I bet some of you (in the US) completed a long shift at the stove last week creating a Thanksgiving meal. Or perhaps you helped out here and there over at a relative’s place. With group meal prep you probably want to spend less time cooking and more time talking with hilarious company. Well, unless you hate talking to your Aunt Edna, your stick-in-the-mud relative. If so, have fun with that turducken you hunt, field dress, stuff and cook every year to spend less time next to her.
On time, this tea drinking, dinner-maker spends less of it waiting for food to heat and water to boil than I did a few years ago. My cooking method is safe and efficient, too. How so? Rather than gas burners or electric coils, my kitchen range is an induction cooktop. Huzzah.
A brief explanation (more entertaining if you read it like you’re brainy Alton Brown):
Induction cooktops use electrical induction (current within metal creates resistance which creates heat) instead of thermal conduction (heat transfers from hotter element to colder one) to cook stuff.
The induction cooktop is great for my visually impaired self. The surface is flat–easy for me to clean. No more scrubbing around coil areas and soaking metal drip pans. No more hoisting the stovetop surface like the hood of a car to clean messes from a pot boiling over.
Also, it’s safer. Once I remove a pan from a burner the cooktop is warm, but not a skin hazard compared to hot coils or gas flames. Furthermore, it’s more efficient than my old ranges. Pans heat faster; foods cook evenly. And I don’t mind the futuristic buzz that the appliance emits when it heats up. The sound reminds me to focus on my simmering and sizzling pots and pans.
So much warmth, yet the induction range isn’t flawless. First, compatible cookware made of ferrous metals like stainless steel must be used on the surface. Copper and aluminum pots are operational only by using an induction disc. Secondly, phones experience electromagnetic interference around it. It makes me think pacemakers might not like induction cooktops, but Dick Cheney isn’t coming over for dinner in Mayberry anytime soon. Does your Aunt Edna have a pacemaker?
All things considered, my induction cooktop makes my cooking life easier.
What do you use to cook dinner and boil water? Have you used an induction cooktop? Tell me about it.
Adventures in Low Vision 
I have had opportunities to cook with the induction cooktop when my sister had one at her place. As someone who grew up cooking with gas and then electric it took some getting used to. I didn’t love it but maybe with more time I would have warmed up to it. 🙂 I wll definitely consider it when it is time to get a new stove.
It’s always great to be able to test it out before you make a major purchase.
I never heard of an induction cooktop before. I don’t remember seeing any when we were out shopping for a new range either. I like the idea of it just being warm when you take the pan off. That would be safer. My new stovetop is ceramic. No cleaning under elements but awfully fussy about what you can use to clean it. And it always looks like it needs cleaning.
Low vision would eliminate that pesky “always looks like it needs a scrub” issue, wink.
Good point! Maybe I should cook and clean without my glasses. 🙂