[masraum]

I've been curious, and trying to sell the missus on induction. Based on this and other threads here over the years. She's game, but said "I'd like to try it out before we go all-in."

So I bought an induction "hot-plate" off of Amazon. You can get them as cheap as $50, but I was concerned that buying a cheap one might provide a bad experience. I spent a bit more ($150) and got one that I think we could use on holidays or whatever over the years. I was also a little concerned that the function of a 120V may not be good compared to a full range running on 240V. And while I know that it is more limited, I figured it would be good enough for a lot of stuff.

I got it today. First, I steamed some dumplings. It was only 1/2" of water in the bottom of the steamer, but it boiled FAST. Even faster than on the stove on a large burner on full power. Then later, I cooked some sausage and a couple of eggs. It seemed to work really well for all of the cooking.

I put the cooktop on a small unfinished wood table that the PO of the house left. The tables not much to look at, but to try to keep it from getting worse, I put a big sheet of packing paper over the cooktop which also covered a bunch of the table. The paper is basically news paper without any printing, and it was between the pot and hot plate. The paper looked completely normal after cooking other than being covered in grease splatter.

When everything was hot, I was able to touch the cooktop near the pan and it was cool. That's impressive.

One thing that I'd read and seen photos of was that for these 120V hotplates, the actual magnetic field size is always about 4.5" ±.25" and people complained that the center of their pot would be hot and burn while the outside was not hot. I assume a full size stove/cooktop isn't like that. Also, I assume that using better pots and letting the pots heat up eliminates that problem. I didn't notice any issues when I was cooking.

I'm curious to see what the missus thinks. She frequently makes large batches of chicken broth/stock. I'm not sure how well this little hot plate will do with a really large pot of water. Again, I suspect the quality of the pot will have some impact on that. I'm sure a large 240V cooktop would do a much better job.