Dozens of public housing apartments will get plug-in induction ranges as part of the initiative, which aims to eventually shift 10,000 NYCHA homes off the use of polluting fossil fuel appliances.
Yes, you can test with a magnet. If it doesn’t react, it won’t work. Aluminium for instance doesn’t work.
I don’t know why you were down voted and the user below gave misinformation. I bought a non stick pan before without noticing it wouldn’t work with my induction. Now I bring a magnet when choosing a pan.
A lot of cheap pans I’ve seen at (AU) Kmart, Big W, Ikea etc are aluminum with a teflon-esque coating, but with a carbon-steel circle attached to the bottom that makes it induction compatible.
Definitely, you just need pans with a ferromagnetic bottom, so cast iron works very well.
The outer material doesn’t matter - only the base. Many cheap induction-compatible pans are made mostly of aluminum with a non-stick coating, but containing a layer of ferromagnetic material in the base that will heat up on an induction stove.
Cast iron would work, though you shouldn’t blast the heat on it immediately because of how brittle they are and how unevenly they heat. You can find plenty of pictures online of people just chucking a room temp cast iron on at max heat and splitting them right down the middle. They get plenty hot when preheated at around the medium setting on most ranges, and if you need more you can blast it after it’s warmed up in like 2-3 minutes.
If you want to completely mitigate the risk, then yeah it’s ideal to start on low and progressively ratchet the heat up. Personally, I’ve just left it at medium and then cranked it up two notches on the dial after a few minutes. I’ve really never used the maximum heat for anything other than boiling water on my range, since just over medium is more than hot enough for a lovely sear. If the coil is significantly smaller than the bottom of the pan, I’d be much more careful and start on low no matter what pan I’m using just to reduce the risk of warping.
I’ve removed this post due to misinformation. Copper and aluminum pots on an induction stove arent forbidden; they just don’t get hot on an induction stove.
…as for thick aluminum cookware, or copper cookware, I was not implying that they would overheat themselves, I was implying that the induction cooker would overheat its coil attempting to work with them, because they conduct current better than the coil. But perhaps that’s prevented by protection circuits. I can’t test since I don’t have an induction cooker at home.
EM-fields induce current in copper and aluminum perfectly fine, no ferromagnetism is needed. These metals simply conduct the current very well, so no heat appears. Steel and cast iron, having considerable resistance, heats up in a similar field, conducting similar amounts of current.
This stuff would matter if induction stoves just had a raw component and no cooling or temperatue sensor or pot presence sensor. They’re an engineered product which doesn’t fail in the same way that the raw components do without any of that.
After thinking about this for a while… I can’t say I agree with that.
Sensors can fail. Some companies may even produce sub-standard sensors or faulty logic. I think it’s OK to tell people that copper and aluminum aren’t allowed on an induction top, and the makers of induction tops seem to think similarly, they just add a sentence “unless equipped with a magnetic base”.
Let’s take a manual of a randomly chosen induction cooker:
Cookware made from the following materials is not suitable: pure stainless steel, aluminum or
copper without a magnetic base, glass, wood, porcelain, ceramic, and earthenware
On one hand, an aluminum pot won’t heat. On the other hand, aluminum foil will melt, or if placed somewhat closer, catch fire. I think I should be allowed to claim that “aluminum is forbidden” on induction tops and add that “aluminum foil is extra forbidden”.
Will you kindly restore my post? People can downvote it if they don’t like my interpretation, but I don’t think it’s misinformation. It explains some things they might not even know about. I would be sad if people think that ferromagnetism is required for induction heating to happen.
Don’t you need special pots and pans for induction stoves? Would a cast iron skillet work on one of those? Or a standard non stick pan?
Yes, you can test with a magnet. If it doesn’t react, it won’t work. Aluminium for instance doesn’t work.
I don’t know why you were down voted and the user below gave misinformation. I bought a non stick pan before without noticing it wouldn’t work with my induction. Now I bring a magnet when choosing a pan.
A lot of cheap pans I’ve seen at (AU) Kmart, Big W, Ikea etc are aluminum with a teflon-esque coating, but with a carbon-steel circle attached to the bottom that makes it induction compatible.
It was aldi and not too cheap. But it was a while ago when I induction wasn’t common.
Definitely, you just need pans with a ferromagnetic bottom, so cast iron works very well.
The outer material doesn’t matter - only the base. Many cheap induction-compatible pans are made mostly of aluminum with a non-stick coating, but containing a layer of ferromagnetic material in the base that will heat up on an induction stove.
Cast iron would work, though you shouldn’t blast the heat on it immediately because of how brittle they are and how unevenly they heat. You can find plenty of pictures online of people just chucking a room temp cast iron on at max heat and splitting them right down the middle. They get plenty hot when preheated at around the medium setting on most ranges, and if you need more you can blast it after it’s warmed up in like 2-3 minutes.
So, you should start my setting the stove to low and gradually heat it up?
If you want to completely mitigate the risk, then yeah it’s ideal to start on low and progressively ratchet the heat up. Personally, I’ve just left it at medium and then cranked it up two notches on the dial after a few minutes. I’ve really never used the maximum heat for anything other than boiling water on my range, since just over medium is more than hot enough for a lovely sear. If the coil is significantly smaller than the bottom of the pan, I’d be much more careful and start on low no matter what pan I’m using just to reduce the risk of warping.
Yeah of course those kind of pans work fine. You don’t need anything special for induction. It’s standard for a lot of the country.
Old pots which don’t have enough iron or nickel in them for a magnet to stick to the bottom won’t get hot on an induction stove.
Cast iron works fine, but that cheap aluminum pot you bought as a student 20 years ago won’t work.
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
I’ve removed this post due to misinformation. Copper and aluminum pots on an induction stove arent forbidden; they just don’t get hot on an induction stove.
Thanks for correcting.
There seems to be contradictory information on the subject.
Aluminum foil is proven to melt on induction cookers (see attached photo). But that’s because foil is thin.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foil_on_induction_cooktop.jpg
…as for thick aluminum cookware, or copper cookware, I was not implying that they would overheat themselves, I was implying that the induction cooker would overheat its coil attempting to work with them, because they conduct current better than the coil. But perhaps that’s prevented by protection circuits. I can’t test since I don’t have an induction cooker at home.
EM-fields induce current in copper and aluminum perfectly fine, no ferromagnetism is needed. These metals simply conduct the current very well, so no heat appears. Steel and cast iron, having considerable resistance, heats up in a similar field, conducting similar amounts of current.
This stuff would matter if induction stoves just had a raw component and no cooling or temperatue sensor or pot presence sensor. They’re an engineered product which doesn’t fail in the same way that the raw components do without any of that.
After thinking about this for a while… I can’t say I agree with that.
Sensors can fail. Some companies may even produce sub-standard sensors or faulty logic. I think it’s OK to tell people that copper and aluminum aren’t allowed on an induction top, and the makers of induction tops seem to think similarly, they just add a sentence “unless equipped with a magnetic base”.
Let’s take a manual of a randomly chosen induction cooker:
https://www.caple.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/C850I-Instruction-manual-May-2017.pdf
Let’s examine what it says:
On one hand, an aluminum pot won’t heat. On the other hand, aluminum foil will melt, or if placed somewhat closer, catch fire. I think I should be allowed to claim that “aluminum is forbidden” on induction tops and add that “aluminum foil is extra forbidden”.
Will you kindly restore my post? People can downvote it if they don’t like my interpretation, but I don’t think it’s misinformation. It explains some things they might not even know about. I would be sad if people think that ferromagnetism is required for induction heating to happen.