New induction cooktops from Miele
21 April 2010
“Now You’re Cooking, Man.”
Miele has always been on the cutting edge of well-designed and innovative products for the home, and the new Miele induction cooktops are certainly no exception to this rule. Actually, the entire concept of induction cooking is really quite extraordinary. If you’ve not yet checked it out, you really ought to do so. One of the pictures we’ve shown here does a nice job of neatly capsulizing the concept. The ice cubes alongside the skillet are un-melted because only those things INSIDE the pot or pan are actually heated by the stovetop. It has to do with magnetic surfaces and a lot of other things I understand only well enough to avoid thinking of the concept as some sort of miracle. Well, actually, I suppose it is a miracle when one considers the utter innovation of what has been done here, but it is certainly not a miracle in the conventional sense. What we see here is the result of men who worked hard to achieve it.
But convention cooking, to return to that, really is an idea that is finding increasing acceptance in the marketplace simply because of the principle illustrated by the un-melted ice cubes next to the pot of boiling water. If, instead, that pot should be filled with sticky caramel sauce, and it boils over, the cleanup is going to be much easier than it would be on a conventional stove, simply because the bulk of the sauce will never touch the heated surface and will not be sticking to the stovetop at cleanup time.
But competition being what it is, one can no longer simply stand in place with a new concept, which is why Miele now offers a new range of products for its induction cooktops: EasyControl Plus, DirectControl and DirectControl Plus. The new cooktops come with TwinBooster, a timer for each zone, Stop & Go functions and automatic simmer direct access system. And because so many wonderful kitchen designs these days revolve around minimalism, Miele has also introduced a new high-frame design, an opaque glass ceramic surface and a stainless steel frame. So along with high performance, one has innovative styling that will complement virtually any kitchen.
The basic idea behind all three of these innovations is to make cooking as easy as pushing a few buttons. As it is with any induction cooktop, the heat pad itself will only heat up when a suitable magnetic pan is placed on it, but here they’ve gone that one better. The size of the pan is actually recognized, so that only that portion of the heat pad truly under the pan heats up, which is the principle they most wanted to illustrate with their photo of the ice cubes alongside the pan of boiling water.
So, now, to return to my example of the caramel that boils over, the cleanup becomes even more pleasant, because even though caramel may have fallen on the burner, if that portion of the burner was not directly under the pot itself, there was no heat generated, and thus, nothing to burn the caramel to the stovetop. It also means, for those with small children learning how to cook, that the stovetop has become correspondingly safer, because the red-hot areas are so much smaller and much better contained.
The other element that is very much worth discussing is that, because of how it works, convection cooking has a lot of the characteristics of gas, in that it stops and goes instantly, most unlike the old electric stoves with the red coil that heats slowly in the first place and then, to add insult to injury, continues to heat after it’s been turned off. Cook with gas, and you’re, um, cooking with gas! But now there’s convection cooking from Miele, and with that process, and these innovations, when you fire these babies up, you’re really cooking, man.
Joseph
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