46 minutes ago, cdh said:Just to be a devil's advocate, isn't it accurate to say that carbon steel is an excellent conductor of magnetic fields, and on an induction plate should be an awesome thing to cook in? It's not the shiny stainless nickel/chrome steel that doesn't do magnetism...
Well, in a word, no.
First, all of the action in a cooking appliance's induction field happens very near the surface nearest the Ceran. Past that "skin depth", it's just sluggish old steel left to (poorly) conduct heat. This is why those ferromagnetic bottom disks bonded onto pans of all sorts are exceedingly thin. The same thing happens with cast iron; it too is a poor conductor (but not as bad as steel)--anything below the skin depth is a waste, except for blunting the induced heat.
Second, this is not conduction.
Third, virtually all induction appliances rely on a single, central, doughnut-shaped coil. With a poor conductor like steel or iron, you can actually see the doughnut-shaped pattern of the coil translating a corresponding hotspot through the bottom of the pan. There isn't much problem moving the heat straight up (the distance is very small), but moving it laterally across the pan floor is harder when the material resists. Without conductive material to move the heat away, it exacerbates this halo effect, and even if you manage not to scorch the food, the heat will be uneven. It is not uncommon to have >50F differences between directly above the doughnut and further out near the wall. To counter this propensity, makers are incorporating very thick aluminum exterior disks or clad cores.
"It's not the shiny stainless nickel/chrome steel that doesn't do magnetism..." I'm unsure of your meaning here, but both carbon steel and ferritic stainless steels "do magnetism". 400 Series stainless steels work just as well on induction as do carbon steels; that's what the makers use, and not just because carbon steel rusts.
Induction may be considered awesome to cook on, but it's largely for reasons only indirectly bearing on cooking.
