuel.
And then someone throws water on it, or tries to move it, and that burning fuel is flung onto wood and cloth and people. (Or a child reaches up and pulls on a potâs handle!)
Doesnât matter if the flaming vesselâs on your induction top or on a wood burning stove. Itâs the burning fuel in the vessel that is the primary danger, and what you do with it.
Auspicious is right to point out the fire hazards of crappy wiring/cheap extension cords for those of us using plug-in devices. Use an appliance rated extension cord for everything but a light bulb, people!!
(Can you tell Iâm fire-phobic??)
Final thought and then Iâll shut the heck up. Kids get burned a lot. Itâs nice that they canât burn their hands on the induction surface! But if they can turn any heat source on easily, be it gas, electric or induction, thatâs obviously a problem, because you might not know until itâs too late. Kids these days like to play with phones & a black glass surface looks a lot like a phone. Is it worth covering your controls w/a chopping board if you have a busy kid in the house?
If you read my post I posited normalizing for market penetration. Electricity is categorically more dangerous than gas. How much of that is operator error is less clear. Certainly the use of portable, plug-in induction burners that keeps popping up in this thread is really dangerous. â15Aâ outlets just arenât appropriate for long term use at the current draws for which they are rated for intermittent use. Plug in an 1800W burner and boil some water. Use an infrared thermometer and check the temperature of the outlet. You wonât like the reading.
For people like @jammie who are concerned about fire you should also worry about all the wire nuts in your house. Fires waiting to happen. Start running high current through those on a regular basis and youâre asking for trouble.
If you have hard-wired inductive cooking (or an electric clothes dryer or a heat pump with electric back-up heat, or an electric water heater) you should be sure that the circuits are home runs, no connections, and really no wire nuts at all.
Electricity is not safe. It deserves to be treated with great respect and proper circuit protection. NEC and NFPA fall short of CE.
As I said there are lots of cool characteristics of inductive cooking. Safety simply is not one.
@Auspicious
Thanks for your response.
Cooking fire is the number one cause of residential fire. Among cooking fire, most start with cooking materials (food/cooking oil/grease) catch on fire. Two categories: cooking materials catch fire inside the cookware and cooking materials catch fire outside the cookware.
(1) Cooking-material fires start inside the cookware are because the cookware overheated and the cooking materials busted into flame. This is often due to unattentive behavior â in which case I donât see a difference due to gas, coil or induction.
(2) Cooking-material fires start outside the cookware are often due the material spilling over the cookware and getting in contact with the very hot heating coil or the very hot gas flame, then burst into flame. In this case, induction is safer because induction is much cooler outside the cookware than gas or coil.
@jammie Thanks for your response for putting out kitchen fire. Yes, the worst idea is to put water to a grease kitchen fire.
Many kitchen fires start barely outside the cookware, not inside the cookware. Oil or food spilled over to the gas flame or to the heating coil, and then burst into flame. The best known cases are the infamous deep-fried turkey fires we get every Thanksgiving. More often than not, it is someone putting foods into hot oil and the food push the oil outside and catches fire.
The above two youtube fires most likely wonât have started if they were on induction stoves. Now, you can also say that the above two fires also wonât have started if the cooks are more knowlegeable
@Ck - Ok, Iâll take your word for âmostâ fires = grease slopping over into live flame. I donât cook w/that much oil in a vessel so Iâm probably discounting the situation. (But please, donât come at me w/turkey fryers. Surely those things are used outside on the driveway w/the 25k BTU wok setups??? Scares hell out of me, I canât even. . . .)
Ok @Auspicious, I have no idea what youâre talking about but Iâll google. Have had bathrooms and the new kitchen re-wired by a licensed electrician. Pâburghâs a town where everybodyâs in-law will do your wiring on the cheap. ??? No way, Jose.
Just ordered a new fire extinguisher.
Cook safe, people!
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Actually, I didnât quite say that. I only stated that most cooking fires are started with grease, food, cooking oil⌠Of the these fires, we have fires started inside a cookware and outside a cookware. I donât think induction is any worse or better for fires inside a cookware (which have been overheated), but induction is safer against fires started outside a cookware (like spilling oil outside).
Yeah, a fire extinguisher is a great investment. There has been a long standing joke-fact on CHOWHOUND. Whenever someone asked what is the most important cookware in a kitchen, few people will always start with âa fire extinguisherâ before whatever copper pans or induction stove or kimchi refrigerator or SG-2 chef knifeâŚetc.
Of course, there is one big caveat. It does not matter how careful your cooking is, how safe is your stove orâŚetc, if your neighbor starts the fire next to you.
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Iâve had mine for two weeks and I am a total convert. I went from glass top electric to induction and it just continues to amaze me. As for pots, I had a few that I use all the time that are induction capable. I did have to get myself a new 8 qt dutch oven but thatâs really it. Even though I had a lot of pots, there really only are a few that I use all the time. Oh, and I had to get a new tea kettle!
Iâm not going to read the link. I get it. You donât like induction as a cooking method. And, you probably donât like gas if it has an electric igniter or oven. Forget all electric appliances. Cooking on a wood or propane stove can result in a fire, too. Fact. Your statistics are irrelevant. Ask any statistician why they donât apply.
The subject is why hasnât induction cooking caught on in the US. Comments such as yours are reasons. The fact is induction is very popular among European and Australian chefs.
Iâve cooked on gas, coil, smooth top, propane, charcoal, wood, and induction. The fact is I prefer induction.
Iâm sorry to get so fired up- pun unintended- but the original question was posed in a nice way to solicit discussion. I still donât know why it hasnât caught on.
I have read from NFPA - quiet a few times too. Is there a particular point you like to make as opposite to simply pasting a link? It is probably not the best way to approach a conversation because I have no idea what you want to say. In real life, you wonât just toss a magazine at someone without saying a word, right?
If you are trying to say that there are many fire started by electric fire, then yes, but that is also because we as a society has evolved to use more electricity. If you think that houses in the old days relying on wood burning and oil burning are safer, then you are wrong. Even in the last thirty years, fires have been becoming less frequent â from NFPA.
This would be like saying that most car accidents deaths involve gasoline cars.
So here is a food for thought. Is adding an induction cooktop increases house fire compare to not having ANY cooktop? The answer is yes. If that is the argument you want to make, then yes, having any cooktop increases the chance of a fire. However, that is probably not what most people like to discuss. By that argument, eating lunches increase the chance of choking to death.
Compare induction with a $15 t fal pan to your copper.
