this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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chapotraphouse
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It depends on your method of cooking. Different stoves offer different advantages. I've owned all 3 and actively enjoy cooking, so they've all gotten plenty of use for different purposes. My favorite method of cooking though is stir-fry, so I'll talk about that more.
Quality/Price matters here. There's a reason most restaurants use gas still, and it's because your high-end gas hob can do things no other stove can do. You're not going to find a better way to stir-fry indoors than this (A grill can do a good job outdoors).
Most people are not getting anywhere close to the sort of output -- or proper venting -- that a restaurant has.
As a stir-fry fan, the best stove I've ever had at home for this was a cheap coil electric. They get stupidly hot, and that is the baseline fir stir-fry. You want an old-ass one that doesn't have temperature safeguards. This is likely what a cheap landlord will provide you in an old building.
Glasstop electric looks nice, but I don't get the point. I guess you can't have food fall under the burner? Not a fan.
Induction is terrible for stir-fry. I've read about some specialized curved wok burners, and those might be good, but I absolutely cannot manage a decent stir-fry on these godforsaken things. I've got a mid-range Induction cooktop that does everthing surprisingly well EXCEPT stir-fry. The heat doesn't recover quickly enough when you add new ingredients, there is close to zero heat on the side of the pan, so it's hard to manage temperatures across elements, and you straight up can't season a new wok on them (my wok has a non-removable wooden handle, so seasoning it in the oven is going to require creative solutions too).
Anybody that tells you that an induction can do everything that a gas can is full of shit. This isn't a "skill issue." The technology just isn't optimized for this. I will be buying a single-pan side-burner (probably coil electric, but I hear butane can be pretty good) for my wok unless somebody has direct experience with a specialized induction wok burner and can vouch for it.