Induction is better than gas in basically any way you can care to slice it, and natural gas in your home is actually quite bad for air quality.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-17/kitchen-pollutants-st...

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chongli 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Induction requires your cookware to sit flat against the surface or it won’t heat up (and the range will shut off after a certain time). With natural gas the flames rise through convection and wrap around the contours of the pan. This means many traditional pieces of cookware with round bottoms simply will not work on induction but work fine on natural gas.

Induction also requires the cookware to be ferromagnetic. This rules out a lot of traditional cookware materials such as clay, copper, brass, and stone. Many of these traditional materials are also accompanied by traditional shapes (round bottoms, gently sloped sides) that take advantage of the convection properties of open flame cooking.

Many recipes rely on these traditional vessels for optimal cooking performance. Woks, for example, work much better with a round bottom so liquids can pool in the middle, letting you use less oil for stir frying but still allowing ingredients to spend time in the pooled oil.

The temperature profile of a round-bottom wok over gas flame is also superior to a flat-bottom wok on induction: the traditional wok has a bright hot spot at the bottom (where all the oil is pooling) in addition to heat up all around the sloped sides, for rapidly reducing liquids that come out of foods and cooking sauces (soy sauce, shaoxing wine) with an arc-splash technique. The flat-bottom wok on induction has a uniformly hot surface on the bottom but the sides remain cool, causing all liquids in contact with the sides to run down to the bottom and begin boiling, just like when you try to stir-fry in a frying pan.

Candy-making is another cooking process that benefits greatly from the convection of natural gas combustion, since molten sugar will crystallize around the sides of a pan if they are not hot enough. Traditional candy-making is done in thin-walled, tin-lined copper pans. These pans don't work at all on induction (no ferromagnetic materials) but even if placed on a ferrous plate they would not perform well due to lack of heating of the sides.

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girvo 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> Induction requires your cookware to sit flat against the surface or it won’t heat up

Not really. You’ve obviously not used modern induction cooktops (though if you’ve gone to a restaurant you’ve eaten from it).

> The temperature profile of a round-bottom wok over gas flame is also superior to a flat-bottom wok on induction

Explain why induction cooktops are incredibly widespread across modern Asian restaurants. You’ve really got to update your priors.

Don’t listen to me, listen to a professional chef (who runs an awesome restaurant in Shenzhen): https://youtu.be/vgv_IiSZarY?si=fgl1w1udQ72xqY3n

Candy making, I’ll concede because I have no experience. In every other way induction is still better.

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chongli 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'd rather listen to one of the top chefs in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgYXRuQcniw

Fried rice IS a quick dish with a proper gas burner.

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eudamoniac 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's a misconception that Chinese food requires a 50,000 BTU burner causing "wok hei" to be right. The truth is that Chinese cuisine is huge and varied. Some regional dishes do actually require that. Most do not and can be cooked at home.

An equivalent induction stove would be around 5000W, which I think exists. The problem with inductioning a wok is the tossing motion removes the wok from the heat, unlike over a big flame. It probably doesn't matter, but maybe it does.

The main difference is that the gas instantly turns off, whereas with induction, the stove surface the pan sits on is just as hot as the pan, because the pan heats it up via contact, so it's almost like electric in that way. I kind of doubt this matters except in certain specialty things like candy making. I'd consider myself a very proficient chef at the level of a new culinary school graduate (minus the restauranteering modules), and in practice any stove type is just fine. I'm not going to rip out my gas stove though; it came with the house and adds resale value.

	▲	Hikikomori 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are wok shaped induction cookers.

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taeric 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, if you are looking at unventilated kitchens, you are going to get bad values cooking. Pretty much period. Yes, by products of burning gas are bad. But by products of cooking are already bad. Ventilate your kitchen.

	▲	tom_alexander 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Induction is also faster to boil water, easier to clean since it's just flat glass, and safer since an induction stove without a pot/pan stays room temperature (in fact, they usually can detect if a pot/pan is present and automatically turn themselves off) Induction is also particularly nice for certain types of cooking because many induction stoves can be set to a specific temperature instead of just to a power level.
	▲	eigenspace 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Even with very good ventilation, gas ranges will pollute your air to a surprising degree.