I’m looking at buying an induction burner but it’s hard to find which brands may be reliable. Most of the youtube reviews are done by review bot channels and relying on amazon reviews in this day and age… yeah. So does anyone have any experience with these and know of a brand that I can go toward?
I’m looking for a hotplate or portable type. One thing I’ve seen people take issue with is a small heating area? Is this an overblown issue? On many of the units I have been looking at they say there’s a ring that’s like 4-6 inches in diameter that heats and I’d like to be able to cook evenly on a larger skillet.
My frying pan extends over the ring by about an inch all around, until now it was never a problem because whatever I was cooking was getting stirred, but this morning I tried making pancakes and there was a very noticeable raw ring on the edge when the middle was fully cooked.
However, I think this is likely an issue of experience. I’m not used to cooking pancakes on induction so if I had used a slightly lower heat setting and let the pan properly heat up I think I could have avoided it.
Induction can be very quick to achieve a high temperature on areas with direct contact, but if the ring is small only the middle part of the pan will be hot enough. For things being stirred that’s not much of an issue, but if even cooking is a big deal for you then it might take a bit of practice getting the pan right.
Thank you for sharing the experience, I’ll have to adjust my expectations lol. Having an even heating is something I was hoping for for things like crepes or omelets. But on the other hand what I have now is a regular electric glass top, and it makes me nervous with how easy it is to scratch. Scratches can make the entire glass top crack and it’s super expensive to replace. Any time any splatter happens or anything boils over for even a second if it drops onto the hot glass it INSTANTLY becomes burnt on and needs to be scraped off but you can only use special non-abrasive detergents…
Induction would suit my needs well enough for most things and I can probably adjust to the times it doesn’t.
One of the things I like is because induction works by directly heating the metal, on the rare occasion something does spill over it doesn’t burn nearly as badly because it only gets residual heat. Wipes off really easily.
They also cool down very quickly if you have children or pets to worry about.
I’m glad I made the switch. The pros far outweigh the cons for me, and with the pancakes/crepes I think it’s just a learning curve.