How Induction Heats Your Pan

Video Description

There IS a super-weird thing about induction cooking, and that’s how the pan gets hot. When you cook with gas or standard electric burners, the burners themselves produce heat, and – through conduction, convection, and some radiation – that heat gets transferred to the pan. But with induction cooking, the heat gets created INSIDE the pan, bypassing that transfer step entirely. This works because of electromagnetism, which is…complicated. But all you really need to understand to get induction cooking is that electricity and magnetism are basically two sides of the same coin; you can use electricity to create a magnetic field, and a magnetic field to create electricity. Straightforward, right? So, let’s peek inside this little induction burner. Inside is a coil of wire, and when you turn on the unit, electricity runs through that coil, which – remember, electromagnetism! – creates a magnetic field around the coil. The current coming through the coil, however, is constantly alternating directions, which makes the resulting magnetic field constantly flip back and forth. If nothing magnetic is that close to this coil, nothing happens – you get no heat. But if say, a magnetic pan like carbon steel is sitting on the glass top of the burner, the magnetic field will interact with the metal in the pan; as the field flips back and forth, it generates electrical currents inside the pan. And as those currents flow through the metal in the pan, they generate heat. Now you have a hot pan to cook your food – just like you would with a gas or standard electric burner.