Autumnal re-runs: Induction cooking rules the universe

This post ran originally on 9 July 2009. I wrote it after I returned from a really great trip to GE Monogram's headquarters in Louisville, KY. I know a couple of people who are headed to Louisville this week to take the same class and I know they're going to learn a lot, eat a lot and enjoy themselves tremendously. Wear your thinking caps kids but tie them too tightly.

OK, so I spent the beginning of the week this week In Louisville, KY as a guest of GE Monogram appliances. While I was at GE I was not only treated like a prince, I was assigned a cooking station in GE's Monogram test kitchen. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the other designers who attended this appliance summit and I prepared most of our own meals under the expert tutelage of GE's chefs.

The bottom line was that I had a kitchen with $20,000 in appliances at my disposal and I was in heaven. I spent most of my time falling in love with the GE Monogram Pro 48" range I wrote about the other day. But the bulk of the actual cooking I did was on a GE Monogram 36" induction cooktop.

I have been on the induction bandwagon since my first hands-on experience with induction cooking at a Wolf seminar about four years ago.

I wrote a description of how induction cooktops work back in January, give it a look if you need a primer.

Induction cookers are highly efficient and they work with unusual speed. For example, an induction cooktop can boil six quarts of water 400 percent faster than natural gas can. I'm a bit of an efficiency nerd and despite my former preference for cooking with gas, I conceded that preference to induction years ago. Get this, from the energy expended from a gas burner, 62% of that energy gets lost and does nothing more than heat up a room. Only 38% of that energy gets delivered to the food being cooked. That lousy efficiency is why gas cooktops have to be vented. Old school radiant electric cookery is more efficient from an energy perspective. In this case, 72% of the energy expended goes toward heating the food and 27% is lost. In induction, 84% off the energy expended goes to the food being cooked and only 16% is lost.

This is the actual electromagnet and circuitry inside an induction cooktop

Anyhow, I've played around with induction at a variety of training seminars I've attended over the years, but I've never actually cooked with it. Until this week that is.

On Tuesday afternoon I browned chicken and made a red curry on an induction cooktop and I was really impressed. The process of browning chicken was faster, but it wasn't due to my using higher cooking temperatures. It was faster because the skillet got to the correct temperature in seconds. It was amazing, actually.

On Wednesday, I made pasta with a sauce of bacon, pine nuts, feta and mascarpone. I made the sauce in a sautee pan. I was always concerned about how well induction would fare with sauces, but my concerns were unfounded. My pasta sauce turned out perfectly. Ditto a caramel sauce I whipped up later. The butter, brown sugar and cream blended flawlessly at a medium heat and then stayed warm on simmer until it was time to eat. Best of all, when I cleaned out the pot later, there was nothing scorched on the bottom.

So, even though I've been responsible for getting induction cooktops into a bunch of peoples' houses in the last few years, I'd never cooked on one until recently. After having done so, all I can say is that induction cookery exceeded even my lofty expectations. So I guess the next step is to get one for me. Hmmm.

A Mad Men mash up

Thanks again to Rufus the Dog from Dog Walk Blog. In all of the accolades being thrown at mad Men these days I think this is the best one I've seen so far. This song is perfect. If you watch the show it will make perfect sense.

The Kitchen Mogul strikes again

Anybody who spends any time around this blog knows that I love to find new finds from all over the net. I don't care if it's a new product or a new website, the amount of great content and great people out there is staggering. Well a couple of weeks ago I made the acquaintance of someone on Twitter who goes by the nom de net The Kitchen Mogul.

The Kitchen Mogul and I have struck up an enjoyable repartee on Twitter and he writes a really great blog called Kitchen Design Think Tank. The man knows what he's talking about and his experienced eye is forever combing the internet for new ideas related to kitchen design. He reminds me in a lot of way of my pal Johnny Grey, who's another one who's forever rethinking his (and my) assumptions.

I've added Kitchen Design Think Tank to my blogroll and I'm recommending giving his blog a good read. He's relatively new at all this, so pop over and say hello. He's a high-end designer who knows what he's talking about.

The Mogul sent me some photos and a description of of kitchen that won a Design Award in London last week and I'm pretty taken with it. He sent along too a description of it from the designer, Darren Morgan from Glenvale Kitchens in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The kitchen's now in a showroom in Norther Ireland but it began it's life at a trade show. Designing a single kitchen that will fit into two, wildly dissimilar spaces is a level of complication I don't even want to think about.

The kitchens broken into five work zones; consumables, non-consumables, cleaning, preparation and cooking; and it has a real, 750 liter aquarium in its back splash.

I love how seamlessly it fits into the room it's in and I am completely taken with that island.

From the designer:

I wanted this kitchen to literally come alive within the architecture surrounding it while still performing beyond expectation on functional level.

My aim is to encourage a relationship between user and kitchen right down to knowing the names of the fish and having the functionality tailored to the user’s lifestyle.

The remotely operated doors and custom made aquarium breathe life into this kitchen while the island introduces softer geometry and mood setting colour.  This kitchen fits any social occasion or time of day and can sit in a "Standby" and an "In Use" position!

Achieving ergonomic efficiency and aesthetical satisfaction on every level is the reason for this design.

Technology:

A Servo Drive electric opening system is used on all doors and drawers. This includes the only remotely operated opening system for wall units available in the world (At the time of design).

The aquarium heating, lighting, filtration and circulation systems use the most efficient technology available.

Innovation:

Kitchen aquariums are common, a living splash back is not!

The island is unconventional introducing soft geometry, energy efficient extraction and interactive lighting.

This kitchen is attempting to be evolutionary in that it is completely functional, completely automated, can be in a standby or an in-use position and offers entertainment and companionship to the user.

I'll take two! Many thanks to The Kitchen Mogul and his blog Kitchen Design Think Tank for passing all that along. Now go pay him a visit and tell him I said hello.

This is the check that Don wrote

This is the check that Don wrote in the Mad Men episode when Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce dropped out of the Honda RFP.

Here's Don's building in case you're wondering. 104 Waverly Place is in Greenwich Village, on the corner of McDougal and Waverly, across the street from Washington Square Park.

AMC has a season four scrapbook on their website that's chock full of these sorts of odds and ends that produce paroxysms of glee among Mad Men fans. Check it out. All hail Rufus the Dog from Dog Walk Blog for pointing it out to me.

My first cover

Thanks to Floor Covering Weekly for putting yours truly on the cover of their issue this week. Man, many thanks to the terrific folks behind this. I know who you are.

So this week it's Floor Covering Weekly and mark my words, I'm not stopping until I make the cover of Us Weekly. Hah! Here's the link: Floor Covering Weekly