I have cooked on gas, induction, infrared and the old style resistive elements. Currently I have a Wolf duel fuel range which is one of the best you can buy in the U.S. and I love it.
I’ll just come out and say it…
Gas has seen its day. I say that as a current gas cook top user.
A good quality induction cook top is fantastic. It gets a lot hotter faster than gas while also simmering better. Responsiveness is off the charts too, depending on how heavy your cookware is, which is gas’s major advantage over older electric cook tops. The only issue I personally have with induction is that cheaper units make a weird buzzing noise with some cookware and settings. I did get to cook on a Viking induction cook top a few times and did not notice that issue.
I switched from gas to a 200v induction cooktop and I don’t think I would go back. Quality definitely matters. I have a cassette gas stove for power outages or if I have something that absolutely must use gas (so far, it’s never been pulled out).
A I understand it the temperature control with an induction stovetop is just as good, if not better than gas. Is that your experience?
In my experience, yes. The only difference is that you don’t have a visual flame so it takes a little getting used to which setting means what (unless you have the type with a knob and a temperature readout, but I do not).
Ok cool thanks for the info!
It depends on the stove. The gas stoves in my building are much better, but that is because this place is ancient and the electric cooktops in question are whatever crap they find secondhand.
Depends on the quality of the stove. The bad ones regulate like most resistive glass ceramic stoves in on/off pulses, which is fine for ceramic because the thermal capacity smoothes everything. I’ve got a mobile induction plate like that tho and it is absolutely horrible to work with.
My decent quality stove top goes from just hand warm (keep warm function) to the fires of mount doom (power function for boiling water) in 17 silky smooth steps. On top of the pulses there is some power regulation as well (you can hear the coil hum change depending on power).
Ah ok thanks for the explanation.
real men use diesel stoves
I just keep a lump of sub-critical plutonium in the kitchen.
Staying indoors during rain can dramatically cut wetness.
Having a gas stove certainly came in handy when we’ve had blackouts.
Electricity is expensive in my state but gas is relatively cheap.
get a camping stove for those occasions. I was worried about the same, that’s what I did.
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.)
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.
The fact you didn’t reply to any of the replies here makes me think you’re not capable of having your mind changed.
Or I had other shit to do than be on the internet, but you do you King
Sorry, yeah this is fair. I did not read the timestamps properly.
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
It’s going to be hard to convince me.
I don’t think anybody wants to convince you, it’s your own choice.
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’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…
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.
Full size entry level induction is in the 200-300 € range nowadays and already beats gas stoves. Just check your nearest IKEA. There is ZERO reason resistive stoves should still be allowed for sale. NONE. The idea that “induction” is a premium offering is a complete myth and has been for years.
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.
Fascinating, where I’m from power outages are a once in a lifetime occurrence. I’ve never experienced one
It’s called disaster preparedness
In Pornhub, gargling the balls is the content. It’s all about context… condoms.
I’d rather have health than maybe marginally better cooking experiences
It’s not marginally. It’s a superior all issues aside.
Gas? What are you talking about?
Yeah gas is amazing.
Gas is dogshit. You’ve never used induction.
I have. You haven’t used a proper gas stove.
LOL if you have to get a “proper” stove to beat a 49$ IKEA portable induction cooktop, you’ve already lost.
GTFOH with your bullshit. Gas. FFS.
Wow calm there buddy. Ask any chef and they’ll tell you why the use gas. Inductions… a fancy gimmick if you have a good set of pots. Try using a wok on an induction stove 🤣
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.
Sounds to me like you need better pans that don’t have paper thin ass bottoms
So put the pan on the edge of the burner…
Now the edge burns instead, while the other side remains cold. How is this helping?
Seems like a pretty shitty gas stove, to be honest.
Guess I was lucky? Our burner had a very low setting, perfect for low heat and reducing things like jams or whatever.
Electric is horrible. It’s either full on or off. No moderation other than time.
Huh, never seen an electric cooker that is full on/off. That sounds terrible.
Yeah, a good number of electrics do that. 100% or 0%, and they pulse between the two.
I think the core thing I have learned is getting a decent gas stove is easy. But it’s real easy to get a shit electric.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
mew construction
User name checks out.
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.
Modern electric heaters are also superior to gas in any way. And yeah, induction is just a new level of superiority.
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.
Renters don’t get a choice, and pollution affects everyone
renters don’t get a choice in practice, but they should in theory, and pollution from gas stoves is less than from combustion cars, just that it’s densely concentrated in your apartment, so levels are still high for you. but it does not affect everyone
a better move would be to actually build social housing, instead of prescribing others what they should build. otherwise you’re simply seen as “the party that wants to forbid others from doing what they like”, instead of being seen as “the party that actually does some meaningful construction and adds to society that way”.
We shouldn’t create decades of priced in emissions or have to pau twice to rip out the gas and put in electric later. Might as well do it right the first time
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
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.
Not just the right filter but a strong enough fan motor to draw air through it. The filter needs to be changed so at some point outside venting becomes cheaper.
The reality is most people never change the filter and rarely use the fan.
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.
If you don’t want to poison yourself with fumes, then yes.
Then you must only breathe the finest purified filtered canned air. And not the dirty polluted air in whatever big city you live in.
I actually have more air quality measures in my home than most and I have multiple sensors measuring the quality of the air. I be been measuring it long enough to know exactly what causes my air quality to decrease.
I also do not live in or near a big city.
Your ignorance is not equal to my knowledge situation. I wouldn’t expect a willfully ignorant person to believe this.
I just like being able to put tortillas directly on the flame burner.
Gas stoves have a place, and I’m not about to take away anyone’s choice on the matter. With all that being said, to the title of this article, I say “duh”… Honestly, who thought that cooking using an open flame inside your home was somehow safer than the alternative?
I use electric, I’ve pretty much always used electric. I will continue to use some form of electric stove. I want to have complete control over the heat going into my cookware, and while it may not be as flashy or as quick to use electric, I can’t see any situation where electric would not be safer.
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
