When Anne Rouse Sudduth wanted to switch from a gas stove to an induction cooktop, her first stop was the local library. From there she was able to check out a portable burner for a two-week home trial.
Sudduth, who had started volunteering with the advocacy group Mothers Out Front when she moved to the Boston area, learned about the health and climate risks of cooking with gas through the nonprofit. Her family’s own stove was noticeably leaky. But her husband was skeptical about making the switch.
“I think for him, and most people who only have experience with a traditional electric stove, the connotations of having an electric stove are that it wouldn’t be as effective to cook with and it wouldn’t be as responsive,” she says. “He was imagining that we would be downgrading our actual cooking experience.” She hadn’t tried induction before, either.
Being able to test out a portable cooktop, she says, was a game-changer: The family was able to try cooking all of the things they normally make and see the advantages of induction technology firsthand, including being able to boil water faster and more precisely control the temperature. They were convinced that buying a new stove was a good idea.
Sudduth’s public library in Brookline, Massachusetts, had induction cooktops available as loaners that had been donated by Mothers Out Front; other local chapters of the group have donated cooktops to libraries throughout Massachusetts. Some libraries in other states also loan out the tech, particularly in California, where multiple cities have started to phase out gas hookups in new buildings. Several of the programs also include pans, since induction stoves work only with magnetic cookware made from materials like stainless steel or cast iron.
Other organizations also loan out portable induction cooktops, including some public works departments and several utilities. “We think it’s really important that people experience it so they understand how it works. A lot of folks tend to have preexisting notions around what it’s like to cook on electric,” says Nick Chaset, CEO of East Bay Community Energy, a community-based utility that loans induction burners, along with pans and recipes, to anyone in its service area. There’s been huge demand for the program, and it’s likely to increase as more people consider induction stoves because of the rebates that will soon be available through the Inflation Reduction Act.
Trying out the stoves tends to dispel doubts. In an affordable housing complex in New York City, when researchers tried to recruit participants for a study that would replace gas stoves with new induction appliances, many tenants weren’t interested. But “once the first 10 stoves were installed, the number of people coming to us asking if they can now be involved in the pilot was pretty remarkable,” says Annie Carforo, a climate justice campaigns coordinator at We Act for Environmental Justice, a group that worked on the pilot with Columbia University and Berkeley Air Monitoring Group.
Tenants liked the speed and efficiency of the stoves, and how easy they are to clean; they also said that they felt safer without the risk of accidentally leaving the stove on or children burning themselves. One resident with asthma said that she used to cough when she turned her stove on, but that changed with the switch to induction. (The study also showed unambiguous benefits to air quality: The levels of nitrogen oxide, a pollutant linked to health risks, dropped by more than a third.)
When the pilot was over, residents had the option to switch back to gas, but none wanted to. The housing authority is now transitioning the whole building away from gas.
If you want to try out an induction cooktop but don’t have an option to borrow one, a single burner is relatively affordable to buy. One model recommended by Food & Wine, the Duxtop 9600LS, is currently $116 on Amazon. Others are even less expensive. Buying a portable burner is also an option for apartment dwellers who want to switch away from gas but can’t convince their landlords to invest in new equipment.
“It was an ‘aha’ moment for me—how much we were able to transition to that one burner,” Sudduth says of her test with the library cooktop. “If you’re not in a position to replace your stove, the cooktop really can be a functional replacement.”
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