It was a close-run thing for my friend who’s having a new kitchen installed in her house in Chiswick. After a persuasive campaign by her eloquent architect, who has an induction hob in his own house and loves it for its clean lines and hyper-efficiency, she had got as far as ordering one for herself. Having placed the order, she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, worrying about the imminent change to her cooking life that the induction hob would (literally) induce, let alone the need to buy a whole new set of ‘induction-ready’ pans.
No more knobs to turn a fraction to the left while frying an omelette, ever again? Just a plus and minus touch-screen sign to jab with the ball of the index finger, 9-8-7-6-5-4 and down to 3? No more flames licking the pan, or the sizzling sound of putting an Aga kettle down on its hottest plate? Just a shiny black slab of glass with circles (called ‘zones’), for the rest of her life? Goodbye to the cooking instincts developed over a lifetime, for the sake of an easily wipeable surface and being able to boil a pan of pasta water in 90 seconds if you press ‘power boost’?
She sought advice from friends. Some screamed. ‘Don’t do it!’ ‘They’re the work of the devil!’ ‘They’re totally counter–intuitive!’ ‘If you get so much as a drop of water on the controls, the whole thing switches off.’ Others were enthusiastic. One said: ‘Induction hobs are fine. Don’t worry.’
Fine? It was that adjective of faint praise that changed her mind once and for all. She cancelled the order and rushed off to buy a gas hob instead. On hearing this, I breathed a sigh of relief — much like the ‘sigh’ an induction hob makes if you place the wrong kind of saucepan on it.
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