Another Lazada purchase
Cheap induction cookstove
Now if you ask the average Filipino there are a lot of things that are necessary in the kitchen. The first is a rice cooker. If you ever watch Jo Koy he jokes that you can always find the way to the kitchen of a Filipino home by following the little red light of the rice cooker. Honestly, he may be telling the truth.
Rice Cooker
Items like this rice cooker can be found in any Filipino home that I've ever been in. It isn't hard to see why. They are really simple just add rice and water, push a button and come back to cooked rice. Simple. Hard to go wrong. Plus at P400 they aren't very cheap to buy.
But there is a hidden cost. The electricity that they use.
Power Meter Reading 1212W
Which is why I love this little meter. You can plug any appliance into it and it will tell you much power it is using now. You can tell how much power it has used since you started cooking or using whatever item you plugged in. If you set it up properly you can even find out how much electricity you have used with it!
Now I looked at my nephews electricity bill and it appears he is paying about P11 Peso per Kwh. I'm Canadian so converting to Canadian dollars that's about $0.25/kwh which is pretty expensive (we only pay about half that amount).
High electric bills has people looking for alternatives
Propane Cookstoves
Propane Stove
Many people look to propane as an alternative to electricity. With propane you never have to worry about brownouts. You get a relatively cheap fuel source and it puts out a lot of heat.
Cooking with wood
Clay Woodstove
For those people who can't afford propane or electricity then wood is the preferred method of cooking. Or with my brother in law and family there is a lot of branches that get knocked down from the back woods so that makes a cheap and environmentally friendly way to use what would otherwise use waste.
However, for those people who go and chop down trees for firewood it is pretty bad for the environment and leads to landslides and worse.
Not to mention that fact that the smoke from these fires is terrible for your lungs.
Enter the induction cookstove
Now if you ask me I just love the induction cookstoves like this one that I just purchased.
New Purchase from Lazada
Yes, it was a little more expensive than the rice cooker. Yes it uses more power than the rice steamer that I just wrote about a couple of days ago. Yes, it only works with Iron (or steel) cookware so all those aluminum pots and clay/glass based items are useless on it. However, the advantages make it well worth switching to.
Here's the thing. With an induction cookstove it doesn't have a heating element. Instead it uses magnets to heat the iron that is sitting on top of it. Your frying pan, dutch oven or other steel based cookware actually becomes the heating element.
So what? Why is that important?
It comes down to efficiency and smooth heating.
Induction over at 1800W
Let's take this oven at 1800W as shown above. With an induction cookstove virtually all of that 1800W is used to transfer heat to the water. It's effiency is actually close to 95%! Very little electricity is wasted. If you were to look at that rice cooker? Well, it is 800W and only about 50% of the energy goes to cooking the rice.
Again, So what?
Well, lets take an equivalent amount of water. In this rice cooker the water hit a rapid boil in just over 2 minutes. In the rice cooker with half the power and half the efficiency it would take closer to 8 minutes! That means that technically your rice could cook in half the time and use half the energy!
But wait, there is more!
Induction over at 80C
You see rice has to hit 100C in order for the starches to turn. However, after that it needs more time to absorb the water to finish the cooking. That absorption phase doesn't require the full 100C but does have to be hot enough to make sure that bacteria don't start growing. Well, the rice cooker hits 100C and stays there until the water is all boiled off then it turns itself off.
With an induction cooker you use less water because less will boil off IF you do a little extra step. Bring to a rapid boil first for a few minutes THEN drop the temperature to 80C which you can see the induction cooker can do with ease.
The initial high temperature means your rice cooks nicely. The longer lower temperature means there is less energy lost due to steam escaping. End result you may be able to use about half the electricity that your regular rice cooker would use.
But wait there is even more!
I mean well cooked rice at half the cost? Sounds pretty good already but..... You see when the induction cooker heats the power the entire bottom of the pot is EVENLY heated and there aren't the hot spots that traditional resistive cookers have. More even cooking throughout means that there is less scorching on the bottom and more even cooking at the top. In addition cooking at 80C after the initial 100C boil means that when the rice is done there will be no (or virtually no) scorched rice that is inedible at the bottom of the pot.
So, getting better cooked rice. No scorched bits and use less electricity? Sounds like a win to me!
But is the energy difference really worth it?
Haha the true power of the power meter rears its head! Plus a fair amount of math to show you the power meter isn't lying.
One batch of rice: 800W * 45min = 0.36Kwh/day
That's not really that much but the average Filipino eats rice every day.
So lets look at a year: 0.36 * 365 days/year ==> 131.4KWh
At P11 per Kwh?
P 1,445.4 Kwh annually
By using the Induction cookstove instead you would save about half that of about P700 annually. Sure, the induction cooktop is a little more expensive to buy up front but the efficiency means you make up that money very quickly.
But an induction cooktop can cook so much more.
In addition to having a rice mode the induction cooktop can also be used to cook many other things. At low heat it can slow cook stews and soups. At high temperature mode it is great for keeping an even temperature while frying things. If you need to boil something you can heat the water very quickly.
Plus with 95% efficiency you are wasting very little electricity.
With the current cost of Propane an induction cookstove is actually quite competitive in the overall cost of cooking. Sure propane is less expensive joule per joule of energy BUT the overall efficiency of propane is only about 45% plus it isn't great for low and slow cooking and its hard to get heat to the pot immediately like induction does. Then there is the hassle of matches and the possibility of running out of propane at the worst time.
Sure the induction cookstove is useless during brown outs...
..... but here is a little secret.
The best induction cookstoves have low power mode which is compatible with battery banks and solar panels. Imagine having a very efficient, clean, fast way to cook food that you can run on the sun. How AWESOME is that!
Unfortunately my power meter told me that THIS cheap induction oven doesn't work that way. So, sometimes paying a little more for an appliance is worth it.
Still, this stove is highly efficient and I'm quite happy for the purchase.
I saw that @sej got an induction cookstove with a matching steel pot recently and I congratulate her on her excellent taste.
I just have a little different view on these awesome pieces of cooking equipment.
Thanks for reading
and as always, I love getting comments.
Final side note
As much as I love induction cookers. I looked at the nearby SM Department store and their induction cookers where far more expensive. As much as I love them if I am paying P3000 for an induction cooker it takes a lot longer to make my money back by the power savings.
In that case I'd have to think hard about whether I wanted induction of just go with a rice cooker that everyone knows and loves