The World's Sexiest Stove

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kymmcnicholas/2012/01/09/the-worlds-sexiest-stove/

by FluidDjango • 15 years ago

22 63 15 years ago

Interesting; I love the "cooks anywhere" aspect and the touch screen that kinda showed where things were.

On thing I noticed about the video was the horrific parallax; it looked like the demonstrator was hitting the touch screen a good 1/2" away from what was being selected.

av500• 15 years ago

Ah yes, I can imagine moving a pot to the side and the thing asking with a popup:

"I detected you moved a pot, would you like me to set up a new cooking area? Confirm|Cancel|File Not Found"

micheljansen3• 15 years ago

Finally a reason to revive good old Clippy!

nodata3• 15 years ago

One step closer to a monthly "Patch Tuesday" for every device in the house :)

buro9• 15 years ago

I guess it depends on the definition of sexy.

I find this sexier: http://www.agaliving.com/our-products/classic-aga-cookers/4-...

Though, I'll be honest and say that I have trouble finding something cast-iron 'sexy'.

gte910h2• 15 years ago

I find that stove really looks like you like your kitchen to look cool, and never be used.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&safe=off...

does 90% of the stuff that cast iron behemoth does and won't make your house require a A/C in the winter.

micheljansen3• 15 years ago

Cool design. Unfortunately, the "put the pots anywhere you want" concept requires induction to work. You'll have to pry my gas stove "from my cold dead hands" :P

tptacek18• 15 years ago

Why? Induction is nothing like an electric cooktop. It's very responsive and very very fast.

They're also pretty cheap; a single burner cooktop from a good brand costs under $70.

My understanding is, gas is the gold standard in the US mostly because gas (cooking fuel) is so incredibly cheap here; induction is more common in Europe.

DanBC• 15 years ago

Gas oven with induction hobs are a popular choice. Natural gas is cheap (in the UK), but the efficiencies of induction are nice.

I did have trouble a few years ago finding a good quality pan suitable for use on induction hobs with a non-stick coating for my US sister.

micheljansen3• 15 years ago

I'm actually from Europe (The Netherlands), but it is not the price of gas that appeals to me, but the flexibility of a gas stove.

I do a lot of stir-fry cooking with a wok and the only way those things work well is if there is a blazing inferno below them. I also like to use cast-iron pans for grilling, because they hold heat well and don't cool off as quickly as aluminium cookware, which helps a lot with big pieces of meat and fish.

I must admit that the cleanliness and beauty of induction stoves does appeal to me. A combination stove where half of it is induction (for boiling water, cooking pasta etc.) and half is gas for more heavy-duty work would be perfect.

54mf6• 15 years ago

Truth. Not to mention, I'd be terrified of throwing my cast icon pan anywhere near that glass top.

tptacek18• 15 years ago

That's the thing that bugs me most about induction cooktops too.

kondro4• 15 years ago

Induction is as responsive as gas, faster to boil water (no wasted heat, or need to heat the pot before heating the contents) and more energy efficient.

tptacek18• 15 years ago

It's marginally slower to boil water than a good gas burner (my tests, but also Cooks Illustrated's, and they're not usually wrong about stuff like this), but they the two are so close that it's not worth comparing.

Also, not sure how energy efficient. It may depend on the specific cook top. At max power, the things drain a lot of power. It's possible that they consume less "energy" than gas but are still more expensive, right? Gas is very cheap.

It's very trippy to sear meat or boil water on a burner, lift the pan off, and have the cooktop surface be cool to the touch.

54mf6• 15 years ago

No, it's not sexy. It's sleek, or simple, or innovative, but I really hope no one wants to fuck it. </petpeeve>

And please, please, please stop saying "culinary enthusiast." In my humble opinion, if "[o]ne of the key consumer cues for induction is cleanability," that's less an enthusiast and more a lazy person with 5 grand to throw at a stovetop. I know a few people who actually work as chefs - the most enthusiastic of culinary practitioners, I presume - and I haven't heard any of them ever complain about the "cleanability" of, well, anything.

[Edit] Not to mention, the UI on that touch panel is totally uggs. Look at those pseudo-3D buttons!

klausa2• 15 years ago

Well, I'd imagine people working as chefs don't complain about about 'cleanabilllity' of their stuff, because they aren't ones cleaning them.

54mf6• 15 years ago

Most chefs also cook at home, no?

invalidOrTaken• 15 years ago

You know, while you're probably right overall, people can get very particular about the tools they use. I'm quite attached to my development environment and am snarlingly possessive about it; I wonder if there are any chefs out there who feel the same way about their stoves?

tptacek18• 15 years ago

No, chefs clean their cooktops continually during service. The thing to know about most pro kitchens: they're incredibly small. There's no way most of them could even fit the person who'd clean up around a cook. And in small kitchens, if you're not working clean, you're going to look like the Swedish Chef.

billybob2• 15 years ago

I share your peev. Stoves, cars, phones, algorithms, archeological discoveries, and economic theories are not sexy. A person who arouses sexual desire is sexy.

Please, people. Find other adjectives for inanimate objects and abstractions.

54mf6• 15 years ago

Look brah, sometimes I can't help that my database normalization is totally sexy. I'm a Rockstar SQL Ninja like that.

joezydeco• 15 years ago

Something to remember that this type of device (a cooktop) at this price level (pretty extravagant) is not just a kitchen appliance... it's furniture.

Talk to any chef that works for hire in people's homes, they'll tell you about $10,000 Viking ranges that still have the manuals stapled to the rack.

tptacek18• 15 years ago

Also a little baffled by why touch panels would seem like a good interface for a cooktop at all.

qw• 15 years ago

This is an induction cooktop, so you can safely touch it with your fingers. It doesn't get hot.

kia• 15 years ago

One problem with induction cooking is that you have to use cookware made of ferromagnetic metal. For other pots an interface ferromagnetic disk is required.

nodata3• 15 years ago

One problem? What are the others?

Ferromagnetic pots are not expensive. Even Ikea sells them on half of their range.

tptacek18• 15 years ago

"Interface ferromagnetic disk" meaning "round piece of any metal efficiently heated by induction".

I think this downside of induction is wildly overstated; I have very few pieces of cookware that aren't "induction compatible", and I certainly didn't shop for them with that as a criteria. Any All-Clad pan works; my cheap-o omelette pan works; my enameled dutch oven works; obviously, my cast iron skillet works.

So much normal, good cookware works on an induction cooktop that it might make more sense to think about "induction incompatibility" as a liability of exotic (or particularly cheap) cookware, instead of a liability of induction.

jacobr• 15 years ago

Induction is hardly new, and the touch screen interface is probably just going to piss you off massively. For an interface like this, you need input feedback and should be able to utilize muscle memory.

k7d2• 15 years ago

Exactly, the best interface for kitchen-ware is physical knobs. I hate all those touch-surface buttons that usually come integrated on stoves like this. They have no feedback and they fail to react more often than they do.

54mf6• 15 years ago

Seconded. Cooking and touch screens should be as far apart as possible. The kitchen is an environment full of potential disasters for such an interface: food everywhere to gunk up the device, heavy / hot / wet objects to destroy it, wet / dirty / sticky fingers (okay, okay, let's [try to] be grown-ups) to prevent proper touch detection, and so on. I love the idea of an iPad in the kitchen, for example, but only as a screen (preferably interacted with via voice) and not as a functional device.

nodata3• 15 years ago

> Exactly, the best interface for kitchen-ware is physical knobs.

I disagree: the problem with the interface shown is the disconnect between the screen and the stove.

I'd like to see the stove itself as the touch screen.

immad• 15 years ago

I mostly agree with you, but that is what people used to say about Smartphones so maybe the flexibility given by touch screen will over rule is lack of muscle memory

k7d2• 15 years ago

So you can get a relatively high-end induction stove from AEG for $1000 with a similarly minimalist design. Um, $3000 for touch screen?

billybob2• 15 years ago

Can't see it. How about a nice <img> tag instead of a plugin?

RyanMcGreal• 15 years ago

I like the idea of induction cooking, but I love cooking with cast iron pots and pans and they do not play well together.

checker• 15 years ago

I'm curious why they don't work together. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems to say cast iron should work fine. I have no personal experience with an induction range.

tptacek18• 15 years ago

I'm assuming he's saying that because cast iron pans are extremely heavy, and because on a conventional cooktop you can be rough with them (you kind of have to be in order to, for instance, saute on one). Induction burners will shatter if you slam a cast iron pan onto one.

kstenerud• 15 years ago

If you can afford $5000 for a stove, you can afford to hire a cook.

HeyLaughingBoy• 15 years ago

How's the cook going to feel about getting out of bed at 3AM because I have a sudden craving for potato pancakes with bacon & sour cream?

The World's Sexiest Stove

Related Stories