I dont cook much inside on the gas stove. I use the microwave and sometimes a "camp" stove outdoors. However, my brother swears by this induction hot plate. I sprung for one from Amazon about $75 I cooked some soup last night. Not a big test but it worked great. It's very thin and a small footprint.
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91DCKTY8NnL._SL1500_.jpg)
We have a built-in induction cooktop at home and bring along a portable one in the trailer too. They are the bees knees especially how they heat nothing up but the pan itself, no blast furnace to heat up the room in the summer. High efficiency means more cooking available per circuit. Wish the compatible cookware could be lightened up a bit though.
Looks like a great way to cook.
We cook with electric appliances in our CampLite, since our TT does not have a gas system. When we camp where there's no electricity, we take the Yamaha Gen-Set and run for 15 minutes while preparing meals.
Here's our electric cook gear & TV on the wood counter-top from Lowes:
[a href="http://s657.photobucket.com/user/vstromklr/media/2013/2014/IMG_3690_zpscb3263eb.jpg.html"]
(http://i657.photobucket.com/albums/uu299/vstromklr/2013/2014/IMG_3690_zpscb3263eb.jpg)
The induction units have peaked my interest for a while now. I like the idea of them, but I cant bring myself to spend the money on a single burner unit for 75-100 bucks. If I did more cooking that required the finite controls I could see the benefits, since I hear most units have a incredibly wide range of temp settings. For now, I'll wait for the prices to continue to drop :)
That's actually the drawback to our portable unit. Only 10 settings. The home one is very adjustable but hums, squeals and ticks quite a bit when various power combos are used. Wouldn't trade it though.
Interesting...I would have expected more. I guess 10 settings are still better than simply Hi, Med, and Low.
I'm really puzzled by this.
My late mother in law had an induction cooktop and it was kinda cool in that there was less chance that she might burn the joint down (elderly living alone) but the cookware having to be steel was a total PIA. I eventually replaced it with a ceramic cooktop after two burners failed on the induction unit.
The reason why the cookware is so heavy is that it has to be iron or steel to work at all, and then you have to have a pretty thick pan to distribute the heat or you get hot spots and burned food. Aluminum is lighter than steel and the difference is even more important in a thick pan.
We have toyed with the idea of a hot plate to plug into the exterior outlet, but there isn't an advantage over our coleman camp stove. We've also toyed with the idea of a small slow cooker, but I think I'd rather get an actual dutch oven for the campfire instead.
[quote source="/post/8043/thread" timestamp="1426685130" author="@admin"]Interesting...I would have expected more. I guess 10 settings are still better than simply Hi, Med, and Low.[/quote]I don't know about shovelheads though. Ours isn't as sleek or modern. We've had it for years. Boils water like Vesuvius.
[quote source="/post/8049/thread" timestamp="1426689844" author="@pinstriper"]I'm really puzzled by this.
My late mother in law had an induction cooktop and it was kinda cool in that there was less chance that she might burn the joint down (elderly living alone) but the cookware having to be steel was a total PIA. I eventually replaced it with a ceramic cooktop after two burners failed on the induction unit.
The reason why the cookware is so heavy is that it has to be iron or steel to work at all, and then you have to have a pretty thick pan to distribute the heat or you get hot spots and burned food. Aluminum is lighter than steel and the difference is even more important in a thick pan.
We have toyed with the idea of a hot plate to plug into the exterior outlet, but there isn't an advantage over our coleman camp stove. We've also toyed with the idea of a small slow cooker, but I think I'd rather get an actual dutch oven for the campfire instead.
[/quote][p]We've had great success with ours. The cookware we have is somewhat copper-clad with real thick and heavy magnetic bases clad to the stainless cook surface. Heavy and expensive but works great.[/p][p]
[/p][p]These things boil in half the time a normal top would do if it were expending the same energy. Side-by-side test here with my trusty Kill-A-Watts shows ~35% energy savings. I actually bought ours to run off of our off grid solar setup for that reason.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Outdoors I think the only benefit would be saving on propane and some efficiency gains. Cooking doesn't contribute much cost percentage to an entire household electric bill but a camper is different. Off-grid solar fed electric cooking is unheard of but now you've heard of it.... that's how I roll..heh[/p][p]
[/p][p]The portable just doesn't simmer as well as I'd like it to. Shovelhead, how many settings do you have on that cooker?
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This version (Duxtop) has 15 power levels. The late night infomercial version Nuwave2 has more steps but is a good bit larger.
[p]Just to show how anal I can be in such devices here's me measuring the weight of sticks in order to demonstrate a new loading technique and calculate the efficiency of the Biolite campstove. Wow, fun fun fun I tell you what! This is several minutes of your life you will be wasting if you choose to watch it.
To keep this on topic the vid was shot on my home induction cooktop.[/p][p]
[/p][p][video src="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0cHdL--XG0&feature=player_detailpage"][/video]
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