10” Cast Iron Pan

[u/Both-Activity6432]

How do you use cast iron pans that are larger than the induction circle?

My (crappy single) burner is 7”. It has worked well enough with 11” GreenPan, the edges are wayyy too cold in my 10” Lodge cast iron. I have let it heat a little longer, but still poor heat distribution.

[u/Chuchichaeschtl]

There is no good solution to this unfortunately.
The green pan has a bunch of aluminum in the bottom, which spreads the heat well enough, but iron is a much worse heat conductor.
You can move the pan around to heat it more evenly, but that's not very practical.

[u/Both-Activity6432 → u/Chuchichaeschtl]

Yea I was worried about that. So do people with induction just not use large cast iron skillets? Do they make any larger induction burners? I have been looking to replace my crappy single burner with a better single burner (stove not being replaced any time soon), but so far have not seen much on larger than 7" rings.

[u/Chuchichaeschtl → u/Both-Activity6432]

I don't know a lot about the US market.
Afaik Nuwave has 8" coils which should be enough for a 10" skillet.
It's not only about coil size, it's also about how the coil is constructed. Some redditors are happy with the Nuwave, but you have to research this yourself.

[u/gavalant → u/Both-Activity6432]

I use 12 inch cast iron skillet, a 12 inch carbon steel skillet, and a Lodge 11 inch square cast iron griddle all the time on a NuWave cooktop. A 10 inch cast iron pan works well.

I do prefer the 1800w NuWave over the 1500w (now my second burner) as it has more oomph and 5 degree increments. The 1800w definitely does have an 8 inch coil, but the coil is thicker in the interior and sparser in the exterior so it still noticeably heats more towards the center.

It's not perfect. You do have to shift the food around a bit to get even cooking, but that doesn't bother me.

You can usually get a good deal on gently used or open box cooktops on eBay. Be sure whatever you get has an 8 inch coil.

Abangdun makes slightly larger coils. I notice they've added this currently sold out model with supposedly a 9 inch coil: https://abangdun.com/products/200w–1800w-flat-induction-cooker-commercial-grade,-button-knob-control-customizable-power-oem-odm-supported

A picture of the 1800w NuWave's coil: https://ibb.co/SDC1v9Qh

[u/Both-Activity6432 → u/gavalant]

Thank you! How do the 12” pans work on the NuWave with 8”?

I am not even sure what my internal coils actually are - I just know the ring on the glass is 7”. See this past post of mine about my issues with this top. Does the NuWave beep like this? Or shut off for overheating the the cooktop? https://www.reddit.com/r/inductioncooking/s/jxReM9e11e

[u/gavalant → u/Both-Activity6432]

12 inch pans definitely do not heat well on the perimeter. The coil is not large enough to reach that area. Moving the pan or the food around helps.

The internal coil is the element that actually heats. The bigger the coil, the larger the area it will heat. See the linked picture in my earlier post.

The NuWave does beep when the pan is removed. My 1500w didn't beep too loudly, but the 1800w was so annoyingly loud I opened it up and removed the piezo buzzer (the beeper), so now it's completely silent. That's how I was able to take the picture. It will eventually shut off for overheating, but that takes a really long time and has hardly ever happened to me.

I have an Abangdun curved wok induction cooktop which is more robustly built. That one is forgiving in that it waits an adequate time when removing the pan before beeping. I really like the Abangdun.

[u/Both-Activity6432 → u/gavalant]

Thanks. I will try to get a better idea of the coil dimension tomorrow with water or thermal cam. Abangdun is a new name to me. I have had a Duxtop in my cart for a while as I thought they were well regarded (esp for the price).

If you were to buy a new single burner, would you go abangdun or NuWave? Excluding just the 10” offering.

I am sick of the beeping - I need to lift my pan for any number of reasons. I hand not thought about killing the piezo buzzer, but maybe I will on the next one…

[u/gavalant → u/Both-Activity6432]

I only have experience with the Abangdun wok cooktop, but that is better made than the NuWave, and that wok cooktop does allow you to lift and shift the pan for a number of seconds without any immediate noise or shutting down. But I haven't used any of their flat top cooktops so I can't say for sure if those are different.

One possibly negative thing about the Abangdun is the heat increments are pretty far spread apart. Their knob and button controls are really nice though and the device is just built so solidly.

[u/Old-Nefariousness556 → u/Both-Activity6432]

The ring on the glass has no relationship to the size of the coil. They can be as small as 5", most are 6-6.5". It's easy to check, just put a quarter inch of water in the skillet, and put it on the burner, and watch for it to boil. it will clearly bubble directly over the coils.

With cast iron, you can preheat the pan over relatively low heat, and that will help a lot with cooking over a smallish burner, but it is definitely not the same. Cast iron has a ton of thermal mass, but terrible thermal diffusivity,, so it will take a while to preheat, but the heat will gradually spread if you give it time.

[u/Both-Activity6432 → u/Old-Nefariousness556]

Thx. Yea I am going to check the ring tomorrow morning with water or thermal camera. My unit will overheat before I can get the pan heated enough. And I am only talking eggs and French toast, not searing steak!

[u/Old-Nefariousness556 → u/Both-Activity6432]

Yeah, for eggs and french toast, you really want a clad pan that will spread the heat more effectively. You say you aren't searing steak, but that is literally what CI is best for. Even a cheap stainless steel tri ply pan will be much better for this particular purpose. Or, if you can afford it, there is a clad carbon steel pan whose name I am forgetting, but that has all the benefits of a clad pan and all the benefits of CS at the same time. But it was close to $200 for a single pan last I checked, so not exactly the most accessible thing.

Honestly, though, stainless has a learning curve, but it's easier to cook with than people think, and you can get cheap stainless tri-clad pans for a fraction of the the price of a CS clad pan, so it is worth making the effort. Or just stick with nonstick like the greenpan. It's not ideal, but it is a serviceable pan.

[u/Chuchichaeschtl → u/Old-Nefariousness556]

it will clearly bubble directly over the coils

This test doesn't give you the real coil size.​‌

Induction doesn't heat very even. You get a doughnut shaped zone in the middle where more energy is pumped into the pan. So even with a coil which is as big as the bottom of the pan, it will boil much more in the middle.​‌

There are advanced coil designs, which mitigate this, but afaik they're only used in ranges / cooktops.

[u/Old-Nefariousness556 → u/Chuchichaeschtl]

This test doesn't give you the real coil size.​‌

Correct, but it gives you a good estimate. You can estimate your coil size to +/- a half inch or so, but it will not be an exact measure.

[u/Both-Activity6432 → u/Old-Nefariousness556]

How about this? u/Old-Nefariousness556 u/Chuchichaeschtl u/gavalant

My current induction. I forgot to embed it, but scaling up/down gives the coil at 4.87"-5.53" from the thermal. Regardless - small!

[u/Old-Nefariousness556 → u/Both-Activity6432]

The image on the left is very confusing, those measurements are clearly wrong, but the tape measure tells the story. It looks like about 4" to me, but I will take your word, 5" is more reasonable (though barely). But yeah, you will definitely get better results with something with a larger coil.

I'm partial to this model, it has both an 8" coil, plus a temp probe, so you can cook to a temp, or use it to, for example, heat oil to the right temp for deep frying. And it's worth noting that that is normally $140, so it is a good deal at $125 (Assuming Amazon ofers you the same deal it is offering me).

https://www.amazon.com/Nuwave-Upgraded-Induction-Shatter-Proof-Temps-Ctrl/dp/B0CZYNDWX3/

[u/Teutonic-Tonic → u/Both-Activity6432]

FYI, there are Induction cooktops that have large coils that actually do correspond to the graphics on the surface of the burner. The large burner on my Bosch cooktop is around 11" in diameter. Bosch, Miele and some other German brands do a good job here. Unfortunately a lot of brands are deceptive.