It could just be that when you speak to a person and tell that you do all your cooking on an induction stove you will be asked the question what an induction stove is. A lot of people may have heard of it but probably have never cooked on one and may even not understand the principle behind it. We can put cooking stoves in to 2 major categories namely gas and electric. There used to be 3 but coal/wood these days are only use for barbecues or some other type of outdoor cooking but for day to day cooking we use either gas or electricity.

Electric stoves can be divided in 3 sub classes, they are:

. The classic and still popular stoves with coil elements

. The halogen heaters

. The induction stoves

With a halogen or coil element stove they produce the heat that gets transferred to the pot, pan, cooker etc. etc. and then to the contents of those, with induction it the other way around. When your cooking on an induction stove the pot or pan is the one generating the heat. When you hear this for the first time it might be a bit confusing to you but it is not that hard to understand. Ones you understand the principle behind induction cooking and you get your first experience with this type of stove you will probably never want to cook on anything else again.

The principles behind induction cooking

An electric stove with a coil or halogen works in such a way that once you turn the stove on the element (the coil or halogen) will start to heat up. It does not matter if there is a pot or pan on that element or not it will heat up either way. That heat is then, like we said before, transferred to the pot or pan and then to the food. When you take the pot or pan of the element it will remain hot until you turn it off, then it will slowly start to cool but this will take some time. With induction cooking the element will start to produce a high frequency electromagnetic field which passes right through the pot or pan. The pot or pan must be made out of magnetic material. This electric (magnetic) current that circulates is what generates the heat. This is the big difference between induction cooking and the other two types of electric cooking.

Now that the pot or pan is heating up that same heat is transferred to the food or liquid that is inside it. The moment you take the pot or pan from the stove (element) the magnetic field that was circulating is broken and stopped and immediately the generation of heat stops as well. With a coil or halogen element you have to turn the element of to stop the heat generation, with induction cooking there is no heat as long as there is no electromagnetic field circulation. The only heat you will feel when you take the pot or pan from the stove is the heat that was transferred from the pot or pan into the surface of the stove, not the element it self because that never produced the heat.

There is one thing that you have to keep in mind when you would like to start cooking on an induction stove. You can only use steel or iron pots because the material needs to be magnetic in nature. So all your aluminum, copper or pyrex cookware would be made obsolete once you start cooking on an induction stove.

But if you are used to cooking electric then you will find that once you cook with induction you will probably not be going back to that halogen or coil element.