I of course love smoked meats of all kinds, but also like quick cooks like chicken portions, pork tenderloins, steak and fish. Really into cooking of all kinds.
My outdoor kitchen has a Lone Star Grillz Adjustable and it is wonderful. There also is a Pit Boss 5 Burner Ultimate Griddle.
There is an outdoor fire pit that has grilling capability and limited Santa Maria-style grill raising and lowering.
News flash: I have an errand to run so not much detail, but Jim's advice was spot-on and once we solved a problem with a connection that came loose, we are up and running!
Can't wait. Going out to dinner tonight, but will cook Friday.
I of course love smoked meats of all kinds, but also like quick cooks like chicken portions, pork tenderloins, steak and fish. Really into cooking of all kinds.
My outdoor kitchen has a Lone Star Grillz Adjustable and it is wonderful. There also is a Pit Boss 5 Burner Ultimate Griddle.
There is an outdoor fire pit that has grilling capability and limited Santa Maria-style grill raising and lowering.
Okay, back from picking up the grandcat (he was being neutered). Had to try a quick, fun experiment. One reason I really wanted this particular model is that it has a bridge function. The two medium-sized burners on the left side can be operated as one unit if you have a pan or griddle of the appropriate size. It took a lot of looking online to get the exact size right (can't be too small or too large front to back or left to right). Finally found this little cast iron cutie at Wayfair, it's 15.5 by 9 inches and is reversible with grill lines on the other side. Using the silicone pads and the tandem burners set to only 60% power, we got over 200 degrees in what must have been no more than a minute or minute and a half.
With my SV and this setup for searing, steaks will be almost zero effort at this point!
With our LG induction 6 seems to be the sweet spot too. I pretty much found the level to get a nice sear/sauté and very rarely use anything else other than the boil and simmer function. The biggest challenge after finding out where the cooktop ran was trusting it since usually the boil burner is utterly incapable of simmer but the induction will shift gears on the snap of a finger.
I figured I would put some induction information here in case anyone is interested. Happy to answer questions about it too. This is a book I have with a 1960 copyright.
I of course love smoked meats of all kinds, but also like quick cooks like chicken portions, pork tenderloins, steak and fish. Really into cooking of all kinds.
My outdoor kitchen has a Lone Star Grillz Adjustable and it is wonderful. There also is a Pit Boss 5 Burner Ultimate Griddle.
There is an outdoor fire pit that has grilling capability and limited Santa Maria-style grill raising and lowering.
One of the biggest problems I had with the old electric cooktop was that my carbon steel wok would not heat up quickly or efficiently. It's a 14 inch wok with a flat bottom that is a 6 inch circle. I just tried it on the medium-sized burner, with the silicone pad and at 90% power it was hitting 280 degrees in only 30 seconds. Stir-fry is going to be so much fun! The small burner is probably a better size match to the wok bottom, but it sits so far back on the cooktop that the upper part of the wok hits the backsplash, not letting the wok center on the burner.
Resistance cooktops must heat up themselves and then transfer the heat to the vessel using conduction. Only a certain percentage of the heat makes it into the vessel and the rest is lost.
With induction, the heat is generated directly inside the vessel through induced eddy currents and magnetic hysterisis; there is no conduction transfer from the coil to the load.
Worked with induction for 17 years and I am still not convinced it's not magic.
gboss Yes, this certainly all is feeling like magic. It will take a little time to learn the heat settings to use with the new cookware, but I can't wait to get started. I have a fun pasta dish planned for Friday and then a Persian stew sometime over the week end, so I'm going to just jump right in. Thanks for the fun science stuff you posted above. I hope to look through it some detail later. I did take three years of physics in undergrad, so I might be able to make some sense of it.
I think the manufacturer described it as some sort of hardened glass, (ceramic may have been mentioned, but I read descriptions of a lot of cookers so that may or may not have been said on this one) so I'm thinking it may be similar to the more rugged phone screens people are putting out these days. It has a nice feel to it and is a bit more textured than just smooth glass, so the paint isn't just a simple coating.
The silicone helps to prevent scratching of the glass surface by the pans. Also, I noticed that my wok was fairly unstable just on the glass surface (it's hammered carbon steel and so isn't perfectly flat on the bottom like pressed metal) but entirely stable when sitting on the silicone. Finally, it also can catch some splatter. Today I hope to fry some eggplant slices and intend to use a dish towel rather than the silicone to catch those splatters and ease clean-up.
Eh, I would bet you don't really need it unless you're using a pan with an uneven surface (I have a regular electric glasstop). I would NOT use a towel. while the burner won't heat up, the pan you're heating will and will likely scorch the towel. Remember the surface won't get hot so you won't have things burn on.
I of course love smoked meats of all kinds, but also like quick cooks like chicken portions, pork tenderloins, steak and fish. Really into cooking of all kinds.
My outdoor kitchen has a Lone Star Grillz Adjustable and it is wonderful. There also is a Pit Boss 5 Burner Ultimate Griddle.
There is an outdoor fire pit that has grilling capability and limited Santa Maria-style grill raising and lowering.
Did my first cook using the cooktop today. Like the crazy person that I am, I chose a really involved recipe that I've never done before. But I wanted to go with it because I'd get to use many of the new Misen pans and would have multiple steps on the cooktop. I'll write up the full cook as a recipe in a bit (spoiler: it turned out great), but here are a few pictures with my experiences as I jumped into using the cooktop and pans.
First step was frying some eggplant slices. This was the only one I botched and I'm not entirely certain what I did wrong.
Here's the large skillet hot with olive oil and some slices:
Turning on the burner to full, it's less than a minute until the pan is hot enough (water droplets skip across it) to add oil. I thought that I had put in enough oil, but I'm wondering if I needed more. Also, I had a few issues settling on the right setting for keeping the oil at a good frying temp. The slices fried up fine (I only torched a couple), but by the time I was finished, I had burned quite a bit of oil onto one side of the pan. I'm a little confused why only one side did this and it did seem like that side of the pan was hotter through the entire cook. I kept checking to make sure the pan was centered on the burner.
A little Bar Keeper's Friend and some elbow grease took this off in just a few minutes after the pan cooled off, but I've got to do a better job of keeping things under control. It's likely I needed to turn the burner down.
I made a meat sauce in the saute pan and that was a dream. A little bit of olive oil in first and then some lean burger meat with garlic and the meat browned in about a minute or two. The little bit of stuff that stuck when browning the burger deglazed instantly with a can of chopped tomatoes, so I definitely handled the temp correctly on that one.
No pics, but the 8 qt stock pot took quite a while to get pasta water to boil. I suspect that when using a high volume in the pot, it's less efficient at heating all the water quickly since the induction works primarily on the bottom of the pan (seek geeky discussions above).
All in all, I'm really pleased with this setup. I had remarkably few problems for everything being new. And, honestly, I don't fry things very often, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over how that step went.
I would suspect that the stock pot was not coupling as well with the induction rather than it being a high volume in the pot. Is it part of the same set? Same material?
I of course love smoked meats of all kinds, but also like quick cooks like chicken portions, pork tenderloins, steak and fish. Really into cooking of all kinds.
My outdoor kitchen has a Lone Star Grillz Adjustable and it is wonderful. There also is a Pit Boss 5 Burner Ultimate Griddle.
There is an outdoor fire pit that has grilling capability and limited Santa Maria-style grill raising and lowering.
One last incidental observation for those of us in the old fart club. When I first turn on the largest burner to high and it hits power boost mode, there's crazy feedback in one my hearing aids. It resolves in a few seconds but is reproducible.
I of course love smoked meats of all kinds, but also like quick cooks like chicken portions, pork tenderloins, steak and fish. Really into cooking of all kinds.
My outdoor kitchen has a Lone Star Grillz Adjustable and it is wonderful. There also is a Pit Boss 5 Burner Ultimate Griddle.
There is an outdoor fire pit that has grilling capability and limited Santa Maria-style grill raising and lowering.
Okay, and now, only to make Panhead John jealous, I present the wonderful storage area I now have. The old electric Jenn-Air was a center downdraft vent model, so there was a huge blower hanging off the bottom of the cooktop leading to a whomping-big 6 inch duct that went through the slab to the outside world. Not much could be stored there.
The induction cooktop has a very thin profile. We have capped off the vent ductwork and placed a new solid floor in the cabinet. And with a cheapo rack from Amazon, I now have totally awesome storage for most of my new Misen cookware. Only the stockpot is in a drawer beside the cooktop. The Lodge enameled cast iron Dutch Oven is in the other drawer since it is so heavy. For now at least, the Lodge skillet doesn't seem to be too heavy for the system. There's even room on one side for my pizza peel, Lodge 14 in cast iron pizza pan, oversized cutting board and new cast iron griddle for the cooktop. For those who have a good-sized cabinet under a cooktop, I recommend this or a similar rack system to increase the storage capacity of pans. This one has coated wires, so I'm not concerned about scratching the pots.
And, yes, I put the larger sauce pan above the smaller one. The large one will be used the most because of making rice for stir-frys. The wok lid only partially fits, it's the old one from my Anolon wok. I didn't buy a new lid with my carbon steel wok.
I of course love smoked meats of all kinds, but also like quick cooks like chicken portions, pork tenderloins, steak and fish. Really into cooking of all kinds.
My outdoor kitchen has a Lone Star Grillz Adjustable and it is wonderful. There also is a Pit Boss 5 Burner Ultimate Griddle.
There is an outdoor fire pit that has grilling capability and limited Santa Maria-style grill raising and lowering.
So the only complaint after quite a few cooks on the cooktop is that the largest burner (which strangely now no longer upsets my hearing aids) appears to heat in a different area than what is marked on the cooktop. Here is the Lodge enameled cast iron pot during today's chili cook. The silicone pad is centered on the markings on the cooker. When simmering the chili, it was possible to see in the bottom of the pot where the simmer bubbles were originating. I centered those bubbles in the pot and this is where it wound up.
The heating area is definitely to the left and back of the cooker compared to the markings.
As a side note my (MUCH lower-end) Frigidaire induction cooktop was supposed to arrive yesterday and as of yesterday afternoon still had not updated from arriving in Illinois on Thursday - so obviously it didn't make it here. I just checked tracking again on UPS' website and it looks like it updated as processing at my local Tulsa facility just an hour ago - maybe it'll show up today, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.
Yes, @tRitiot, it is fascinating to think about how the induction field got moved. But since most of the workings of the cooktop are sealed, there's no easy way to look at what's going on.
I think you will enjoy your new cooktop. Honestly, the biggest difference for my cooktop compared to the others is the bridge function of joining two burners. The knobs were just a nod to me being hold and hard to change my ways.
Oops. Use GRAVYTRAIN25 for 25% off at Misen. Or take a refrigerator magnet with you for shopping off the shelf anywhere. If the magnet sticks, you’re good to go.
I lost track of this thread somehow.... I'm glad it's working out for you. That's the last change I'd like to make in our kitchen appliances, but the ceramic cooktop is not even close to needing replacement.
Hey, very late to this party but had exactly the same questions Jim did about making the move to induction. We're this close to pulling the trigger, going to head down to our local Best Buy after lunch and see the model we're considering, they've got a demo on the floor, for a miracle. We'll have to replace our saucepans and stock pots, which are mostly Calphalon, but the CI skillet, dutch ovens, and three existing pans are G2G. I really appreciate all the great info in this thread, it answered everything I was wondering about and the wiring discussion was particularly reassuring. Thanks all!
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