Induction-Friendly Cookware Selection

[horseflesh]

I have a D'arto carbon steel pan and a thermal camera. What temperature should I set?

 

[adrianvm]

5 hours ago, dtremit said:

 

One thought here: the Control Freak's sensor is in the dead center of the pan, which is a centimeter or two from the coils. So heat has to be conducted to the location of the sensor.

 

If for some reason the pan's external cladding conducts heat poorly, it's possible that more heat could be conducted to the inside center of the pan than the outside center of the pan. I wouldn't imagine it would be 15-20 degrees, but it could certainly be some amount lower.

 

I would be tempted to try something with a completely non-clad construction like carbon steel and see if that behaves the same way.

 

 

Only one of three multilayer pans is giving a large temperature difference.  Also note that this is the steady state temperature, not dynamic temperature.  Aluminum has about 10x the conductivity of stainless steel.   How do you maintain a 14 deg temperature difference vertically across 3mm, mostly aluminum, in steady state?  Heat *must* be moving upward to equalize the temperature, so it seems like the only way is losses at the top side, like heat being lost to the air.  But why would more heat be lost for one skillet than another?  

 

@horseflesh My testing was all at 250 F, a fairly low temperature I chose because I figured it was safe for empty cookware to sit at that temperature, even nonstick, and no great concerns of overheating if there are overshoots.   So if you want to try to match my tests, use that temperature.  Note that I found the IR thermometer measurements with my point IR thermometer were ~30 deg high on nonstick.

[horseflesh]

I'll see if I can figure out a way to get the phone + thermal camera secured so taking pics is easy. 

[adrianvm]

If there's an incompatibility between my pan and the CF I'd like to know so I can return the pan and get a different one.  Any thoughts on a test that involves cooking that would be enlightening? 

[blue_dolphin]

2 hours ago, adrianvm said:

If there's an incompatibility between my pan and the CF I'd like to know so I can return the pan and get a different one.  Any thoughts on a test that involves cooking that would be enlightening? 

I know you want to know the pan temp but it’s a lot easier and more relevant to a lot of cooking to measure the temp of the pan’s contents - water for low temp, oil to go higher.  I assume you did that first but only read back to the IR thermometer part. 
if you want to visualize that hot spot in the middle, a thin layer of granulated sugar will show it to you. Its melting point is 367°F

[afs]

6 hours ago, adrianvm said:

If there's an incompatibility between my pan and the CF I'd like to know so I can return the pan and get a different one.  Any thoughts on a test that involves cooking that would be enlightening? 

 

As far as compatibility goes, if a pan heats on the Control Freak and isn't overpowered by induction (e.g. super-thin i.e. non-clad stainless steel pans) and is in the 14cm-26cm (bottom diameter) pan range...then it's a good match technically. 

With pans that don't conduct heat well, the pan center temperature may not be as accurate as a proxy for the temperature of the whole bottom of the pan however.  [If you cook something with quite a bit of liquid in the pan, that issue may resolve itself by using the liquid as a heat transmission medium, but if you're cooking mostly dry food on an unevenly-heating pan then the cooktop will basically have one arm tied behind its back.]

Beyond that, as far as the pan giving you the results you are looking for, it's really up to how and what you cook--and how much of the work you want to do vs. how much you want the Control Freak to do.  A cook with lots of experience being a human thermometer who likes standing by the cooktop and stirring things and gauging things by eye and sound and smell is probably going to be quite happy with a pan which doesn't distribute heat evenly--and may even be happy with cast iron.  Someone less interested in standing at the cooktop (e.g. myself, shame shame...) who cooks almost exclusively at temperatures below 175F and just likes to "set it and forget it" will probably want either a heavier and more conductive clad pan (e.g. Demeyere Proline, Falk Copper Coeur) or a disc-bottom pan (e.g. Demeyere Atlantis).

[adrianvm]

I'd like to be able to rely on the Control Freak to do as much as it can do, so I don't want to be limited because I bought the wrong cookware.   I tend to be more of a high heat cook who forgets to watch the onions because I'm cooking 3 things at once and then I'm trying to decide if I burnt them or not. 

 

Regarding cookware, it's been suggested more than once in this thread, and also by the CF manual, that the cookware should be flat, for example.  But both of the new pans I bought are not flat.  That seems like it could decrease heating closer to the center and lead to more heating at the pan edge.  But how much concavity is required for this to be noticeable? 

 

I also just like to understand what's going on, and right now I don't.  I've talked to several physicists about it and nobody can explain the my observations---so it's a puzzle. 

 

The sugar test seems like an interesting one for seeing how pan contents get heated.  

 

I got a Falk pan and it seems to display the worst performance yet, with a 260 deg temp in the center and 228 at the edge.  How can it be hotter in the center than the set temp of 250? 

 

I also did a set of high speed tests.  On that test the Falk center peaked at 323 (side peaked earlier at 265) and steady state was 249 center, 235 edge. 

 

The Analon pan peaked at 285 center, 270 side and settled at 249/248.   The Hestan pan peaked at 298 center, 310 side and settled at 245/252, which note is better than where it settled on low speed. 

 

Pretty interesting that temperature uniformity seems to be inversely proportional to how much the pan costs.   Is a highly responsive pan a liability with the CF control loop? 

[MJS301]

Hi Adrianvm...my choice of pan or pot is Scanpans Impact series. It's not expensive & I would rate it middle of the road s/s cookware. It isn't one piece (that is it has a seperate base...I'll do some pics) & according to some, this isn't ideal. I have had no problems with these pans on the Control Freak Commercial. Now, I haven't done extensive heat reading tests, however I have done a lot of cooking in my various sized frypans (15cm, 20cm, 25cm & 30cm) without any discernable variations of heat from middle to side of pan. I'm not saying there isnt any, but I do not have a problem with even food cooking, browning or other variations in different areas of the pan(s). It took me a while to learn what intensity level I should use for preheat (& cooking) & when I first got the CF I wasn't impressed with the way it overshot the set temp. Playing around I learned that the intensity settings (4 levels on the Australian model) are very important for different sized pans. I'd like everything to be perfect too...& it is compared to other cook tops I've used. I trust the unit, I can now recall a program (my program from my last cooking)...lets say I'm caramelising some onions to use on tonights pizza, I load in the onions, brown sugar & balsamic vinegar, push start & walk away until I need to give it a stir. Anyway for what its worth some pics of the Scanpan impact product...I have also recently purchased a 25cm Hexclad frypan. Early days as yet but it was purchased with low - med heat non stick cooking in mind...fish etc. Will be interesting to see how that goes. Anyway some pics. (I'm pretty sure this range of Scanpan is 3 ply...as I said it's nothing flash or expensive but I really like mated to the CF.

 

ps...just noticed scratches on the pan in the pics. These pans are now quite old & this would have happened on the gas hobs I have.

[Laurentius]

1 hour ago, MJS301 said:

pan in the pics

 

These bases look a lot like the bases on Fisslers, named "Cookstar".  The pattern serves several functions--or rather theories: to better hold the base together, to hold the base more rigid/predictable in its expansion, to break suction, and kinda/sorta direct gas flames outward.

 

Another brand suggestion for taking the unevenness out of induction, if you can find them, is Silga Technika, which have a 7mm aluminum disk core.  As long as quick response and cooking on the sidewalls aren't important, they're at least as good as Fissler, Paderno GG, and others of this type.  I love Silga's heavy covers--I keep one around and ready for pretty much everything I cook.  

[adrianvm]

I uneven heating a problem generally with induction?  I would have thought that it would be more even than gas, say. 

 

What I dislike about many of the disk base pans is that the disk has a 1" smaller diameter than the pan, so you have a bunch of pan that doesn't work around the edge.   Demeyere Atlantis is an exception and it looks like that Scanpan is as well.  Fissler, Paderno Grand Gourmet, and Silga Technika all seem to suffer from the undersized disk problem.   I have a Sitram catering pan like this that has a copper base; I've been using it with gas (not induction compatible) and it's a 9" pan disguised as an 11" pan---nothing cooks around the edge. 

 

I tried heating pans on fast on the CF  to 367 with a layer of sugar in the pan.  I think I should have made more of an effort to control the amount of sugar, as it seemed like that affected how things looked.  But here are the results.   The pics are after about 5 minutes.  I noticed that caramel had already formed on the Falk after 2 minutes; no other pan did that.   I did a brief time (20s maybe) at 380 before turning off the heat after about 8 minutes.   First pic is analon 10" fry pan, second falk 9" fry pan, third is demeyere dutch oven, fourth is hestan 8.5" fry pan, and finally a pic of the three frying pans together after it cooled. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[palo]

1 hour ago, adrianvm said:

I tried heating pans on fast on the CF  to 367 with a layer of sugar in the pan. 

 

 

 

 

Was cleanup a problem?

 

p

[Laurentius]

1 hour ago, adrianvm said:

I[s] uneven heating a problem generally with induction?  I would have thought that it would be more even than gas, say. 

 

I believe it is.  There are uneven gas hobs, too, but it's a nature of those beasts to flow hot gases up and out, not merely heat in a mostly discrete ring.

 

Did you start your sugar/caramel tests from cold?  Or did you wait for thermal equilibrium before dumping in the sugar?  The RATE at which sugar melts (and what pattern it creates as it does) isn't necessarily a great measure of evenness.

 

If you're interested, pick a temp on the CF that is on the cusp of scorching, and dump.  Then see what any pattern of burnt sugar emerges on the pan floor.  If you have a black ring, surrounded by caramel, surrounded by hot sugar, you may have a good measure of poor evenness.

Edited May 12 by Laurentius (log)

[adrianvm]

The caramel tests I started from cold.  So you're suggesting I should bring the pan to temp first, then add the sugar?  I'll need to figure out a way to spread the sugar evenly into the hot pan for this test to work, I think.

 

Note to Palo: cleaning up caramel is simple: soak the pan in water and it dissolves.  I left them over night and there was a little bit not dissolved.  It came off somewhat more easily from the nonstick pans, and I ran the Falk under hot tap water for a minute to clean it out so I could make a Bacon Brie Frittata this morning.  This came out more evenly cooked on the Freak, cooking at 250 than when I cook it on gas at medium low.  (But not quite fair comparison because I've never used the Falk pan on gas---usually make this in an All-clad masterchef that's not induction compatible.)   On gas the edge cooks faster than the middle and my result on the Freak was more uniform. 

[Laurentius]

5 hours ago, adrianvm said:

So you're suggesting I should bring the pan to temp first, then add the sugar?  I'll need to figure out a way to spread the sugar evenly into the hot pan for this test to work, I think.

 

Yeah, maybe.  Shake or sift or whatever.  It's much the same as scattering flour for scorchprints--it doesn't need to be perfect to tell you what you want to know.

[afs]

15 hours ago, adrianvm said:

The sugar test seems like an interesting one for seeing how pan contents get heated.  

 

I got a Falk pan and it seems to display the worst performance yet, with a 260 deg temp in the center and 228 at the edge.  How can it be hotter in the center than the set temp of 250? 

 

I also did a set of high speed tests.  On that test the Falk center peaked at 323 (side peaked earlier at 265) and steady state was 249 center, 235 edge. 

 

Pro tip: high-conductivity pans like the Falk Copper Coeur or Demeyere Atlantis pans are going to heat up really quickly if you use the fast or extra-fast (2400W) intensity setting.  With clad pans like the Falk Copper Coeur, that means you're going to see more overshoot while the temperature at the center pan catches up to the rapidly-rising temperature over the induction coil itself.

And if you're doing a sugar test, you almost certainly want to use the "slow" heating intensity of the Control Freak for that.  The theory with the slow/mid/high/max settings is that the heating intensity should match the food you're using.  And that goes for the pan you're coupling it with too.  If you're just boiling water or searing foods, high/max intensity is fine.  But if you're cooking eggs or doing a sugar test, etc. I'd highly recommend using the slow intensity setting.  Note that max intensity is only available on the 2400W (UK/EU/ANZ) models.
 

And again, if you're looking for a pan with a really tight band of temperature consistency across the bottom, you're probably going to want to find a pan in the 14-26cm range that has a highly-conductive disc bottom style of construction.  That's what I use my Demeyere Atlantis pans for.  I actually thought I'd use them most of the time because of the temperature consistency--but in real-world applications I've found that I usually pick up the Falk Copper Coeur instead.

 

15 hours ago, adrianvm said:

Pretty interesting that temperature uniformity seems to be inversely proportional to how much the pan costs.   Is a highly responsive pan a liability with the CF control loop? 

 

While the temperature uniformity isn't actually inversely proportional to the cost of the pan, I can see how you'd get that feeling when testing a higher-cost clad pan against a lower-cost thick disc-bottom-style pan.  It's the construction style of the pan and the material properties (including the thickness and conductivity of the heat-conducting material) that largely determines the tightness of the temperature across any given surface, the temperature ramping and spreading speed, etc.

I have zero issues using highly-responsive pans with the Control Freak.  But please remember that the intensity function (slow/medium/high/max) is basically the Control Freak's analog to turning another induction stove to a low, medium, high, or excessively high setting.  So if you're warming up your pan on high or max, it's basically behaving like if you put it on a powerful induction burner and set it to high--except that the Control Freak stops heating the pan once its sensor hits the temperature setpoint.

So please, be kind to your food and use the slow or medium intensity for more delicate items (or if you're wanting a tighter temperature gradient on clad pans).

You may also find out that you want a few disc-style pans and a few clad-style pans in your collection, each tool optimized for its application.

[adrianvm]

I would think that amount of overshoot should depend mainly on the mass of the pan, which is why I found the large overshoot on the Falk surprising.  But what about the steady state behavior where I have it set to 250 and the Falk is at 260 in the center and 228 at the edge?  That seems weird, and very much not even.   This is a 24cm pan, and the contact area is a bit under 20cm.   How do you maintain a higher temperature at the top side of the pan than underneath?   I have observed that once a steady state is achieved, changing the Control Freak intensity seems to have no effect.  (That's not surprising.) 

 

Would you suggest doing the sugar test from cold but at slow?  Or as previously suggested waiting until steady state and then adding the sugar? 

 

Note also that the middle priced pan is an aluminum clad pan, not a disk pan and it's more even than the Falk. 

 

I have never used any other induction cooker---only gas. 

 

With regards to the right intensity choice, Chef Steps has some "Precision Scrambled Eggs" recipes that all specify using high intensity.  Mistake?  Pan dependent? 

 

Are there any disk pans with these super thick disks where the disk goes reasonably close to the edge of the pan?  Demeyere Atlantis is just 2mm copper, so it wouldn't qualify.  Not sure about that Scanpan Impact---can't find specs.   Seems like Cristel has some edge-to-edge pans, but don't know how thick their bases are.   This handles are bizarre.  Anybody used the cristel handles?  They look like they wouldn't work very well. 

[horseflesh]

On 5/10/2024 at 9:45 AM, afs said:

who cooks almost exclusively at temperatures below 175F

 

Now this is interesting, what kind of cooking do you do below 175F? 

[afs]

53 minutes ago, horseflesh said:

 

Now this is interesting, what kind of cooking do you do below 175F? 

The chemical reactions that cook food mostly happen below 175F.  For those standing at a stove, it's really convenient to cook at a higher temperature to get faster reactions--but often at the expense of making the food less healthy or requiring more human attention, etc.

A quick example of cooking below 175F is a breakfast of steak and eggs.  I fill a 24cm pot with water and then sous vide steak at 59C (138F).  On another Control Freak, I put a few large eggs in a 20cm saute pan at 59C (138F) as well, using slow intensity, and I cover the pan.  This holds the eggs at a temperature where the yellow is still runny but the food is safe to leave on the burner for a while.   After the steak is fully cooked (45 minutes to an hour) I come back and turn up the temperature on the eggs to 79C (174F) and let them cook at that higher temperature for 3-4 minutes while I plate the sous vide steak (optionally seared on each side really quickly).  Then I plate the deliciously- and consistently-cooked eggs onto the top of the steak.  Breakfast is served.

As for other foods, I cook veggies and pretty much everything else at <175F temperatures.  I sometimes put a little water in the bottom of the pan to help with spreading around the heat--and then drain it from the pan before plating.  Sometimes I turn up the temperature for a minute right at the end for charring effect for people who like that.  But mostly I just start cooking a half hour or so before people or myself are going to want to eat--and then get up maybe once or twice to stir for a few seconds.

And when I do meal prep and prepare several days of meals in advance, I use the same trick.  I just put the already-prepared food (which itself usually wasn't quick-cooked originally) into a saute pan and maybe add a little water.  Then I put a lid on it and turn the temperature to somewhere between 60C (140F) and 70C (158F) depending on the food and how "hot" I want it to feel when it's done.  Then I walk away and it's ready to eat a little while later.  [I've even done this with frozen dinners from the grocery store; it's amazing how much better frozen meals taste--especially ones with chicken or the like in them--when warmed up at 60C/140F instead of using the microwave instructions.]

Some foods require a little higher temperature.  When I make brown rice for example, I basically simmer the rice in water at around 93C/200F.  But honestly a good rice cooker is better-optimized for rice, so I reluctantly prefer rice-cooker-cooked rice where available.

As for pasta, well, I need ~100C (~212F) for that kind of cooking.  And for foods which require a few temperatures or methods, I tend to use a few pans at different temperatures and then combine everything at the end.  Being able to hold an already-cooked food at a precise temperature which won't "cook" it any/much more is pretty great to be able to do.

But I rarely do "quick cooking" of meats or other foods by using temperatures above 100C.  I understand why it's economically important for commercial kitchens to do so.  But most of my food is made in advance (either 30-60 minutes before mealtime or in big batches and then reheated on the cooktop).

Edited May 13 by afs (log)

[afs]

3 hours ago, adrianvm said:

I would think that amount of overshoot should depend mainly on the mass of the pan, which is why I found the large overshoot on the Falk surprising.  But what about the steady state behavior where I have it set to 250 and the Falk is at 260 in the center and 228 at the edge?  That seems weird, and very much not even.   This is a 24cm pan, and the contact area is a bit under 20cm.   How do you maintain a higher temperature at the top side of the pan than underneath?   I have observed that once a steady state is achieved, changing the Control Freak intensity seems to have no effect.  (That's not surprising.) 

 

Would you suggest doing the sugar test from cold but at slow?  Or as previously suggested waiting until steady state and then adding the sugar? 

 

Note also that the middle priced pan is an aluminum clad pan, not a disk pan and it's more even than the Falk. 

 

I have never used any other induction cooker---only gas. 

 

With regards to the right intensity choice, Chef Steps has some "Precision Scrambled Eggs" recipes that all specify using high intensity.  Mistake?  Pan dependent? 

 

Are there any disk pans with these super thick disks where the disk goes reasonably close to the edge of the pan?  Demeyere Atlantis is just 2mm copper, so it wouldn't qualify.  Not sure about that Scanpan Impact---can't find specs.   Seems like Cristel has some edge-to-edge pans, but don't know how thick their bases are.   This handles are bizarre.  Anybody used the cristel handles?  They look like they wouldn't work very well. 

The Falk Copper Coeur pans are 75-80% copper.  Copper is a highly-conductive material, and the amount and rate of heat that a couple millimeters of it can pass can surprise people.

Assuming "slow" intensity...  If your Control Freak is reading 250F at steady state and your thermocouple is reading 260F at the pan center at top, and assume you're not in a room that's at 260F+ (science humor), then I would double-check the thermocouple.  Or wait a little longer to get to a true steady state (in case the 260F you're reading from your thermocouple is just leftover overshoot.

Also, it's valuable to consider that pans without a thermal load in them are interesting to analyze--but it's the behavior of pans with a thermal load (i.e. ingredients, liquids, etc.) in them that is more interesting and important from a cooking perspective.  Unfortunately it's significantly trickier to measure temperatures once ingredients are introduced.

BTW, when you say that the pan is 228 at the edge, are you talking about the edge of the pan base or the edge of the (what I presume is a frying) pan?  If you're talking about the upper ring's edge...yeah, you're going to see a gradient of temperature, especially significant as you move farther away from the induction surface.  The value of clad pans (for some types of cooking) is that there's no sharp drop-off of temperature from the bottom of the pan to the sides of the pan.  But few if any clad pans are going to give you a tight and even temperature all the way through the sides of the pan.

As far as sugar tests go, I would just use the slow intensity.  Adding the sugar afterwards may give you a more realistic view of pan evenness on a preheated pan.  But both adding the sugar before heating and adding the sugar after reaching a steady state will yield results that may help inform your cooking science.

As far as the Chef Steps or other egg recipes go, most people tend to cook when they need to serve or eat food.  So most recipes are designed for cooking quickly.  You'll note that some egg recipes also call for like a tablespoon of cooking oil (100 kcals!) to be added to a pan before cooking eggs (160-240 kcals) and then doing a water drop test, etc. to find the optimal temperature for quick-cooking of eggs.  That's one of the reasons that I cook slowly: I can either use no oil or I can put a little bit of oil on the pan and then wipe almost all of it off using a paper towel, avoiding a bunch of unnecessary calories.  But in any case, the Chef Steps recipe is not wrong; it's just a different style of cooking that requires more human involvement but cooks in less time.  Also, there are some cooking techniques which intentionally want a food that's cooked significantly more on the outside than on the inside--or that require brief higher-temperature chemical reactions; those cooking techniques are more likely to use the fast intensity or higher temperatures.

Most cooking techniques and recipes were designed long before temperature-based cooking (other than a high-temp griddle) was a viable thing in a home kitchen.  There's a lot of inertia to continue doing things the way we've done them for a very long time, even when our new tools give us the opportunity for new modalities.  The good news is that we can mix a bit of the old and the new--and when you have accurate precision cooking instruments you can rethink the whole enchilada.

[adrianvm]

The thermocouple that read 260 at the pan center is the same one that read 238 when doing this test on a different pan, and correctly reads at room temperature.  Maybe it broke.   I haven't done any calibration tests on it and I don't have prior experience with thermocouples.  When I got the 260 reading it seemed to be stable. I waited a couple minutes and saw no change.  When I say 228 at the "edge" of the pan I mean about 1cm in from the edge of the flat part of the pan that will be in contact with the induction heater---so still over a portion of the pan that should be getting heat. 

 

I readily admit that by measuring empty pans I'm measuring the thing that's easy to measure, not the ideal thing. 

 

It's not clear to me how the Chefsteps egg recipes rely on the intensity setting, or how things would work differently with a lower intensity.   Would the pan fail to keep temperature at low intensity (in the presence of actual food) and therefore the eggs would cook more slowly and at a lower temperature?   The interesting thing about the chefsteps recipe is that they provide several ways to get different results at different cooking temperatures ranging from I think 130 F up to 400 F.  But what role does that intensity setting play?   If I'm following their 350 F or 400 F egg recipe, why might I want to disobey their instructions and use medium or low intensity?  

 

I asked Cristel how thick the aluminum is in their pans and got the rather weird answer that it's 1/2" to 3/4" thick.  Somehow I doubt that's correct.   I wonder if they meant 1/2 cm to 3/4 cm.  Anybody have experience with their handle system?

 

[adrianvm]

Tried measuring a very large cast iron skillet with the Control Freak set to 250 on slow intensity.  After about 20 minutes it is in steady state with the center at 260, a point 2" off center is 260, a point 4" off center is 230, and 5" the temperature is 200.   It took quite a while to reach steady state and overshot by a lot (up to 290) on the "slow" speed. 

 

Tested 12.5" Demeyere proline skillet.  This one was also pretty slow to heat.  Is stabilized at 236 deg center, 243 at 2", 225 at 4", 215 at 5", and 205 at 6" (which is up the sidewall).  Surprisingly good heat up the sidewall, actually. 

 

I saw the claim on a review site that Demeyere proline can hold as much heat as cast iron.  But my experience is that cast iron is dramatically more effective at browning than proline.  Am I missing something? 

[adrianvm]

If the induction heater heats out to a 9" diameter, why does the temperature fall off before the nine inch mark?  Shouldn't the pan be getting heat there? 

[Johntodd]

Here is a great video on why some pans are better for induction than others:

Why Some Induction Compatible Pans Work So Badly

[Laurentius]

3 hours ago, adrianvm said:

If the induction heater heats out to a 9" diameter, why does the temperature fall off before the nine inch mark?

 

Most do not heat that far out.  You can't judge coil size by the painted circle.

[Laurentius]

1 hour ago, Johntodd said:

Here is a great video on why some pans are better for induction than others:

Why Some Induction Compatible Pans Work So Badly

It's a terribly misleading video from a number of perspectives.  I could go into detail, but there are many doozers told here.