Need a new hob, has to be electric. Were not massive cooks and have used gas and ceramic in the past with no problems, but just looking at induction ones as to see how they compare.

Do they cool down a lot quicker than ceramic after being in use? I see they all still have the ‘hot hob’ warning lights like ceramic, so are they that much better? Mainly interested in this not for cooking control but for after its turned off as got young kids who sometimes climb on the worktops to try get stuff out the cupboards.

Also I’d be looking at cheaper induction hobs (say upto 200, maybe a fraction more but cheaper the better!) and a lot of these seem to have mixed reviews.

So basically are cheaper induction ones worth it over a ceramic, and if so any recommendations?

Thanks

I have an induction hob, it’s nearly as good as gas for control.

They use an induced current to heat the pan directly rather than heating the surface. They do get hot but cool a lot quicker than a ceramic one.

I’ve never used ceramic, but have an induction hob. It’s excellent and cools quickly enough that kids are unlikely to come to any serious harm. The hot food will be much more dangerous.

Induction hobs don’t generate any heat themselves, they only get hot from having a hot pan sat on top – so the heat is never more than that of the pan itself.
I can’t be sure but because they don’t produce their own heat I would say that the hob should cool quicker but by how much it’s hard to know without testing.

What I can say is that induction is way better than any other hob I’ve used – and that includes gas (I could never get a gas hob to do a really low simmer, plus gas puts the heat into a small area while induction creates heat throughout the entire surface). In my eyes it’s a no-brainer.

I’ve got a hob that I bought used for about £80 off eBay in our holiday place and a big £900 Neff one at home. The Neff has more bells and whistles (but not that many) and simmers a pan more smoothly (the cheaper hobs seem to ‘surge’ the power so it’s on, then off, then on, etc while the Neff is a constant low trickle of power) but they seem to do the same job TBH.

Just remember that you ‘may’ need different pans.

As pointed out already. The hob itself doesn’t produce heat. Any heat in the hob has been conducted from the pan. So yes they do heat up but not anywhere close to the temperatures of ceramic or radiant rings. Good safety feature if you’ve got little little around.

Our induction hob is only really hot to the touch just after a boiling pan has been removed. Even mopping up spilled water with a cloth isn’t really that hot.

I have got asbestos fingers though…

Thanks for the replies, looks like an induction one then.

I’ve got one more question though!

I’m used to a hob with knobs on, I’ve noticed a lot of the cheaper induction ones have touch controls where you need to select the ring, then adjust temp as they only have one temp up/ down that does all 4 rings.

Is this a faff if you’re cooking with several pans and worth finding one with 4 separate temp controls, it is it something that as soon as you start using it it’s a non issue?

Bro’s got one where the main control is a magnetic dial thingy that you can just lift off and stick on the cooker hood, keeping the whole thing safe from “accidental” presses by little fingers when not in use

Given your use case and kids … worth thinking about.
You need a heavy (ferrous) pan base … this has to go somewhere after you finish cooking.
It’s also then potentially easier for kids to grab … unless you have somewhere safer than on the top of the hob.

I haven’t found one control for all a problem, like most things you just get used to it after a while. I’ve seen them with 4 separate controls, so they do exist, can’t recall brand or price bracket tho. maybe Ikea?

as said above you can remove a hot pan and wipe the hob with a paper towel without issue, but if someone put their hand on for longer than just a dab then I’m certain there’d be consequences.

If you do get a cheaper one with rings (rather than zones) worth checking min pan size. You might find a milk pan won’t work or those hipster coffee pot things

The touch controls on our dirt cheap one are a bit of pain… not enough of a pain that I’d pay many times more for one with knobs though. If you have money to burn, then I’d say get one with knobs on.

You need a heavy (ferrous) pan base

I wouldn’t call our pans heavy. You can get pans with an encapsulated ferrous core these days – look somewhere like pro-cook for a good range.

Is this a faff if you’re cooking with several pans and worth finding one with 4 separate temp controls, it is it something that as soon as you start using it it’s a non issue?

We’ve got an expensive Siemens one and there’s still only two controls – one does the left hand flex zone, the other does the right hand flex zone and the middle “big ring”.

It’s a bit of a faff and I tend to put pans on left side, and leave the right flex zone empty if using the big ring.

hipster coffee pot things

is more likely to not work because it’s aluminium.

Pans for induction must have a steel base

The hobs cool won much quicker than ceramic because they do not have a bug lump of material on top getting hotter than the pan itself.

Touch controls are of course nowhere near as good as a proper rotary knob but we’ve got to make do, eh.

Check the maximum power output – cheap ones might do 2.4 kW per zone, but if they have a plug or maximum 3 kW total, then forget bringing a pot of water to the build the same time as a hot frying pan. If it has a 13A plug fitted then you’re talking low power (3.1 kW max)!.

Apologies for the Amazon link but this is the one we bought. Only downside is the touch controls are rubbish. If you put a baking tray down on top of the controls, it might switch everything off!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cookology-CIB605-Induction-Built-Bridge/dp/B072XLCLLW

You need a heavy (ferrous) pan base …

Ignore this ^
Any pan with a ferrous base will work – weight has nothing to do with it.
(and why you apparently can’t put a heavy pan in a cupboard/drawer is beyond me!)

Pro tip. Don’t buy one if you have a pacemaker.

So just run a quick test.
I heated up some leftover casserole in a Le Creuset pan (heavy) on the hob for about 5 mins. The base of the pan measured 109c when I took it off and the hob underneath was 92c. After 2 mins the hob was 75c and 58c after 5 mins – I could leave my hand on it for more than a few seconds easily.

These temps were from directly under where the pan was – even a couple of cm outside that area was just 21c

We’ve had an AEG induction hob for about 6 months.

I’d not go back to gas now, it’s way better. More control, no naked flame, cools much quicker, no hot spots in pans. Safer for kids to learn cooking on.

I can get a small pan of water boiling for poaching eggs in 50 seconds, which is fantastic.

As a side issue, removing a combustion appliance from indoors has made my fight with indoor humidity much easier too, making the house cheaper to heat and much more pleasant to be in.

Have a Beko unit here, used for 6 years now, worked flawlessly. The one gotcha is that the rings are on or off, so low power settings adjust the proportion of time the ring is on.

Touch controls, bit naff, but they work and you get used to them.

My one is on a 40A spur so no problems with sharing power between the rings.

They knock ceramic hobs into a cocked hat.

Ignore this ^
Any pan with a ferrous base will work – weight has nothing to do with it.

No you are correct it is MASS… the same pan would work on the moon however light aluminium pans won’t work at all. Ultimately the point is the pan will take as long to cool down by itself as the surface of something like a ceramic hob…

(and why you apparently can’t put a heavy pan in a cupboard/drawer is beyond me!)

Again no problem if you don’t mind damaging the cupboard/drawer or potentially setting the kitchen on fire or just letting it cool first.

I’m a big fan of induction … I’m just pointing out that the pan gets hot so it isn’t a panacea

No you are correct it is MASS… the same pan would work on the moon however light aluminium pans won’t work at all.

My light aluminium pans with an encapsulated ferrous base work.

A heavy pan is generally better as they heat slower and retain heat, but it depends what you are cooking.

Again no problem if you don’t mind damaging the cupboard/drawer or potentially setting the kitchen on fire or just letting it cool first

This is the same with any hob cooking method though isn’t it?

If you want the things in the pan to be hot, the pan has to get hot too…

I’m just pointing out that the pan gets hot

… except you didn’t mention a hot pan at all, just that a heavy pan, apparently, needed to be kept on the hob! Maybe a little more explanation in your original post would have been clearer.

Again no problem if you don’t mind damaging the cupboard/drawer or potentially setting the kitchen on fire or just letting it cool first.

You put your pans back in the cupboard without washing them?

is more likely to not work because it’s aluminium.

Believe it or not, they cater for all hobs. My point was don’t go spunking silly money on something like that unless your certain it’ll work with your hob (the single ring on my hob has a min pan dia of 13cm, so anything small has to go on the zone). A Cheap 4 ring affair might have it’s limitations.

This is the same with any hob cooking method though isn’t it?

If you want the things in the pan to be hot, the pan has to get hot too…

Yup… that’s all I was pointing out …

… except you didn’t mention a hot pan at all,

If you want to quote a few words out of context whatever….because that’s so obviously so much more important than a kid getting burned.

Induction hobs are great, but I’ve yet to find one that doesn’t have hateful controls. We’ve got a Miele (came with the house, not my choice) which has separate touch buttons for each hob, which is OK, but idiotically, you can’t turn a hob down unless there’s a pan on it. So if something boils over you lift the pan off, but you can’t turn it down until you put the pan back!

Other family members have a Beko – have to keep telling it which hob you want to control which is very fiddly – and a Neff (I think) with a very cool magnetic spinny thing as the controller, but again, you have to keep telling it which hob you want to control which I found very fiddly.

With the Moka pot, could you not get a steel disc and put the aluminium pot on top of it? Would that work, hypothetically at least?

Pro tip. Don’t buy one if you have a pacemaker.

Or are on an insulin pump (or likely any other electronic medical device).

Mainly interested in this not for cooking control but for after its turned off as got young kids who sometimes climb on the worktops to try get stuff out the cupboards.

It will be safer in that regard, although it will of course do nothing to stop them falling off the worktop, playing with sharp knives, or pulling pans of hot liquid onto themselves – so not sure it solves the fundamental issue of young kids unsupervised in a kitchen.

Those steel plates are really inefficient and not worth bothering with. I ended up with a plug in mokka pot as I couldn’t find a solution for out Hotpoint hob.

edit: like this but it doesn’t get used now since I got an aeropress as we have hardwater. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coopers-of-Stortford-Stainless-Percolator/dp/B07Y3YSKRF/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3O6TC0UBJKDPF&keywords=percolator&qid=1581349381&s=home-garden&sprefix=perc%2Ckitchen%2C148&sr=1-4

We’ve used it for 7 years now and it was fitted in the house when we moved in. I don’t like the ring select button and I regularly end up turning them all off.

The left two rings have been playing up on ours so we’ve been looking to replace it. I’ve decided on an Ikea one for around £270. I was looking at a higher priced ikea one but something put me off it. (the cheaper one has +/- buttons, the higher priced one is a slide. When we tried out a slide in a shop it was really hard to get a specific setting. I think it was a highend hotpoint one with 40 increments.

We only tend to use a few settings. One ring has boost for boiling water quickly, everything else is usuallly on 7 for frying or 3 for simmering, more increments would be nice.

The neff one we have have has 0-9 plus a “half” setting for each of those, so 18 in total for each zone.

Spinny ring works well actually and it’s nice to be able to take it off for the completely clean look.
It beats the crap out of our old gas burner range anyway – especially if you like to keep things clean.

Regarding frying pans, while I agree that any pan with a steel base is likely to work, most frying pans that you’d buy in the shops actually don’t as they tend to be aluminium and certainly all of the ones we had when we got ours went straight on the skip.

Personally, we like the heavy Ikea ones and they work a treat with our induction hob:
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/trovaerdig-frying-pan-golden-brown-50270179/

In general, we love our induction hob. More controllable than ceramic, less utterly rubbish than halogen, and much, much easier to clean than gas. Best of all worlds if you ask me. Had ours 11 years and when it dies, it’ll be replaced with another identical one. Ours is a De Dietrich and while the push buttons aren’t amazing, they’re good enough and better than others I’ve used.

I picked up one of the small versions of that pan a couple of months ago. I agree it’s very nice but I have noticed that it heats up slower than the steel pan that came free with the hob.
I’m assuming that it’s because it’s a ferrous base that’s encompassed within an alloy pan.

Interesting. I’ve never noticed mine taking particularly long to heat, but I’ve got the big one and induction hobs are odd things, with larger pans often heating more quickly than small ones. That said, it maybe does take a bit longer than the pans that came with the hob, but only maybe 10-20s to start sizzling the bacon. (let’s be honest, that’s about the extent of my kitchen expertise!)

If anyone actually cares enough, I can break out the thermometer and test, but I can’t be arsed otherwise.

Some touch controls are better than others. Got a new AEG induction hob recently, not too expensive. It has kind of slider controls, for 0 to 14. So can just press the number you want.
Old hob was just + and – buttons, so a lot more button presses to turn it up or down (and more annoying beeps).
And separate controls for each hob. I think that is worth it, when you have a few pans on the go.

I would rather have something with proper knobs, but seems they are all a lot more expensive.

And got a stainless steel Bialetti Venus moka pot, works fine. I have the “6 cup” version. The smaller sizes might be a bit narrow for some hobs. Nice and quick to heat up anyway.