(thanks to http://theinductionsite.com for this information)
Instant Adjustment
To serious cooks, the most important favorable point about induction cookers–given that they are as or more “powerful” at heating as any other sort–is that you can adjust the cooking heat instantly and with great precision. Before induction, good cooks, including all professionals, overwhelmingly preferred gas to all other forms of electric cooking for one reason: the substantial “inertia” in ordinary electric cookers–when you adjust the heat setting, the element (coil, halogen heater, whatever) only slowly starts to increase or decrease its temperature. With gas, when you adjust the element setting, the energy flow adjusts instantly.
But with induction cooking the heat level is every bit as instantaneous–and as exact–as with gas, yet with none of the many drawbacks of gas (which we will detail later). Induction elements can be adjusted to increments as fine as the cooker maker cares to supply (and nowadays that is very fine, especially at the critical low-temperatures end), and–again very important to serious cooks–such elements can run at as low a cooking-heat level as wanted for gentle simmering and suchlike (something even gas is not always good at). Someday, perhaps not so many years away, the world will look back on cooking with gas as we today look on cooking over a coal-burning kitchen stove.
No Wasted Heat
With induction cooking, energy is supplied directly to the cooking vessel by the magnetic field; thus, almost all of the source energy gets transferred to that vessel. With gas or conventional electric cookers (including halogen), the energy is first converted to heat and only then directed to the cooking vessel–with a lot of that heat going to waste heating up your kitchen (and you) instead of heating up your food. (The striking image at the left shows how precisely focussed heat generation is with induction–ice remains unmelted on an induction element that is boiling water!)
As a comparison, 40%–less than half–of the energy in gas gets used to cook, whereas with induction 84% percent (or, by many estimates, more) of the energy in the electricity used gets used to cook (and the rest is not waste heat as it is with gas). There are two important heat-related consequences of that fact:
Cooler kitchens: of course the cooking vessel and the food itself will radiate some of their heat into the cooking area–but compared to gas or other forms of electrically powered cooking, induction makes for a much cooler kitchen (recall the old saying: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”); and,
A cool stovetop: that’s right! The stovetop itself barely gets warm except directly under the cooking vessel (and that only from such heat as the cooking vessel bottom transfers). No more burned fingers, no more baked-on spills, no more danger with children around. (The photo at the right–one of several similar ones to be found on the web–shows, like the one above, how only the cooking vessel does the actual cooking.)
Safety
We have already mentioned that the stovetop stays cool: that means no burned fingers or hands, for you or–especially–for any small children in the household. (In the image at the right, you can see a pot boiling water on an induction unit while a dollar bill between the pot and the cooktop surface is unsinged.) And for kitchens that need to take into account special needs, such as wheelchair access, nothing, but nothing, can beat induction for both safety and convenience (see the paragraph farther below).
Furthermore, because its energy is transferred only to relatively massive magnetic materials, you can turn an induction element to “maximum” and place your hand flat over it with no consequences whatever–it will not roast your non-ferrous hand! (Nor any rings or bracelets–the units all have sensors that detect how much ferrous metal is in the area that the magnetic field would occupy, and if it isn’t at least as much as a small pot, they don’t turn on.) And, while an element is actually working, all of its energy goes into the metal cooking vessel right over it–there is none left “floating around” to heat up anything else. (The image at the left shows a hand–wearing a metal ring–harmlessly touching a full-on induction element, while a metal utensil lies equally harmlessly on another, emphatically demonstrating those points.)
Moreover, gas–induction’s only real competition–has special risks of its own, not all of which are as well known as they perhaps should be. While the risk of a gas flame, even a pilot light, blowing out and allowing gas to escape into the house is relatively small, it does exist. But a much bigger concern is simply gas itself, even when everything is working “right”. Use any web search engine and enter the terms gas health risk cooking and see what you find (really: do try it right here); if, for example, you visit the Gascape web site, you may never again want to even enter a house with gas laid on (take some time to really poke around on this site–you may be shocked). And, of course, all combustion releases toxic carbon monoxide.