While more and more people are switching to induction cooking to take advantage of the unique benefits it offers over conventional cooking methods such as electric and gas many people and businesses are still on the fence as to whether to invest in the wonders of induction.
To help make things easier, we’ve put together five reasons, among the many, that you should make the move to induction cooking in your kitchen at home or at your restaurant.
Faster and More Efficient
One of the biggest selling points of the induction cooktop: speed. The science is quite simple: induction cooking allows you to cook food faster because the pan heats up quicker.
That’s because both gas and electric cooktops must use a conductor to transfer heat to the pan — either flames or an electric burner– while an induction cooktop generates heat directly in the pan.
It does this by using electromagnetic activity which then triggers electromagnetic activity in the pan causing the pan to heat itself up.
The advantage here is that with pan acting the starting point of the heat, there are fewer steps involved in heating the cookware.
To put it in more simple terms it takes 25 to 50 percent less time, on average.
According to research, it takes little over 4 minutes to boil water on an induction cooktop. That is blazing fast compared to the 7 minute it takes with an electric coil cooktop and the 8 minutes it takes on a gas range.
More Precise Control
An immediately recognized benefit of using induction cooking in your kitchen is the ability to have remarkably accurate control over the temperature. This is due to near-perfection responsiveness when you adjust the temperature settings.
When you invest in an induction cooktop, gone are the days guessing how high the flame should be or trying to figure out which setting is best to cook your meal just right using conventional electric technology.
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of induction cooking is that they provide more temperature increments and better performance at very low heat settings.
Induction cooktops can be set to melt butter or delicately heat your grandmother’s recipe for her world-famous sauce to perfection. While on the other end of the spectrum induction cooking can bring a pot of water to boil in less than four minutes.
For professional chefs whose customers count on consistency, have exact heat control also delivers deliciously consistent and repeatable results every time.
It’s Safer!
Whether your cooking in a trendy restaurant or preparing something for your family at home, safety is always your top priority. And as everyone knows the conventional gas or electric stovetops is are one of the most dangerous places in the kitchen.
Just a little grease, loose clothing, or even a bare hand placed in the wrong place can cause serious injury.
With gas fire ranges, the dangers in the kitchen are the most obvious. Quite simply, if there is no flame that means no grease fires, and no gas means no gas leaks.
However, since the induction cooktop doesn’t actually get hot, since the pan is where the heat is conducted, this makes it far less likely for the cooktop to cause a burn.
And while a hot pan or pot can cause burns, with a turn of the induction dial the loss of heat is practically immediate and the pan quickly cools down.
Easier to Clean
While you will often find people who enthusiastically proclaim “I love to cook!”, it’ not often will you find someone who tells you “I love to clean!”
Since an induction cooktop radiates little if any heat, food doesn’t burn onto it. So that splatter or spill of spaghetti sauce or that stray veggie can be cleaned right up with a simple swipe of the sponge rather than a good hard scrub usually required.
And that also means that your induction cooktop, with its hardened glass and difficult to scratch surfaces, looks like new years after you purchase them.
Energy Efficient (Saves you money)
Unlike conventional gas and electric cooktops, induction cooking is much more. Quite simply, where gas and electric waste a lot of heat, when the heat is generated within the pan itself with induction, more of that energy gets to the food, and less of it doing little more than heating up your kitchen.
When considering all of these advantages, it’s understandable why most people, when buying an induction cooktop, prefer to talk about it as an “investment” rather than a purchase.
That’s because with induction technology’s increased energy efficiency comes greatly reduced energy consumption, meaning lower utility bills and a better environment.
And aren’t those some great investments?
If you haven’t made the switch to induction cooking in your kitchen at home or at work, then we hope our 5 tips have been helpful in giving you more to think about before you invest in the best way to cook your best meals.