thrift store induction cooker

I’ve wanted to experiment with induction but a few things were stopping me.

1. cost - the Imusa coil hotplate was $9.80 when I bought it. The cheapest induction unit I’ve seen on Amazon were in the $40 range and seemed rather primitive.
2. watts - some offered varying watt levels but it was not clear how it worked. My system is set up for max 1,000W loads.

So I’ve been holding off.

This week I found a Nuwave PIC Flex at the local Goodwill for $19.98. I tested it in the store with a cast iron pan and it heated the pan. The front edge of the control panel is a bit melted. I suspect someone had bad pot overhang or melted it on another burner because that area has stayed cool during my testing.

I have a cast iron pan but don’t use it that much. My main tool has been a 2qt saucepan (Calphalon-type) so I picked up a 2qt saucepan that the pocket magnet approved of.

power

This particular one has 600, 900, and 1300 watt settings. I run it on 600w and it is fine for my uses. It keeps the 600w setting between cycles but defaults back to 1300w if unplugged. :-(

The kill-a-watt shows the 600w setting pulls right at 600w on start. It seems to settle down around 588-590w after it gets going.

temperature control

It has 6 temp presets from Low (100F) to Max (500F), and is settable with +/- buttons in 10F increments in between. I think 5F increments would be more useful.

The temp control does do some regulation¹ but it doesn’t seem to be consistent. More testing needed.

Update: wok

Works surprisingly well with my carbon steel wok. I was worried there wasn’t enough of a base to it but the center heated nicely.

Also toasted a bagel on a flame tamer. :-)

update: glass surface

Yes, the glass top makes cleanup easy. It also means there’s so little friction that pots can slide around during stirring. I’ve learned to hold the handle any time I’m working with the cookware.

1. I can hear the electromagnet cycling on/off and see the wattage vary on the kill-a-watt ↩