German Stovetops
Moving to a new country means learning to adjust to any number of differences in daily life. Something as basic as an unfamiliar cooking surface doesn’t have to be a stumbling block! Whether you’re getting used to the setup in your rental apartment or need to decide which appliance to put in your new kitchen, you’ll find useful information here about the three most common stovetop types in Germany.
Types and Function
Gas
Gas cooktops heat the burners by burning natural gas. You turn on the gas, then light it to produce a flame under the burner you want to use. There is a visible flame under the burner whose size and heat you can adjust by increasing or decreasing how much gas is being fed to it.
Some gas stovetops have self-lighting burners. Generally you will turn the dial for the burner all the way to the right and hold it there to make it light. You’ll hear a repeated clicking sound which comes from the striking mechanism. Other gas stovetops require that you light them yourself. You should turn the gas on low to start, then hold a lit match or lighter under the burner, close to the opening.
Electric
Electric stovetops have metal coils heated by conducting an electrical current. On older electric stovetops you put your pans directly on the coil or else on metal burners covering them.
The most common type of electric stovetop in Germany is the smooth-top cooktop, also called radiant stovetops or Ceran cooktops. The metal coils are underneath a glass surface that radiate the heat more evenly.
Induction
While induction stovetops have been commonplace in Europe for decades, they are arrived much later and were slower to gain popularity in the United States. Many Americans encounter induction cooktops for the first time when they move overseas.
Induction cooktops look very similar to radiant cooktops since they have electromagnetic coils under a glass surface. However, induction transfers heat directly into your cookware through electromagnetic energy. When you turn on an induction burner, it won’t actually activate until you place an induction-compatible pot or pan on the stovetop to activate the magnet below. In a way, you can think of induction as making your pots and pans into burners! When you move the pot or pan off the activated area, the induction stops, even if the burner is still theoretically on.
Logically, that means induction-compatible pots and pans have to be magnetic for induction to work. So, you’ll need pans made from some kind of ferrous material. That includes stainless steel, cast iron, and enameled cast iron cookware.
Ease of Use
Gas stovetops are popular because they are relatively quick to heat and allow fairly precise temperature control. Since natural gas is still the primary source of heat in German homes, it’s generally not too complicated to get a gas line set up in your kitchen.
If you aren’t used to cooking with gas, it can take a bit of time to get used to having an open flame in your kitchen. Lighting the burners may also take a bit of practice if you don’t have a self-lighting stove. You will need to figure out how quickly and how close you need to bring the match or lighter to the gas stream in order to avoid frustration or even injury. In addition, depending on how your gas is supplied, you may need to manage tank refills yourself.
Electric stovetops are very easy to turn on, but they take more time to heat up and to cool down. Every cooktop is different, so you’ll have to experiment to figure out how long it takes your pots to heat up, what number corresponds to what kind of heat, and how long it takes to move between the different levels. Essentially, you have to get used to factoring in lag time whenever you want a temperature change, and you can’t control it very precisely.
In addition, the heat from one burner will gradually radiate across the entire glass cooktop. Even if you don’t have any other burners on, you’ll have to keep that in mind and not place anything on the surface that shouldn’t be heated. Plastic in particular shouldn’t be placed on the cooktop! This also means it’s not as straightforward to find a place to let a pot or pan cool off.
Induction offers the fastest cooking and the most precise temperature control. It heats cookware up two to three times faster than gas because the heat comes directly into the pan, so you don’t have to wait for a burner to heat and then for the heat to transfer to your pan. When you increase or decrease the heat, the induction response is immediate, so the only lag is caused by the heat in your pan. When you turn an induction burner off, that immediately stops the transfer of heat. So, you have much less concern about a pot boiling over or food overcooking.
However, cooking with induction can also can come with a learning curve. If you’re used to setting a pan with oil on the burner and doing some ingredient prep while you’re waiting for the pan to heat, you’ll need to adjust your habits! You may also hear unfamiliar sounds from an induction stovetop. Some humming is usual, but older induction stovetops from lower-end suppliers may whine when they are becoming overtaxed, for example when you are using multiple burners on high heat.
Safety
Gas cooktops come with some obvious safety risks. Anything flammable can ignite if it’s too close to the flame. If you take too long to light a burner, the gas it ignites may have reached close to your face, arm, or clothing. Self-lighting gas stovetops are convenient but give kids an all too easy way of getting a flame going. Otherwise, you do need to have matches or a lighter on hand, which also need to be kept safely out of the hands of curious children.
In addition, if the gas on a burner is left slightly open, natural gas can gradually fill the room. That’s dangerous not only for its flammability but also because of the respiratory consequences of breathing it in. More broadly speaking, burning natural gas contributes to air pollution and climate change.
Smooth-top electric stoves present a wide area of glass that retains heat for quite a while, and not only directly in the burner area. While most electric cooktops have some kind of light in the dial or control area to indicate that an area of the stove is still dangerously hot, this can be easy to miss. Children in particular need to be warned never to touch the glass surface without confirming that it has cooled completely. And of course, never to turn on the burners unsupervised! Newer models usually have dials that recess or a touch-screen control that requires multiple presses to activate a burner, offering some protection for children, but older models have simple dials that are all too easy for a kid to turn.
Induction offers much more safety because the glass surface isn’t directly heated, the induction won’t activate unless something magnetic is placed on top of it, and the induction ceases as soon as a pot or pan is removed. However, it can sometimes be unclear whether an induction burner is on, since the burner doesn’t heat up with a visible glow. Certain manufactures have added a light that turns on when the electromagnetic energy is active, though.
Cleanup
One of the big disadvantages of gas cooktops how much work they can be to clean and maintain. Gas burners have many irregular surfaces with lots of gaps and grooves that are tricky to get into. The burner grates also have to be removed and cleaned separately with the appropriate cleaning products.
Smooth, surfaces are obviously much easier to keep clean. Both electric and induction glass-top stoves can be cleaned with either a mixture of vinegar and baking soda or a ceramic-glass cleaning liquid. For electric cooktops, it is important to clean the entire surface before each time you cook, since the radiant heat can cause anything left on the stove to become burned or set in place. You also need to be careful not to use any abrasive cleaning tools that could scratch the surface.
Energy Efficiency
Gas stovetops are only about 40 percent efficient. That means more than half of the energy is wasted when you cook with gas! In the summer, that’s also a lot of unwanted heat being added to your home.
Smooth-top electric stovetops are significantly more efficient, generally about 70 to 75 percent.
Induction stoves are the most efficient option since the heat is transferred directly to your cookware. They are about 84 percent efficient, more than twice as efficient as gas cooktops.
Cost
Paying for the installation of a gas stovetop can be expensive, particularly if a gas line isn’t already set up in the kitchen. The overall trend is also that gas itself will become more expensive over time. Considering the overall inefficiency of gas cooking, that may lead to high costs over the lifetime of the stove.
Electric cooktops are the least expensive option overall. However, they may also cause higher energy costs due to the longer cooking times required.
Inductions stoves are the most expensive in terms of up-front costs. The appliances are more expensive and they require induction-compatible cookware. If you only have aluminum pots and pans, you’ll have to replace them with cookware with a suitable magnetic base.