A quality electric makes a big difference fwiw. I’ve gone through several types depending on where I lived. I gotta admit that gas is my favorite to cook on. Just so many ways to control heat, where the heat is, and how quickly the heat can be changed. Most electric cooktops and ovens are shit unless you buy an upper tier brand, and even then heating a big coil under a glass top is inefficient AF.
Just switched to induction. While not the same as gas, and it does have a few peculiarities, it is by far better than standard electric cooktops. Way fast, more efficient, easy. These need to come down in price to help win over people used to gas.
I have found gas consistently shit for cooking at low temperatures because you can’t turn it down low enough. Minimum power on the lowest ring, nope, still far too hot right in the middle of the pan.
you don’t say, captain obvious is on it again today
but i guess it’s nice that we now have quantitative data on it
Electrics are all I’ve used for the last 30 years
Are induction stoves shit in the US because of the lower voltage? Honest question
Honest answer: Induction stoves aren’t shit in the US. They don’t run at a lower voltage because our homes are wired for 240V same as Europe.
Honest explanation: The American power grid closely remembles anyone else’s, we’ve got the big long distance power lines up on those big pylons that transmit power in the megavolts, those get stepped down at substations to a dozen kilovolts to snake into neighborhoods, and then those pole mounted transformers step it down to 240V to make the couple hundred foot trip from the pole to a few houses. The difference is that in America, the transformer is connected to the house with three wires, not two. The third wire is a center tap, so you have the two outer wires and a center wire.
Measure the voltage between the outer two wires, you find 240V. Measure between the center wire and either of the outer two, you find 120V.
Most of the normal outlets throughout an American home or business are wired between one of the outers and the center, to deliver 120V. But, we routinely wire some circuits across the two outer wires for 240V, we even have special plugs for this to make sure you don’t plug a 120V appliance into a 240V outlet. Things such as electric water heaters, HVAC units, clothes dryers, electric car chargers and electric stoves are indeed wired for 240V here.
Induction cooktops took on a low reputation in the US because early models were hilariously expensive (Westinghouse was selling an induction range in the 70’s for $1500, that’s about $10,000 in today’s money) and not particularly reliable. Another factor was all the trendy cookware from the 60’s on. CorningWare and Pyrex (ceramic and borosilicate glass) was huge in the 70’s, Calphalon (anodized aluminum) and Revere Ware (high-nickel stainless steel) was on all the wedding registries in the 80’s, and solid copper was big in the early 90’s. None of which work on induction stoves. Which means, for decades, Americans perceived induction ranges as gimmicky crap that required “special” cookware, that to buy into an induction range would require throwing away all your pots and pans. Americans continued preferring resistive coil electric or natural gas stoves.
Well, we arrived into the 21st century, teflon-coated steel and tri-ply stainless pans come into vogue, Corning stops making consumer ceramic and glass products, Revere changes their stainless formula, and now we find that most cookware on the market is induction compatible. Induction stoves are the fastest growing market segment in kitchen appliances in the US, everybody wants one.
In Germany we have 230V for normal appliances and 400V for stoves.
Why?
In the us, wall sockets run on 110v, but it’s standard for all residencies to also have specific appliance wall sockets specially wired for 220v, usually two areas of a home, for washer/dryer and stove/oven. It’s a totally different plug design, too.
I don’t personally have induction, but I know people that have them and say they love them.
We’re actually split phase and higher power appliances like stoves, EV chargers, water heaters run on 240 volts.
But the “standard” wall outlets are 15 amps at 120 volts.
Just switched to induction. They work great.
What nobody is saying is that they’re viewed and priced as premium items, almost double the cost of a cheap electric cooktop and even more than gas. For instance, cheapest I could find for a basic multi-burner in-countertop cooktop with a quick search: Gas $175, Electric $199, Induction $330. This gets worse for a typical range that is found in most homes (cooktop/oven combo). You can get a cheap gas range for under $500. An induction range starts at just under $1000.
No, they work really well because they run on two phases so 220v.
220v isn’t achieved via two phases; we get 110v out of a single phase by center tapping the transformer. The center tap wire is called the “neutral” and is at ground potential, and then the two “hot” wires. There’s 110v between the neutral and either one of the hots, and the hots are 220v apart. It’s still one phase.
Note I used 110/220v here and 120/240 above. peak-to-peak, root-mean-square, ask an actual electrician, I’m just an asshole on the internet.
You’re correct. I tried to keep it short and misspoke. Two hot wires from previously split phase.
You’d presumably install a 240, a NEMA 6-20, so you can get all the power you need. So a 6-20 gets about 5k watts, versus 3k for standard British plug, versus 2400 on US standard. And these numbers are all fudgy because for some reason it all varies.
How often are yall getting power outages?
Every month or so. Every two if I’m lucky
Once a year maybe? Almost always due to storm damage.
A couple days a year typically, between hurricanes, tornadoes and winter ice storms.
Regardless of that, higher end modern gas stoves won’t allow you to use the stovetop during a power outage anyway even if you match light them, because they have electronic flame presence sensors for safety. And no modern gas range or gas oven with electronic oven controls will allow you to use the oven without power.
the question might be more properly phrased as:
what is better, using electricity + backup power generator, or using gas stove in the first place?
A backup power generator that will run a household stove is kind of a tall order; most of the portable gasoline models on the American market won’t put out 220v.
I’ve got an electric stove, and I’ve got a backyard grill that runs on propane and propane accessories. Ain’t no power outage gonna starve me.
One long enough to be worth considering in the last 7 years.
We had maybe one in the past 12 years where I live. A lot of people around me have had more, but my house specifically hasn’t had a major one that I can recall. We’ve been thinking about switching away from gas stove eventually.
I’ve had one in the past 2 years.
Every elective stove I’ve used has sucked for controlling the temperature. I’ll deal with a little air pollution to have my food actually come out how I want it. Maybe induction ones are better but those are expensive.
I lived for nearly a decade with an old stove with loose coils, did some of my best cooking in my life on that piece of rusted shit.
Seriously, give me a goddamn heat source and I will turn it into the finest shit you ever ate.
That’s a skill issue.
Honesty it is, I feel bad for anyone struggling with poor tools but once you really learn to cook, you can turn any source of heat into good cooking.
I lived for nearly a decade with a rusty old piece of shit from the 80’s, loose coils that only worked when you pressed down on one side, weird temperature controls that I eventually had to override, lots of problems to overcome. Did some of the best cooking of my life on that thing.
I think it might simply be a matter of getting used to it. For example, i can cook well enough with an electric (induction) furnace but it’s difficult for me to use a gas stove without burning my food.
Yes, induction stoves are the solution. The way I went about it is I bought a secondhand hob for just $110. Works brilliantly, controls just as well as gas. As a bonus, pumping all the energy straight into the cookware makes it heat things up REAL fast.
Regular electric stove is very inert, making it straight up impossible to do a lot of stuff.
Never heard of these limitations. All I know is you can’t prep a tortilla the right way on gas stoves.
I know little of cooking tortillas, but to me the main limiter with gas cooking is that it cuts off at certain gas pressure, not allowing you to use it at very low heating.
Bullshit
I wish someone pointed this out 20 years ago (enough to be heard). I raised two kids with occasional asthma in a house with gas stove, and maybe that could have been different.
I recently converted from gas to induction, and find it a much better cooking appliance in every way. Pans on the stovetop heat up faster than with gas, and I can boil a pot of water faster. The oven has more options and more consistent heating, especially on the broiler.
The only problem was the cost. Way too much money to get a new circuit installed but also the range was double or more what I would have spent on gas. There were very few options at appliance stores, and I never did find one on display, of any brand. In the US, it’s unnecessarily difficult to make this switch.
When I was shopping for one I was told to pay attention to coil sizes. Sure enough experimenting with a large skillet on small coil shows very uneven heating. I did find one or two reasonable priced ranges but with only tiny coils. Even at spending way too much, I only have one coil that works well with 12” skillet or stock pot. I know ikea now sells an induction range for more reasonable price but coil size is critical and the first thing I’d look at
I have gas and would fight anyone who tries to tell me otherwise. I rented a place with an induction range and now I want one so bad.
Having a proper exhaust hood that sucks air outside mitigates this to a huge degree, but a lot of us have hoods that “filter” the air through nothing and then shoot it up towards the ceiling.
The flippers who did my house disconnected the outside air vent, I’m still pissed and mean to get it fixed, cause I can’t afford an induction range either.
If you think you can’t afford an induction range, you also can’t afford to hire contractors to have your new ductwork put in and/or unborked.
Much as I hate to recommend Frigidaire for various reasons, the FCFI3083AS is I think the most economical freestanding 30" induction range on the market at the moment and has an MSRP of $1099. You can probably score one from some discount or independent appliance retailers (i.e. not Home Depot, Lowes, or Best Buy) for a little under a thousand.
A lot of us
Everyone I know has a microwave. Is that a class thing?
It’s a failure to read the manual thing. Every OTR microwave ever manufactured functions as a hood by definition, and basically all of them (I can only think of like two exceptions) have the option to be configured for either recirculation or to duct outside. It’s just that most models come out of the box already configured for recirculation and most people ('s contractors) are so averse to reading that they fail to realize you can flip the blower motor over and thus cause it to actually accomplish something (provided a duct is in place) rather than just blowing stale air back in your face.
The ducting behind a microwave is not that common in my experience. It makes sense for microwaves to come preconfigured to recirculate instead of trying to exhaust to a sheet of drywall because most people are going to install it how it comes out of the box. I’ve installed dozens of microwaves and only twice has ducting existed to flip the venting for. Higher end houses typically have dedicated exhaust fans and lower end houses never seem to have ducting for a microwave. I installed a dedicated fan that exhausts out the roof at my house. Even with ducting those microwave exhaust fans barely provide anything of value. I’m sure my experience is very regional but it seems like a really niche middle ground where someone would bother venting out of the kitchen but also not care enough to have a purpose built exhaust fan.
Part of the problem there is I have guys just absolutely insist at me that a microwave “can’t” be vented outside so they don’t bother to install a duct, and tell me that in order to vent outside you “have” to get a hood instead. This is obviously bogus.
This also leads to the inevitable Contractor Special where a duct was there, often when the user is replacing an old hood with a microwave, but the installer just shrugs and slaps the microwave on the wall as-is where A) it is inevitably too tall and now way too close to the stovetop, and B) covering the duct outlet while still recirculating back into the room. Whenever I unearth one of these in my travels it makes me want to track down whoever the hell installed it and then punch them so hard they come clean out of their socks.
People are for some reason hyperfixated on getting appliances off of their countertops, which is why the over-the-range microwaves became so prevalent in the first place. (And then they all immediately filled the spot where their countertop microwave used to be with a countertop air fryer instead, but that’s a whole different discussion.)
Yeah that would drive me insane to run across. It’s not even particularly hard to tell that the exhaust fan motor is reversible just by looking at the top/back of the microwave before it is installed. Every one I’ve seen looks pretty damn modular in comparison to the rest of the microwave shell.
Edit: reversible is the wrong word, able to be unscrewed and rotated, I’m sure you know what I meant but on a reread of my comment I wanted to clarify.
As a taller guy who wears glasses, I’ve had the horrible experience of some of these filters blowing greasy air in my face and settling on my glasses. Not pleasant
Mine has a vent, but no hood so there’s only so much it can do. And the way they built out the kitchen means there’s no good way to install a hood without remodelling.
But now I don’t care as much. The current vent (and window) is good enough for induction
I’m here in Europe where I’ve never ever seen anyone using a gas stove, ever. Not even the old timey stove in my grandparents’ tiny summer home. I’m almost 40 years old. Seriously, gas stoves are ancient and not efficient.
Europe, I’ve seen induction only in airbnbs, everyone has gas at home
Northern Europe here, everyone has either induction or electric glass/ceramic.
I have induction, live in an apartment, not an Airbnb. You live in eastern Europe by any chance? Maybe less far along technology wise?
I do, yes. But people are renovating and modernizing their homes and I don’t know anyone who chose induction - they are available here, and so is electricity.
Habit maybe? Just like Americans seem to be stuck in the past because of fear of progress.
I’m in Europe too, and I’ve seen a lot of them, and I think they are still standard in restaurants. I’ve owned gas stoves in 2 of my apartments.
In restaurants seems like it’s like some sort of tradition, even though it’s much less efficient than induction.
Depends alot where you are living. As a kid I never saw anyone using gas. But later, especially living in a bigger city gas stoves are really common.
Which part of Europe? I’m living in the biggest city in my region.
Another fuckass article trying to shift blame to the individual instead of holding gigantic corporations and tech giants responsible for making conditions so bad that even indoor air is polluted.
not… quite. these are research findings that what we’ve long suspected is true: gas stoves aren’t great for your indoor environment. the question you should really be asking isn’t “why are we saying this now” but “why is there so much pro-natural gas stove propaganda out there in the world when modern energy efficient electric stoves are just as good in the areas that gas excels in at a lower long term cost to the owner?”
what you’ll find is that it’s the gas companies who are pushing the narrative that gas is better and landlords not performing upgrades because they don’t cover their tenants’ utility bills so those upgrades cut into their exploitative profit models. so. yes, the problem is gigantic corporations and the capital class in general. but don’t shoot the messenger, especially when the messenger has brought you weaponry to arm yourself against a common enemy
Not everything is propaganda man, using that argument against people’s directly observed comparisons and preferences kinda undermines the whole idea. I’ve got panels on the roof and an electric chainsaw, propane is still the best fit for my stove. I’ve got wood, diesel, and electric heat, all of which have their season. It’s easy to get blindly optimistic about exciting new tech (electric cars are probably the biggest one here) but nothing is universally applicable and you need to have some faith that your fellow man is an intelligent, thinking being trying to navigate this world just like you
I feel like the health benefits I get being able to cook proper, healthy Asian style food with my wok outweigh the health risks of a gas stove.
For what it’s worth I have an induction stove and if I put my steel wok on it empty I can made the bottom third of it glow red hot within about 10 seconds of powering it on.
Gas is absolutely not necessary for this, but there is a grain of truth to the fact that outside of induction stovetops, practically all radiant electric stoves do indeed suck ass.
You can use wok with electric stove
“No, you don’t understand. It’s a different kind of heat.” - them, probably.
Yes, it is. Cooking on fire isn’t the same as cooking on an electric stove.
Its more like you can’t use a wok on a cheap electric stove, but you can use it on a cheap gas stove. That’s it. You get what you pay for and landlords are parasites, so if you rent gas is what you prefer.
With wok specifically, you either have the specific Chinese high burner that you absolutely can not and should not have in your house, or you can’t do fancy tossing. I am unsure fancy tossing actually achieves anything, but even if it is, you can’t do proper technique at your home kitchen anyway, even with the highest quality flame burner.
Shouldn’t you be using your outdoor kitchen to do that properly.
hmm, which kitchen shall i use for this meal?
mfr most of us are grateful to be able to access a kitchen at all, American Suburbia-ass take
If you have a gas stove and can’t afford, or don’t want to switch to electric, keep a window open in the kitchen while you cook. This is especially important if your over-the-range hood does not vent to the outside (yes, that’s a thing.) If your hood does vent to the outside, turn it on every time you cook and you’re golden.
Where the fuck else can it vent to?
Through an activated charcoal filter and right back into your face.
This is depressingly common and functionally accomplishes just about as much as you expect it does.
Ohhh, thanks. With the right filter it can make sense but it will be far cheaper to just pipe it out.
Yeah, I’m going to open a window every time I want to fry a couple of eggs or bake a loaf of bread at -25F/-32C.
Just how many hours a day do you think any stove is continuously on? That 3D printer you might own runs far, far longer.
Induction stoves should be Mandatory in mew construction. Coil electric works just fine but we need to introduce people to tech that’s superior to gas to get the switch to stick
I don’t get why there’s such a huge push from self-declared “left-wing” people to prescribe others what to do. Supposedly, “left-wing” people don’t like being told what to do, i.e. by employers (who are making them work in bad ways) or by “main-stream dominant right-wing culture”. At the same time, the very same people who don’t like being told what to do, tell others what to do. Such as by wanting to force everyone to switch to a specific type of technology that’s supposedly superior. I don’t get this behavior.
mew construction
User name checks out.
Modern electric heaters are also superior to gas in any way. And yeah, induction is just a new level of superiority.
I got an induction maybe 10 years ago or so. It is amazing how fast I can boil water or just get going in general. Lovely tech
I think that electric cooking speed is only limited by how much power you can draw from your wiring. And if you have good wiring, cooking speeds can be extremely fast. It’s a bit like with cars, where people get excited about having a lot of HP (horse power) where idk (i’m not a car expert) sth like 100 HP is considered “crazy good” and everybody wants to have it (that’s combustion engine cars). Then, an electric vehicle comes across the corner (and it’s not even an expensive EV, just a cheap one) and it easily has 700 HP. Like, the acceleration power is immense, it’s enormous. EVs accelerate crazy fast, and it would actually be dangerously powerful if they didn’t have software control to throttle the maximum engine power.
Suddenly, everybody stopped talking about HP. All these car-crazy friends i had when i was in school, the moment EVs appeared on the stage, they stopped being impressed by HP.
The same is with electric appliances like cooking stoves. They can be crazy fast and there’s no upper limit on power if you get good wiring. It’s only limited by the device so you don’t accidentally burn your food all the time.
I think that with gas flames, the flames are more-or-less always the same size, while for electric cooking, there’s a much greater range in heating power, both up and down. You can also have very small, very gentle heating, that is difficult to get with gas.
I used to prefer gas ranges. I grew up with one and really liked that we could still cook when the power was out. Also, fire. I just… kinda like fire.
But learning about the dangers has changed my view. Funny enough, I recently moved into a new place and have an electric stove for the first time. My heart is upset at me, but I can’t deny that it’s better. Not only are there fewer dangers, but it seems to heat up really fast. Much faster than any of the gas stoves I’ve used (which have been in almost every house and apartment that I’ve lived in til now.) I set a pot to boil, go sit down, and it’s bubbling before the YouTuber I’m watching finishes gargling their sponsor’s balls.
(Kidding, of course. I always skip the sponsor placement.)
I grew up with one and really liked that we could still cook when the power was out
Is this a north america joke I’m too European to understand? I heard America gets power outages but surely they are not frequent enough this would be something influencing what stove you buy
Summer thunderstorms will knock out power, especially in the Midwest where tornadoes are common.
It’s called disaster preparedness
Induction tops are the best. Instant heat, very safe and energy efficient. Not compatible with cheap non magnetic cookware though.
I fucking hated the induction stove we had in the 90s, and awe moved into a place with a very nice gas range. One of them rich people brands. And I’m a food snob. Well okay I was before I wokenboken. It’s going to be hard to convince me.
It’s going to be hard to convince me.
I don’t think anybody wants to convince you, it’s your own choice.
Not sure if induction stoves existed back then.
Do you recall if it got hot with no pot on it?
If it got hot with nothing on it, it was not an induction top, but a normal electric one with glass on top.
In the 90s you probably had one of those shitty glass top coil element stoves. Those things suck. Induction is great. Maybe there was some old tech out there but I love mine
I think a big part of the issue is the wild variances on electric stove quality.
The landlord specials are dogshit and what most people have experience with. Even a bad gas stove is 10x better than those.
But once you get to quality electric ranges, and then induction options, they are superior to gas in basically every way. But very few people have experience with these, or the money to afford upgrading to them when their existing stoves breakdown unexpectedly. So most are stuck with the cheap crappy electric options.
See this explains my experience. Shitty induction range and expensive gas range. Like, if I had a jennair induction to compare to I could make an intelligent analysis but as is I fucking love gas ranges. Very easy to see what you’re getting as far as heat.
Fwiw my induction range has blue LEDs built into the glass top so so can see when the big burner is on. I thought it was a stupid gimmick, but it really makes a nice stand-in for that flame
I will never own another Jenn-Air. We had one for a brief period of time. It tried it’s best to burn the house down 3 times by shorting out 2 twice and having the thermocouple induce a runaway the last time.
I’ve got a higher range induction and there are worlds between that and the run of the mill portable induction stove I bought for cooking smelly/smoky stuff outside. So much so that I prefer the 80’s electric hot plate of my mother.
That mobile induction abomination regulates like a microwave: full blast or nothing (in much too long pulses). Cooking on that is a challenge. My stovetop tho goes from just hand warm (keep warm function) to the fires of mount doom in 17 silky smooth steps. I could hardly believe my eyes when it boiled pasta water faster than my electric kettle. As nice as cooking is with that, the biggest advantage is the cleaning…
In Pornhub, gargling the balls is the content. It’s all about context… condoms.
There are two kinds of studies I really enjoy. 1. Some wildly unexpected result in a classic field. Rare. 2. Quantification of some phenomenon in greater detail, which confirms current understanding. Happens all the time. Love it the most.
Integrating indoor and outdoor nitrogen dioxide exposures in US homes nationally by ZIP code https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/12/pgaf341/8361964?login=false
Switching to electric stoves can dramatically cut indoor air pollution https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/12/gas-propane-stoves-nitrogen-dioxide-exposure-health-risks-switching-electric
As a foil: I grew up with an electric oven. Used an electric ofen through the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and finally got a gas oven in 2017.
Because I was concerned about gas in the home, methane, CO, etc. I invested in a bunch of sensors so I’d know the moment any of it became an issue.
It’s been almost 9 years now, and I’ve yet to experience an issue.
However, that whole “you can use it when the power’s out” thing: can’t use the oven; the valve is electric. On my first gas range, the range wouldn’t even come on without electricity.
The pots and pans I use now are designed for gas and heat up fast, maintain an even heat, and cool down fast.
Essentially, I think not all devices are created equal.
I like not depending on a single utility for my energy needs, but at the same time wouldn’t shed a tear if methane production vanished tomorrow (I’d probably convert to propane short term and electric long-term).
One unexpected change with induction is the handles of my cast iron skillets take much longer to get hot. If I cook something relatively fast, like an egg, I can now pick up the cast iron bare handed!
But if I wanted to cook during a power outage, I have a propane grill.
Actually, it’s kind of amusing that my main grill is a pellet grill with powered auger to feed the pellets, so I can’t use that in a power outage
What metrics did you monitor? With my air quality monitor I’d see CO2, particulate, nox skyrocket in rooms even far away from the gas stove. If you got a carbon monoxide detector + explosive gas detector then yeah you wouldn’t get any alarms with normal use, but those aren’t the only pollutants to monitor.
Co2, CO, particulates, NO2 and volatile organics.
I guess it’s down to venting?
I like not depending on a single utility for my energy needs
We had an extended outage in our neighborhood. Just over a week. I let the neighbors know I had enough wood and charcoal to keep the smoker at 275 all week and we could pop on the propane grills if we needed something hotter (I have been blessed with an abundance of backyard cookery). Fed half the neighborhood at some point that week, everyone at least got some ribs.
Last thing I want the folk on my street to do is go hungry, especially if all what’s wrong is the electricity.
Did any of those sensors measure nitrogen dioxide?
Yes, actually. I can see the level go up slightly when the burners go on, but when the ventilation fan kicks in, the levels go back down almost immediately.
Yeah that’s why. Most people don’t have a real vent in their homes. It’s the recirculating one or nothing.
That’s what should actually be illegal. I see those everywhere now, and I can’t believe they were ever allowed. Mine is bad enough as a ceiling vent without hood but at least it does vent outside
