Is it time to change your hob?

Induction cooking – is it time to change your hob?

Many of you reading this will regularly cook on a gas hob at home or maybe an electric ceramic hob, each have their own idiosyncrasies, so let’s have a look at these vs the modern induction electric hob. To make it easy we can break the differences down into the three broad headings of cleanliness, safety and cost.

Hygiene
The cleanliness of a hob is down to two things, getting dirt out of all the nooks and crannies, and preventing spills from getting welded onto the surface of the hob in the first place. The worst-case scenario is gas, where you have not only indentations and welds on the surface of the hob itself but also multiple parts to the burner itself, all of this makes it very difficult to keep clean. In the case of the older style ceramic hobs, they are much easier to clean due to having a flat glass surface but if something you are cooking boils over it will stick to the glass due to the extreme heat. The difference with an induction hob here is that the glass remains cool so spills can be easily wiped up without fear of burning the cloth or your hand.

Safety
In terms of the relative safety of these hobs, it’s obvious that given we know the glass remains cool with induction, it will also be much safer if touched accidentally or during a clean-up during cooking. The induction hob also has another trick up its sleeve though – it only starts cooking if the pan is present. Once the pan is removed (or if the hob is activated by accident) no heating will take place and it will turn itself off. Most also feature a child lock if you have an “inquisitive” youngster at home.

Cost
Finally onto the cost-effectiveness. If you’ve ever looked at the relative costs of these cooktops you will know that induction is a chunk more expensive, especially when compared with gas. Gas is also a firm favourite of chefs but on the flip side, the UK government are actively looking to phase out fossil fuels and you also have professional chefs like Michel Roux Jnr changing over to induction. To understand the real lifetime cost of a hob, you need to also look at the running costs every time you use them and further, look at the efficiency of the products. The worst-case here is again gas where you end up heating up your room as much as your pan, with an induction hob you just heat the pan and this results in a pan of water boiling in roughly half the time a ceramic would
take and significantly quicker than gas.
If none of the above has convinced you I’m guessing you might love to cook with a wok? Don’t worry we have a solution to that too! We hope to see you in our monks Cross store soon.

Herbert Todd & Son
Monks Cross Drive, Monks Cross, York, YO32 9QZ
01904 628676
www.htodd.co.uk