| Induction stoves let home cooks and pros cook with unprecedented precision and power, the gas industry's lobbying and advertising against electrification notwithstanding. My new induction range (RIP: 1940s Wedgewood) has transformed my cooking and kitchen. But one thing bothered me. Buzz. Whine. Hum. Whatever you want to call it, it's a sound that a few pots or pans made when I turned on the stove to maximum heat. My cookware generally made a seamless transition to induction cooking, but a few stainless steel pots, frankly, struggled. To find out why, I called Holger Müller, a physics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. The answer is the physics of metal. Induction stoves generate heat by creating an electromagnetic field rather than burning a fossil fuel. By sending electricity through coils of copper wire, they induce an alternating current of electrons to flow through your metallic pans. As these tiny, subatomic particles move through the metal, they rub up against each other and other atoms. The friction heats up your pan and your food, while everything else remains cool. This is why induction stoves are so efficient and you don't heat up your kitchen, as you do with gas. This works great with metals heavy in iron. Stainless steel pots and pans, however, tend to be bonded layers of metals from aluminum to iron alloy. Each layer responds differently to the oscillating magnetic field based on how close they are to the stove's coil. As the electrical current in the stove oscillates 120,000 times per second, essentially turning off and on in a rapid sequence, "that creates a buzzing sound ... that should get stronger when setting the stove to higher power," says Müller. Pans made out of a single material, meanwhile, don't register those brief interruptions. How to avoid it? Here are a few tips: - Adjust positioning or add your ingredients to the cookware, as this dampens any noise.
- Use heavier, flat-bottomed pans, according to Consumer Reports. Poorly constructed ones may worsen the sound, it says.
- Pick cookware made from cast iron and — my new kitchen crush — carbon steel, a material with some of the best attributes of stainless steel and cast iron.
- Use an induction interface disk, essentially a metal disk that heats up below any pot for low- to medium-heat applications.
- Upgrade a few pieces of cookware.
In my case, I donated the one (cheap, thrift-store) pot that was acting up and invested in a few pots and pans I plan on using for the next few decades. Have questions for my next column? Write climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. |
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