The Case for Induction Cooking

Robert Osborne grew anxious about dinner when his Brooklyn co-op board put the kibosh on a plan to move a gas line for his kitchen renovation. How could Mr. Osborne, a math teacher, cook his favorite dishes like skillet chicken with caramelized mushrooms and onions if he couldn’t do it over the classic blue-orange blaze of a gas stove?

Like many of the more than 40 million home cooks in the United States with gas stoves, Mr. Osborne considered his to be essential, a nonnegotiable part of his kitchen that, had it not been for the co-op board, he would have kept.

After all, cooking over the open fire of a gas stove sparks something primal and intuitive in our lizard brains. Watching flames leap over the sides of a pan and lick the bone of a sizzling lamb chop is visceral and sensual, two adjectives you might not associate with the sleek ceramic surface of the Samsung induction range Mr. Osborne ended up installing instead.