Induction feels like cooking in the future. It's startlingly powerful and delightfully precise.
While induction is the dominant cooking technology in much of Europe, it has been adopted much more slowly in the U.S. This is, in part, because when you swap out a methane gas burning range, it can cost a thousand dollars or more to rewire your kitchen and much more if you have to upgrade your electrical service.
At Channing Street Copper Company, we're solving that issue with the first-ever battery-equipped induction range, which can charge and store power the same way an electric vehicle can.
The range charges when plugged into a normal outlet, giving a powerful cooking experience with no electrical work required. So hopefully, we can get induction into more homes soon.
But a second and more tricky reason is people often have cultural attachments to cooking on gas. Fossil fuel companies have invested millions of dollars to try to convince us cooking on gas is great, despite the availability of powerful and precise induction alternatives as well as clear evidence that cooking on gas is bad for our health.
We want to help overcome that cultural barrier, so we've been going out to farmers' markets to introduce people to induction, using our full-sized, battery-powered induction range.
We also want to show that battery-powered induction is up to the big tasks, so this week, we took on the biggest meal for many households: Thanksgiving dinner. We gathered the whole team and cooked from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. serving up a total of nine dishes.
Here are some great things to keep in mind that we saw when preparing our Thanksgiving feast on induction.
Incredibly fast heat
Induction delivers more energy to the pan than any other cooking method. So when boiling broth to cook the potatoes, it takes just a few minutes before several gallons of liquid and eight pounds of potatoes are bubbling away. Because of the battery inside our stove, it can blast power to the pot while only drawing a small amount of power from the standard kitchen plug. Side note: Eight pounds of potatoes is far too many for 15 people. Quite a few leftovers.
This also means you should be careful when heating up a pan. If you turn a burner on high, you might find the pan gets hotter more quickly than you might be used to. When you're using a new induction range for the first time, make sure to get a sense of how quickly things go before walking away from a pre-heating pan.
Precise low heat
Lots of Thanksgiving foods are cooked slow and low.
Whether slowly simmering the cranberry sauce, cooking wild rice stuffing, or keeping the mashed potatoes warm, we turned the heat down low and enjoyed the precision that induction offers. It's great for holding heat low enough that nothing burns on the bottom of the pot, but it still gets the simmer or warming just right.
During these times, the onboard battery recharges from the wall. At one point when we only had cranberry sauce simmering and the turkey in the oven, we were still able to actively charge the battery.
Cool, easy-to-clean cooktop
Since induction heats the pan directly, the cooktop surface near the pan stays nice and cool, doubling as a place to rest dishes after cooking and even set down cutting boards when the kitchen gets crowded.
This smooth glass surface is also a breeze to clean, meaning the cleanup crew was done faster than you could say, "I love this stove!"
I hope these tips help as you cook your Thanksgiving dinner or encourage you to consider getting an induction range for Thanksgiving next year.
If you currently have a gas stove, consider a battery-enabled induction range for plug-and-play electrification.
Follow The Cool Down on Instagram and subscribe to our newsletter.
Cool Picks
