I saw an induction cooker at work for the very first time in a flower show. That was a few years back. It looked a bit devilish to me at first. The sales man placed a pot of water on the stove and the water started boiling in hardly any time at all. And there was absolutely no flames of any sort. Once the pot was removed, I was asked to touch the stove. I was skeptical and did not take the bate. After the sales man himself touched the stove and proved that the stove is not hot, I touched it myself. And it was not hot at all. I was really amused and asked to see if it needs a lot of electricity for its operation. The sales man told me that the electricity cost will be only a third of what propane needs. As sales men are known to hyperbole and try to sell stuff, I did not buy the instrument that time.

It took me another couple of years before I got an induction stove for myself and started using it. It seemed to me to be a bit similar to microwaving except that you cannot use metallic cookwares in a microwave. But in an induction cooker, only a magnetic flat bottomed metallic cookware can be used. In a microwave, the food is getting heated and then some of the heat is passed on to the pot. In induction cooking, the pot is getting heated first and then transfers most of that heat on to the food.

In normal electric cooking instruments, the cooking element gets heated due to electric resistance to the metal, and then transfers that heat on to the cooking pot. In induction cooking, the stove is not getting heated at all. What it does is heats up the cooking pot directly and thus warms up the food inside it.

The process of induction cooking is achieved through magnetic hysteresis loss. The cooking element on the stove will generate an alternating magnetic field on the cookware and this will in turn create heat due to magnetic hysteresis. This works only on certain type of cooking utensils like cast iron cookware, enamel-covered iron cookware, carbon steel cookware, some stainless steel cookware etc. Not all stainless steel cookware can be used for induction cooking.

How do you figure out an induction friendly cookware?

Any cookware which attracts a magnet to its bottom can be used for this purpose. It should have a flat bottom too. If the bottom of the cookware is not flat, the cooking won’t be efficient. Of late, many cookwares has a description on it saying whether it is suitable for induction cooking or not. If you are not sure about this, you may ask the sales man and clarify your questions.

Some Advantages Of Induction Cooking Over Electric Cooking

• Cooks faster
• Heats up faster
• Much more easier to clean
• More child safe
• More energy efficient
• Do not heat up the kitchen as much

The original slogan for crock pots at its inception, way back in the sixties, was “It cooks all day while the cook is away”. Those words were potent enough to get a few million people to start using them in the seventies. Later the popularity of crock pots started to diminish in the early eighties. Right now, it is resurgence time for these utensils. If you join the enthusiastic bunch of crock potters, you can also be cooking your dinner while working at your office, during your kids soccer practice, during a thorough yard cleaning etc. As you have the option to throw most of stuff in to the pot and do not have to worry about every step of cooking, crock pot cooking can reduce the stress associated with routine cooking. Young adults who are starting to live and cook on their own love this a lot.

If you use crock pot, even less expensive cuts of meat also will become really tender and tasty. Thus crock potting is especially good for this recession time as it saves you money. Many a times, there will be a lot of leftovers from this type of cooking and those can be used in the next few days. As cooking many meals at a single time is economical in time spent and monetary terms, this is an appropriate cooking method for the current times. Retired people struggling to make a living on their meager income are also going back to this electric gadget they are familiar from their past use during younger days.

Many families are enjoying the aroma of dinner in all areas of their home when they arrive in the evening! And this rejuvenating smell is going to linger in your home all through the afternoon. These and other factors have added to the increase in the sales of crock pots to an amazing number at 8.9 million in 2008.

The current bunch of crock pots are much more attractive than their older counterparts. Some of them look pretty much like some of your cool gadgets with their stainless steel bodies. They have multiple heat settings and cooking time settings, making it much more easier for ladies to manipulate the appliance better.

In the seventies, there were a lot of complaints about the quality of the food cooked in crock pots. This was to be understood as it was a new invention and there were no recipes prepared exclusively with crock pot in mind. There were people who complained about the same taste found for any thing and every thing cooked in crock pots. There were complaints about the food being too dry even I the closed cooking environment. Even some others felt that the food created looked ugly.

But in the recent years, recipes created solely with crock pots in mind are coming in to the public domain. Endorsements from TV chefs, celebrity chefs etc have added flavor to new crock pot cooked food items.