Difference between induction hob and glass ceramic.

The most common modifications of electric stoves include induction - like high-tech glass-ceramic, as well as traditional glass-ceramic. What is the specificity of each type of kitchen appliance?

What is a glass ceramic hob?

Traditional glass-ceramic includes electric stoves, which involve placing kitchen utensils for cooking - pots, pans - on a smooth glazed surface. The heating of the dishes and the products placed in it is carried out in this case due to special elements located under the upper glass-ceramic layer of the plate - spiral, tape or halogen type. These elements differ in the level of manufacturability and, accordingly, in price. True, halogen, which are considered the most advanced, usually have a rather short service life - about 7-8 years.

The principle of operation of the glass-ceramic plate is as follows:

The heating element, after applying current to it, heats up to a high temperature. Then the heat is transferred to the glass-ceramic layer, which, in turn, begins to heat the dishes placed on the stove.

A traditional glass-ceramic hob heats up rather slowly: it takes about 5 minutes to boil 1 liter of water on it. The device cools down even less quickly: after turning off the heating element, the surface temperature drops to room temperature in about half an hour. Therefore, immediately after cooking, as, in fact, in the process of using the device, you should handle the stove carefully - it remains hot for a long time.

Traditional glass-ceramic hobs are quite versatile: they can cook food using any metal, as well as glassware (if it is resistant to high temperatures).

There is a special modification of glass-ceramic stoves, characterized by induction technology for heating dishes. Let's study its specifics.

What is an induction hob?

So, induction cooker is a high-tech subspecies of glass-ceramic device.

This type of kitchen appliance functions by distributing energy generated by a magnetic field. Thus, under the glass-ceramic layer is not a high-temperature heater, but an inductive element, a coil. It creates an electric field, which, in turn, creates an eddy current in the area of ​​the bottom of the cookware located on the stove. As a result, the pot or pan heats up quickly.

The device cools down to room temperature rather quickly - less than 10 minutes after the power is turned off. For this reason, an induction hob is quite safe. Moreover, its glass-ceramic surface heats up to a relatively low temperature, about 60 degrees (mainly not due to the stove, but due to the effect of heat from the heated bottom of the dish).

The bottom of the cookware, which is supposed to be used for cooking on the induction hob, must be made of ferromagnetic alloys. It must also be thick enough to allow the eddy current to heat up quickly. That is, not every pot or frying pan can be used to cook food on an induction hob - special types of cookware are needed. Aluminum, glass will not work, since they do not have ferromagnetic properties.

Comparison

The main difference between an induction cooker and glass ceramics (if we do not consider the fact that the first device is a subspecies of the second) is that in a traditional kitchen device, the dishes are heated by transferring heat from the heating element on the hob, and in the induction one - due to the energy generated by the magnetic field and transferred to the bottom area of ​​special pots and pans.

The principle of operation of the considered kitchen devices, therefore, is very different, despite their external similarity. This predetermines other tangible differences between them:

1. in the type of dishes used;
2. in the rate of heating and cooling of pots and pans;
3. in the heating temperature of the hob.

Induction cookers, as they are more technologically advanced, usually cost more than traditional glass-ceramic ones.

Having determined what is the difference between an induction cooker and glass ceramics, we reflect the conclusions in the table.

Table