What Is An Induction Cooktop – Definition & Working Process

Cooking is among the most ancient technologies, and without it, man would not have thrived without perfecting the art of self-nourishment. The root idea of cooking is to kill harmful microorganisms in the raw food thus making it safe and on top of it nutritious.

When food undergoes the heat treatment, which is called cooking. When comparing between the ancient open fires roasting and the application of gas or electricity, the difference is not much.In this post we will try to cover what is an induction cooktop & how does it work.

What Is an Induction cooktop?

An induction cooktop consists of a copper wire coiled. The wire is used as a heating element and is placed under the pot. And it is through the wire that an alternating current is passed. The resultant oscillating effect creates a magnetic field.

Which causes a magnetic flux that repeatedly causes the pot to be magnetized. Which treats it like a magnetic core resembling that of a transformer. Eddy currents are produced in the pot in the process and due to the resistance of the pot the contents of the pot are heated.

In nearly all induction cooktops, the material used for their manufacture has to contain or be made of metal that is ferromagnetic like cast iron or different types of stainless steels.
However, glass, copper, aluminium vessels, and non-magnetic stainless steels could be used separately on a different disk with a ferromagnetic interface that works as a normal simple hot plate.

How Does Induction Cooktop work?

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When compared to the traditional cooking method, the induction cooktop is much more efficient in cooking fast and conservation of heat. Arguments from experts state that in open fires a lot of heat is lost to the atmosphere before the actual heating is done thus the long periods of waiting. And the vast amounts of energy required regarding gas and other fuels.

Material used in building up of induction cookers is ceramic or glass cooktops. These material are usually easy to maintain in terms of cleaning, with the use of magnetic fields heat produced is almost instant which is way better than most traditional heating tools.

That take some time to heat up, on the other hand while using the induction cooktop one should be careful to avoid overcooking or even burning their food.

Unlike the traditional electric cooktop, the induction cooktops heat can be controlled almost instantly like when using a gas cooker thus no time is wasted in waiting for it to cool down just like in the electric cooktops. It may take some time at first as one gets to learn the numeric required for the type of cooking required.

In induction cooktops, there are no open flames used thus there is no risk of one burning themselves.Only the pans are heated, and the cooktop does not get hotter than the vessel on top of it.

Some electronically controlled cooktops sense the amount of heat produced and they can cut out the power if the temperature gets to a hazardous level or even to avoid some meals from boiling over.Or even when the pan is dry or boiling to dry. On top of it, induction cookers are a couple of inches thick if built into ceramics thus can fit a range of heights.

Conclusion

Hope our article provides you sufficient knowledge in answer to the question what is an induction cooktop.Also read our best induction cooktop reviews along with pros & cons, features and frequently asked questions for best induction cooktops.