Thread Number: 73984  /  Tag: Ranges, Stoves, Ovens
Sears final day sale; bargoon
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Post# 977481   1/8/2018 at 14:51 (2,270 days old) by petek (Ontari ari ari O )        

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Well today happens to be the final day for our local Sears store so I popped in to see what was left. Not much at all, some clothes, a few pieces of mismatched furniture, coffee tables etc.. and wait, Kenmore induction cooktops. I walk by and look at one display model and it says $128. (about $99 US) I ask the guy is that right . Yes he says only 3 left.. So being me, no way am I not getting one at that price even if I have no where for it LOL..

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Post# 977482 , Reply# 1   1/8/2018 at 14:55 (2,270 days old) by petek (Ontari ari ari O )        
It's this one

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Post# 977488 , Reply# 2   1/8/2018 at 15:43 (2,270 days old) by Whatsername (Denver, CO)        

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Wow you got a great deal!

Post# 977492 , Reply# 3   1/8/2018 at 16:29 (2,270 days old) by gansky1 (Omaha, The Home of the TV Dinner!)        

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Drop-dead deal of the day!  What a steal.  


Post# 977513 , Reply# 4   1/8/2018 at 18:53 (2,270 days old) by Frigilux (The Minnesota Prairie)        

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Wow! Very nice cooktop. You could resell that and make a chunk o' change.

Post# 977528 , Reply# 5   1/8/2018 at 20:01 (2,270 days old) by petek (Ontari ari ari O )        

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Believe me I stood there thinking should I just take all 3.

Post# 977535 , Reply# 6   1/8/2018 at 21:00 (2,270 days old) by DADoES (TX, U.S. of A.)        

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Wowza!!


Post# 977586 , Reply# 7   1/9/2018 at 05:29 (2,270 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        
Such a Deal! 1/10th the retail

You can put a dryer cord on it, sit it on top of or near the dryer and have a second cooktop. You will love induction cooking.

Post# 977592 , Reply# 8   1/9/2018 at 07:12 (2,270 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        
Induction Cooking

Really a bliss. I only have cooked on gas a few times in my life, but from I what did, I can say that I prefer induction far beyond gas. Maybe I'm just sensitive, but couldn't stand the heat and moisture it produced when used for longer cook durations.

I have both used a 18-level (9 main levels, 8 half levels, 1 booster in each zone) and a 9/10 level (9 levels, half of the zones with an additional booster level) cooktop, the former being a mid-price BSH unit, the latter being a cheap IKEA Whirlpool unit.
Further I have cooked on several setting-less glas cermamic cooktops with those HiLight-unit things that glow red.

These normal heating units cycle on and of depending on temperature, even at max power and thus sometimes take ages to cook something. Sometimes, stuff just burns because you misjudged the setting due to the delayed response.


With induction, things are different and require some learning.
These units have usually 2 different ranges of power levels.
You'll usually quite clearly hear a sound emmited from the pot, not unlike a unltrasonic cleaner, the higher the power the louder usually.

On the lower levels (on the units I used, both do this until 2/3rds normal power), the power cycles on and off in a pattern in the second-range, changing depending on power level. You sometimes see when boiling water and then reduce the power to keep a steady low boil that the boil increases and subsides in that pattern.
From a certain level on, they usually start with continous power supply that then intensifies as you increase the power level, with the noise clearly changing.
The booster level (which yours dosen't appear to have) allows for basicly overdriving the plate for a limited amount of time. Perfect for boiling water and basicly nothing else as some units actually mention that that level with an empty pan could under bad circumstances melt your pan or overheat the electronics.

Now, one thing that changes is that you don't have heated mass in the cooktop to act as a heat buffer.
Second thing is that your pan isn't heated to a temperature, but is supplied with power, much like a microwave.
That actually describes that cooking feeling somewhat well: In a oven, you select a temp, and that is kept. In a microwave, you select a power level, that is supplied, idependent of temperature.

For cooking, that means you'll mostly use 3 levels:
1) Full power: Heating up quick. Carefull with pans and low-oil frying here, quick heatup here means a maximum of 1 minute to good frying, after 2 minutes you most likely are smoking up your kitchen.
2) Lowest continous power level: That is usually most handy for typical frying, both in deep and low fat situations. Sometimes, if food is cold, or a lot, yo might find yourself adjusting a little up temporarly. For deep fat frying, there is usually the need to up the setting when adding food to lift the temp, and once it starts raising again to lower it back down again. You can pretty accuratley adjust that there. This level is also usually perfect to keep a steady good boil.
3) A medium-low pulsing level: This is for everything that needs a simmer-like temperature like stuff with longer cooktimes, heating up stuff. That level is where with some pots, you get an intermittent boil as the element cycles, and with some, you get that just below bubbling temp.


I got that down to a science after a few weeks. And I think you will love it.

Over here, the technology has become pretty mainstream by now. A lower end but well warranted and for most people perfectly fine cooktop can be had for under 300€ at IKEA, a mid-range one with the better power level control is just 50 bucks more.
So, we are in the tiem of induction cooking, I think.



One thing though:
These beasts need proper ventilation beneath them!

This system relys on high power high frequency switching components which produce a lot of heat that needs to be removed from them to maintain a reasonable lifespan.

During normal operation you might hear a fan run at various speeds depending on what you are doing, which is perfectly fine.

If your cooktop randomly switches off without it being caused by spilling something on the touchpads (ours does this pretty happily) or it even displays a error code while cooking or it refuses to activate some zones, your most likely culprit is overheating.
Usually letting things cool is enough to clear that, but you have to keep in mind that the more heat you subject it to, the shorter it lifespan will be.


And, sadly, once something goes south, it usually means the end of the appliance.
Most of these have 2 huge and one small PCB in them, some and additional one for power input.

The 2 big onces are the inverter units that produce the high power high amperage low voltage AC need for the coils, one board running one big and one small zone. These are ALWAYS prohibitvley expensive and complicated to replace and sadly more often then not if one of these fails, the high current backfeeds into other parts and damages all other components as well. (On our Siemens combined unit - cooktop and oven with the cooktop controls on the front of the oven - one of the inverter boards failed in a pretty loud and violent fashion, takeing out not only the cooktop but even parts of the oven controls.)

The smaller board manges user input and other functions and can fail, especially if you place something hot on the interface.

So, best to keep your kitchen cool whenever possible and to not have power levels set higher the need as well as warranting proper ventilation below the unit.


Post# 977624 , Reply# 9   1/9/2018 at 11:01 (2,270 days old) by vacerator (Macomb, Michigan)        
good to know

especially if you buy one and Sears is gone before the warranty is up.

Post# 977636 , Reply# 10   1/9/2018 at 12:46 (2,270 days old) by foraloysius (Leeuwarden, Friesland, the Netherlands)        

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Congratulations! What a steal!

Post# 977674 , Reply# 11   1/9/2018 at 17:16 (2,269 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

All of my induction units have the choice between power levels and temperature settings. The temperature control is great for french frying. Where people who are accustomed to cooking with gas run into trouble is the power and efficiency of induction compared with gas. As Henrik said, you rarely use the highest heat setting for more than bringing water to a boil or for bringing a pressure cooker up to cooking pressure. The most important bit of knowledge for those who come to induction from cooking with gas is that medium high heat in electric cooking is HALF of high heat so if you have 10, 20 or 100 power levels most of your cooking will be done below the halfway point in all of those settings, in fact, below half of that half because half of that is medium low and half of that is low, depending on the wattage. Out of 20 power level settings on my 3000 watt unit, most cooking operations are finished on 2 or 1 although frying might be finished on 3, 4 or 5, depending on the food and the amount, but the temptation is to see all of those settings and think you need them for sustained cooking operations which leads to disaster. The only thing I do at around medium high is boiling pasta.

The food editor of the NYT wrote several years ago about trying a portable induction unit which was probably about 1500 watts, like a good 6 inch electric surface unit and the main thing he talked about was the insanely high heat settings. Someone who is accustomed to cooking on a commercial gas range should not find a 1500 watt unit that hot except for the fact that he was not aware of the efficiency of the unit nor did he know how to adjust heat without looking at a flame.


Post# 977676 , Reply# 12   1/9/2018 at 17:37 (2,269 days old) by brisnat81 (Brisbane Australia)        

With our Miele Induction the big thing you have to watch when using Boost, is that you dont end up with a volcano of boiling water exploding from the saucepan.

The rear centre bridge booster boosts to 7400watts, so if you leave it on Twin Booster and take your eye of it, water will start to overflow from a super rolling boil. After its happened once or twice, you really learn to keep an eye on it. Having said that if you want to cook 10 pounds of potatoes, its amazing how quickly you can bring them to a boil when they directly come from the fridge.


Post# 977718 , Reply# 13   1/10/2018 at 05:48 (2,269 days old) by foraloysius (Leeuwarden, Friesland, the Netherlands)        

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My portable two burner induction unit has terrible intermittent lower settings. It's hard to simmer something decently on that unit. Whem making stews I use the oven to simmer or the single burner unit. The single unit doesn't cycle on and off as much, perhaps because the max wattage is lower (1600 Watts vs 2100 Watts). The thermostat settings don't work very well either on the double burner unit.

Post# 977726 , Reply# 14   1/10/2018 at 08:08 (2,269 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

Maybe your double burner unit just isn't all that great.


Post# 977751 , Reply# 15   1/10/2018 at 10:19 (2,269 days old) by foraloysius (Leeuwarden, Friesland, the Netherlands)        

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No, exactly my thought. I got it rather cheap, so not much of a loss when I decide to get rid of it.

Post# 977755 , Reply# 16   1/10/2018 at 11:02 (2,269 days old) by kd12 (Arkansas)        
Last day in more ways than one

Sears is warning that they are "considering all options" if they don't get more financing to deal with their $1 Billion in debt. Don't know if this is just Lampert making threats to get a better deal, or if they are really about to pull the plug, but the Christmas season sales were not surprisingly a disappointment.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO kd12's LINK


Post# 977756 , Reply# 17   1/10/2018 at 11:45 (2,269 days old) by panthera (Rocky Mountains)        
I gave my dad one for his birthday last year

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Also from Sears, probably that model, though I don't currently have the model number to hand.

It works great for my parents. They love it.

I did hook it up with a 50 amp cord, not a dryer cord - I follow the German rules of 75% load maximum for any one component.

The instructions included clear info on how to hook it up to North American 240 split phase.

It's in constant use and my parents have had zero problems with it. To be fair, they already were familiar with induction in Germany and had never cared for resistance heating elements, so their adaptation time was zero.

One piece of advice to newbies: High heat on these is HIGH. Massively faster and enormously hotter than on a resistance range or a conventional gas range. Great for bringing pasta water to a boil or quick recovering when deep fat frying, but dangerous if you don't pay attention.


Post# 977957 , Reply# 18   1/12/2018 at 05:59 (2,267 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md)        
Great Deal On An Induction Cook-Top

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Hi Kevin, while I can agree with using heaver than required wiring to connect electrical appliances it is far safer to use smaller fusing, 30 amps is more than enough for any residential CT, I have seen far too many wall ovens, CTs etc where things shorted out and when they are on 50 amp fuses there are a lot more fire works and damage to the appliance.

 

John L.



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