Jean wrote:I love my gas one, but do you even have access to natural gas way out in the country?
Out here we use LP gas (liquified petroleum gas, which these days is mostly propane). When I was a kid, it was butane, and anytime the temp would go below about 18 degrees F, the butane would stop flowing, because it couldn't volatilize, so you didn't have any heat.
When that happened, we would have to build a big fire under the propane tank, in order to get the gas warm enough to flow.
These days everyone would be scared to death to try something so foolhardy, but back in those days, it was routine.
Monique,
An inductuction cooktop transfers electrical energy by using magnetic induction to agitate the molecules in the bottom of the pot, so that only the pot is heated (not the cooktop itself). The pot has to be magnetic, of course, so either cast iron or magnetic alloys of stainless steel can be used on them (or pots with cladding of copper or iron). The advantages of induction heating are mainly efficiency and speed. Since the energy is concentrated where it is needed, much less energy is wasted, and it can boil water before you can say "Jack Robinson" (as they say).
Sure, I love non-stick coatings on pots, skillets, etc. I even use a non-stick griddle. But I'm not aware of anyone who sells a pot with a non-stick coating that would hold up very long for induction cooking.
Because it heats so rapidly, you can have a temperature spike that destroys a non-stick coating before you even realize that it's too hot. You can select a "temperature" mode for cooking, rather than a "power" mode, but the temperature rises faster than the feedback system can keep up with it, so you could destroy the coating before the feedback system would realize that the temp was too high. That's because the temperature sensors have to be built into the cooktop (not the pot), but since the cooktop is glass, it takes a significant amount of time for the bottom of the pot to transfer the heat to the cooktop sensors (heat transfer is a time-dependent process). IOW, there is a huge time lag between the temperature rise in the bottom of the pot, and the temperature rise in the cooktop sensors. By the time the bottom of the pot heats the temp sensors enough to cause a power adjustment, the temperature of the bottom of the pot could already be way above the safe limits for the coating.
Otherwise it's a nifty system.
No, I don't know of a way to saute onions in a rice cooker. One has to prep all ingredients beforehand (by whatever methods are necessary), and then add all the ingredients to the rice cooker before starting it. But it's not that much trouble to saute onions separately, first.
Yep, I like that recipe.
Love,
Tex
