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- cross-posted to:
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Cooking on gas is the one environmentally damaging thing I don’t want to give up, I’ll admit…
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Realistically, how likely is it that this whole gas system we’ve been using will look batshit crazy in the future.
We build a city wide network of pipes carrying flamable gas … so we can all have a nicer cooking experience despite alternatives being basically mainstream? What?!
Plenty of comments in here about induction being better or as good with different strengths/weaknesses. IME, I agree completely, I much prefer induction now.
But just recently I had to downgrade to the “crappy” electric stove tops. And you know what … it’s fine. Seriously, you get used to it and cook decently enough. There’s probably a lot of “preciousness” around cooking and kitchens TBH.
The thing about gas stoves is that they release pollutants in your house. It spikes CO, CO2 and a bunch of other combustion residue.
How different stoves work for you partly depends on what types of things you cook, but there are also a lot of variations in how crappy standard electric stoves are.
I’ve used old coil stoves that were not that bad, but my mother’s new glass topped thing was so awful I learnt not to even try cooking some dishes. If you needed to brown anything you had to put the pan on for a 10-15 minute preheat to get anywhere near hot enough, then if you needed to reduce the heat to simmer it was best to just move to another burner if you could because it would take 5+ minutes to cool down. The top heat was just enough to brown something if you left it a long time and did not crowd the pan, but doing something like searing a steak or making a stir-fry just wasn’t possible.
But then I’ve also used gas stoves that are hard to work with and don’t have much control over the temperature - even my current stove I tend to switch burners to accommodate different heat levels better. So I guess a lot comes down to having the right specific stove to meet your requirements, more than being just a gas vs. electric issue. Having previously believed I’d never want anything other than gas I have been pretty impressed by the portable induction cooker I’ve been trying out, and I’m sure a better quality model would suit me for pretty much everything.
I would contend that electric cooktops have only started being decent relatively recently (specifically induction).
The coils ones are crummy, the “hot plate” ones are frustratingly slow and as you mentioned the glass ones aren’t any better (unless induction).
Could we please instead do something about the global shipping and trucking industries? Hell, even clothing production creates more CO2 emissions than shipping and trucking combined. I would gladly sacrifice more shitty clothes for the ability to cook a decent meal.
It’s not an either/or, we need to do both. Plus a lot of other things that everyone refuses to do or complains about because they think something else should be done by someone else first.
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Bah! Lousy science ruining all our fun! /S
Thanks for the link. If I have no choice but electric I could at least go induction.
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Induction cook tops are so great. I can’t imagine going back to gas.
This screams “what are the low hanging fruits that are quick wins” approach that the gov probs got from some consulting firm.
Doing the easiest things first just makes sense. And it’s not like the Victorian government has a great influence over the international shipping industry which will need a coordinated international effort to solve.
Victoria is running out of gas. There isn’t as much easily extracted gas left in Bass Strait. We also use more gas now, being more dependent on it for electricity generation than in the past. We’re now resorting to having gas shipped in from Western Australia, having to compete on price with China who also want the gas from WA. Gas is just going to keep becoming more expensive, but Melbourne and the rest of Victoria was built around the assumption that there will always be cheap and effectively unlimited gas flowing in from Bass Strait.
We need to do something about this now, before it gets to the point that there just isn’t enough gas and we have to resort to rationing. The environmental angle is nice and all, and makes people feel better about complying. But it needs to happen anyway, just for economic and practical reasons. And getting rid of gas appliances in homes is an easy win with the added benefit that you’re removing a source of combustion byproducts from homes, yielding health benefits.
The dairy processing industry in particular is very dependent on burning gas to generate heat for all their processes. They have facilities for using diesel in emergencies (which they had to use in the gas crisis near the end of the ’90s), but getting them off gas entirely is going to be a lot harder than switching to induction stoves and electric hot water. Gas-fired power plants are going to be here for a while, especially because they can throttle up and down relatively quickly which is important if you need to respond to drops in output from wind and solar.
Pretty sure this is a Greens initiative
https://greens.org.au/vic/gas-free
So even if you might not agree with how much it achieves, it’s from a party that if they could would also implement more stringent protections as well rather than a mindless think tank.
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Electric appliances are generally cheaper to install, and now that gas prices have gone up are also cheaper to operate. There may be some benefit to manufacturers of electric appliances, but that is negated by the impact on the manufacturers of gas appliances. Installation of gas appliances often involved two tradespeople as there is often an electric component, so I would expect overall for there to be slightly less work for installers and trades overall too.
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Gas companies have pushed stoves as a way to get gas hookups which tend to also include heat and hot water. The latter use far, far more energy than cooking so they make more money.
I’m not sure how much usage adds to their bottom line these days, but the supply charge definitely keeps going up. I had a look at my figures for gas last year - I paid $392 total, $262 of that was the supply charge. If I expected to be in this house longer (or if the water heater hadn’t been recently upgraded) I would definitely be considering changing over. The ongoing costs being cheap used to make gas the most economical option, but I think electric is the better deal these days.
It’s literally cheaper in every way to build a home to be all electric. It means you don’t need to build new gas lines for entire new neighbourhoods, appliances are cheaper, and you only need one type of tradie to do all the work of installing the infrastructure for said appliances (except for hot water).
You fail to understand just how big a large container ship is. If a shirt comes on a ship from China, the truck taking it from the warehouse to the shop emits more CO2 for that shirt than the ship did bringing it from to the port. In fact, if you walk for ten minutes to the shop and back, you have emitted more CO2 than the ship did to carry that shirt. A container ship emits a large total amount of CO2 because it’s very big, carrying a massive amount of cargo. But overall, shipping is one of the most efficient modes of transport we’ve invented.
We need both
induction ranges are like soooooo much better than gas, my parents got one and the range of power it can put out is much larger than any gas stove I’ve used and it doesn’t make the room hot
Like woks?
You can get super fancy induction cook tops that work with conventional woks but even better you can get woks designed to work with conventional induction cook tops.
It’d be hard to make the choice for the induction top without trying it. We have a resistive range/hob so I have a 15kbtu butane burner I use with my wok and it’s so, so much better.
If induction was good enough for the cost they wouldn’t have to force people. It’s going to be cheaper to buy bog standard shit that works how you’d expect with a gas burner. Maybe poor people don’t deserve good fried rice.
It’s great. Really much better than gas in my opinion.
I have been expecting this to happen at some point. I like my gas cooking as well, but have been experimenting with other options to try to prepare for the future (and because the price of gas is rising so quickly). The induction works pretty well, even though I only have a cheap portable unit. More expensive units would minimise a lot of my issues with it. From reading I have done I think the technology has improved a lot too, so people who have tried very old units might be less impressed.
My two main issues are wok cooking and preserving. There are wok compatible burners, but they are expensive and inflexible. I think my cast-iron wok could work well on a better stove, but the portable burner overheats and shuts down. The preserving is a bit more of an issue, as I use a large aluminium pressure-canner, and they do not work well with most electric stoves - partly a matter of the weight on glass stoves, and also issues with the way the heat control works. I’m still working on a solution for that one. But it’s not really an urgent issue, as I can’t see a new build being anywhere in my immediate future.
Fwiw I went from induction to gas and I hate it. The speed and accuracy of induction vs gas, while also not needing the same level of venting, is just vastly superior. It’s also just safer with kids around. If my kid flipped the induction burner on nothing happens if there’s no metal… where the gas is now a live flame or gas pouring out. Heavily prefer induction, personally.
I wonder if steel plates placed under aluminum cookware would solve the second problem
You can get plates to use under aluminium pots, although I don’t think they are as good as a decent pot. Preserving is a bit more complicated (and a bit of a niche issue) as it involves a very large and heavy pot, which is kept at high temperature for a long time. So there are issues with the size of burners, whether the stove can support the weight, staying hot for a long time, and maintaining a consistant temperature and not fluctuating. I’m currently looking into a portable commercial solid-plate electric burner. It’s pricey, but if it works then I won’t need to worry about the future gas price rises changes, and will have the ability to take it outside in hot weather to avoid overheating the kitchen.
Can anyone recommend what to look for in an induction cooktop? I’ve only briefly used one at my Mum’s place and I hated it. Finnicky digital bastard of a thing, and if your fingers are wet, you can’t press the buttons. But it’s probably better to cook on than the old electric solid hot-plate thing we have now that takes aeons to either heat up, or two aeons to cool down.
There are models that have knobs, I would look for those. Other things to look for is how many power levels there are, how low the power is before it cycles on/off (lower the better) and how quick those cycles are (faster the better).
Think of it as similar to a microwave. Having power levels 1-20 would give you much more control than one that only gave you 20%, 60% and 100% options. The power cycling is what a lot of microwaves do (except inverter models) - instead of reducing the power, it turns full power on and off. If you are trying to keep something at a consistent simmer that can be a problem, so you want a stove that will do that as little as possible, and if it needs to one that cycles as quickly as possible to reduce the temperature variations.
Yeah, right, I’ve never seen any with knobs, I’ll have to look closer I guess. Thanks!
induction is not about the buttons, induction is the method of heat transfer between the cook top and your pots. Just look for one wiht better phyiscal buttons that are not digital-ish. Miele and Bosch are usually safe bets.
I had a KitchenAid that did well. The oven was stupidly slow but the induction top was very good.
There are a few with knobs but not many. More options there would be good and I think dials are still the best interface. That being said the good touch ones aren’t as bad as I expected.
I have used a few different flat panel ones and the miele one my parents recently installed was tolerable despite the fact it was all touch. The lights for the buttons are bright, they work even if a bit dirty / wet (not in a puddle but don’t need tho be clean), and it doesn’t panic if you move a pot over the buttons.
On the other hand, I’ve used an Ikea one a bit (my partners mum has one, and she lives at home). It’s so shit, the buttons are dim and hard to see, it panics if a pot goes over them and they don’t work if a little dirty.
Overall, the touch ones can be bad, but if your go with a well made one like miele they’re actually okay.
What do you like so much about gas? From my experience all cooking tops are equally fine…
Except my parents 30 year old Aga. Awfully slow every time I have to go home and use it.
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