Allow me to add my voice to supporting gas, though not entirely for any of the reasons stated so far.
Yes, there is a lot of truth in say that gas supporters are loyal to it in large part due to years of experience developing a ‘feel’ for just hot hot a given flame is, and that there is the ‘instant’ heat change that old style electric heating elements cannot match.
Yes, induction units are far superior to old style electric units and do not suffer from the aforementioned heat change lag. And they are arguably more efficient overall than gas.
However, gas has one advantage that electric does not. It functions just fine during power failures.
I live in an area where winter storms can (and often do) result in long power outages lasting anywhere from a few hours to over a week. People with gas stoves are still able to (partially) heat the house, cook, have hot water for bathing, etc. during these periods. All electric houses become unlivable very quickly under adverse conditions.
If I had the budget and space, I would probably have both versions installed. Forced to choose, gas wins every time.
I believe I’m a bit older and about equally white. But perhaps my relative youth at the time - still kinda-sorta able to claim early thirties in the early aughts - meant my full allotment of stodginess hadn’t yet set in.
The stodgy dude (? - it’s hard to tell in this medium, but the “m” looks masculine to me) mentioning operation during a power outage names gas’s clear advantage, the one I always forget. Were I in a stormier location with iffier electricity - say, a hundred blocks south - this might loom larger for me, so maybe I’d keep a $20 portable butane burner handy for emergencies.
I could control the level of flame better on gas. The induction range that I had (and others I have seen) had numbered heat levels, so you couldn’t be between 1 and 2, for instance. I haven’t done any research whatsoever into what’s out there, so maybe there are plenty of induction cooktops that don’t have this issue. But that’s mostly what I meant when I said control, in addition to my already mentioned lack of technique with the tool.
Sure, with the digital control, insufficient granularity would frustrate - you need enough levels. 3 - high, medium, low - would fall short for anyone except my mom. 100 is clearly more than enough: if you really need a setting between 56 and 57, well, gas wasn’t going to give you that micro precision either.
That was my biggest concern going in, but it was never a problem for me in practice. And in my case, 2 was already lower than I could achieve with a gas burner so 1 was a slowly-melt-the-butter bonus.
I had 9 levels. That wasn’t enough for me. Yes, the lowest settings are the reason why my ideal kitchen has both.
Just a quick vote in favor of Induction. We love the induction cooktop. It is I think faster at boiling water than most gas (perhaps not restaurant quality). I love the precision (we have ten settings). Yes, I have some nice copper pots that wont work on it, but that is ok. I should however disclose that we cannot have gas (not available in our building), so take this with a grain of salt. But I really love the versatility of induction. We also have regular electric (they are both, the induction and electric, Wolf). Some say that the modern electric top like we have is as good as gas. That is clearly not so. I do think induction comes close.
BUT, if you like to move a pan around – raising it and lowering and moving it to control temp, then gas is definitely the way to go. So I do think it depends on whether you want a hot flame nearby (there is heat loss of course), or if you want something more controllable and perhaps more precise; how you cook, etc.
I have cooked with gas my entire adult life. But when we downsized, it was into an all electric, 5 star green townhouse, with an induction stove. I was not thrilled about not being able to use some of the all-clad that I have been carrying around for 30+ years.
It took a little while to get used to, but the induction is as responsive as gas.I love it. It helps that we have a solar array on the roof providing most of our electricity.
The one thing almost everyone agrees on is that induction is great for boiling water. Beyond that there is a great divide. If you like to cook with gas but can see the advantage of induction cooking at times, get a couple of the portable induction units when you need to expand your cooking area.
Just noting that the portable units are 120 V and their power maxes out around a third to a half the power available on the biggest burners of the built in cooktops. A 120 V portable unit should boil water a bit slower than, or maybe about the same as, a typical gas range or cooktop burner. A built in cooktop can effectively supply about twice the juice of even a pro style range burner, so boils in about half the time.
I certainly wouldn’t suggest choosing solely or primarily on the basis of boiling water speed.
Yes my non scientific sense is that it does boil water faster than gas - but of course that all depends on the BTUs etc. I do agree that induction is limited to the ten settings (at least on ours) so you can’t fine tune as you might with gas. (We can only go to 10, not 11…) But on the other hand, when I set the induction to setting 2, I know exactly what it will do. That is hard, if not impossible, with gas.
My view is that if you are looking at gas versus traditional electric, go with gas. If it is gas versus induction, it depends, which really means you will to go wrong with either.
I’ve cooked on all. When I rebuilt my house after the fire, I put in six Wolf induction burners, a four burner and a two burner. I loved them, much better than the glass topped radiant electric, and actually giving me more heat control than gas and far easier to clean (boil overs, etc.) than either. The glass tops are fairly tough and do not scratch easily at all. I soon discovered that the Wolf induction units have a thermal cutout at about 500 degrees F which makes searing meat difficult if not impossible. I swapped out the two burner for a Wolf glass top radiant which works fine for higher temperature cooking and searing. I virtually never use the electric radiant except for that. Moral to the story is that if you do put in induction, make sure you can sear meat on it before you sign on the job complete line.
that’s good advice. Can you remove that 500F governor?
Love love our induction. You can play on it if you want to test it out. 