OK good point.
In fact it was my comment with new cooker that one needs a whole new cook book.

I have never grilled food before with door closed and to be fair it does work. Using fan and top heat it cooks bacon well but except for very small cooking instructions that came with oven I have not found a cook book where it tells you what elements to use in the oven and if to use fan or not.

The hob is also a problem as it's so fast. Water is great, but so easy to burn food onto the bottom of the pan when using such high power. I was surprised when my daughter who cooks on gas said she boils water in electric kettle first then fills the pan with boiling water. The gas hob rated at 5.5kW and she demonstrated by filling kettle to mark pouring in pan then re-filling kettle to mark and lighting gas and switching on kettle at same time. And yes she was right a 2.7kW kettle beat the 5.5kW gas ring hands down the gas ring took near double the time.

So returning home I had to repeat the experiment. On the 3kW heat area the 2.7kW kettle just beat the cooker by a second or two but nothing in it really. With the 3.7kW heat area the cooker won easy. So after that little experiment I realised the induction hob is around twice the speed of gas. Seems most of the energy from a gas ring goes to heat room not food in the pan.

As a result I questioned the use of a pressure cooker. There must be a limit to how much steam can be forced out through the pressure release valve so there must be a limit to the amount of power the vessel can handle. So I asked manufactures of pressure cookers. They told me to ask cooker manufacturer! Old stainless steel pressure cooker would not work so had to get new one. I did not realise there is a range of pressures they work with so some run hotter then others. Again means hard to find cook book which matches ones own pressure cooker.

So just to add to the problem my missus comes home with a red plastic microwave pressure cooker so food is being microwaved and pressure cooked at same time. To be fair it works well. We did after get a new pressure cooker for induction hob from Lidi but the red plastic one is quicker.

Try explaining to my mum (86) how the oven works and it is conventional and fan or both and I was surprised how she refereed back to solid fuel days and how moving the dampers could alter which areas of the oven got hot. But how to relate the modern oven to old eagle stove is beyond me. I was only 12 when we got first electric cooker and I was not really into cooking.

All I can remember is the song where you push the damper in or pull the damper out and the smoke goes up the chimney just the same and thinking they were wrong in our house it filled the kitchen if put in too soon.

But unless you want burnt food believe me your missus will with an induction hob have to work out how and when to turn down the heat. Flat out is just not an option.

a nice summary for info there Eric. thanks

at the moment i am battling a kind of duel fuel set up in a way. i am renovating my whole kitchen/dining room. in doing so i dropped a piece of ceiling and it landed straight into a 2" gap i had no board coving the cooker top..smashed.

i had to dismantle the hob and remove it so we could still use the ovens. we have a high pressure gas camping stove temporarily hooked up on the top for hobs. for the first few days we burnt everything we cooked on it as it cooked twice as fast as our halogen hobs.
i have got to get a new cooker and have been looking at both a duel fuel cooker and an induction one. i appreciate the benefits of the induction but i just prefer the look of a gas hob one. my only trouble is the one i like is £4000

Nice photo.



I am allowed to laugh at that photo as I admit to finishing a bathroom off and dropping the cordless damaging the new bath.

The cooking speed is not an issue really the considerations are.
1) Safety electrics wins hand down against gas naked flames can't be safe. But forgetting that.
2) Temperature of kitchen in summer. Gas will heat whole house. A plus of course if there's a power cut.
3) Water. Burning gas produces water so even if you don't rapid boil the food it will always make kitchen damp as it's adding so much water. So only option is to have a cooker hood to extract all the moisture. And of course if your pumping air outside your also dragging in cold air from somewhere which in turn needs re-heating.

So it's all down to house design. In my parents house originally solid fuel the kitchen has a high ceiling and loads of vents so what happens in the kitchen does not affect rest of the house. And the cooker is on an outside wall so easy to extract the moisture. With my house the cooker is on an inside wall and a cooker hood is just not an option. Also ceilings are low. Although there is a gas supply at the cooker location it is really not an option with the way the house is built.

Watching my daughter and daughter-in-law clean their gas hobs I also like the easy clean induction hob. Even the old ceramic hob would get a build up of muck and needed scraping off from time to time where it had burnt on the new induction is so much cooler it wipes clean a treat.

But don't be temped by touch controls my mother did and they are too slow to work. The whole idea of induction is fast response to controls no need to lift pan just turn off heat in same way as gas. But can't do that with touch controls. They are a real pain you have to touch in a set order and within a set time. Ended up ripping my mothers out and replacing with halogen and with knobs on. Mainly due to her having a pace maker but also because she could not work touch control.

The gas does work with a wok. The wok for electric is just too heavy. And gas is far cheaper than an induction hob.

Oddly back in 1980 when we bought our second cooker you could get a gas oven with a microwave built in where with electric it was either or not both. But gas mark is so variable as to heat it gives off even the solid fuel cooker has a thermometer.

But as I said before it's all well and good having all the controls and options but unless you have a cook book to match it's rather pointless so for some one who has always used gas then I can see why they would want to keep using gas. And most of the real great cooks who write the books will cook in a commercial kitchen with a huge extractor and gas as to supply the power needed for electric cooking with half a dozen hobs would be a problem in many old restaurants. So since the books are written for gas then using gas does have an advantage.

First ceramic hob had a small chip in it and was replaced. The old one is still in the loft. So of course it was never needed. Now of course it would not be a problem to get a new ceramic top but give it 10 years and then to get a replacement would likely be a problem so yes I can see the down side of a ceramic hob.

Although our new cooker has many more controls to old one of same make. It no longer has a built in splash back. And the oven shelves I have needed to put hair clips on to stop them coming right out. Seems they have spoilt it for a ha'penny of tar!