Fagor’s Powerful New Portable Induction Cooktop

Pow­er mat­ters. Whether it’s a gen­er­a­tor, a pro­ces­sor, or an au­to­mo­bile, you can usu­al­ly find a num­ber that sums up the pow­er of a prod­uct. It isn’t the most im­por­tant num­ber, typ­i­cal­ly- many oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions come in­to play. But it’s cer­tain­ly one sim­ple way to mea­sure im­prove­ment over time, and to ob­jec­tive­ly look at change. We’ve checked out sev­er­al mod­els sim­i­lar to to­day’s nifty piece of kitchen gear, but this one is the most pow­er­ful, and al­so man­ages to be sleek and slim.

We’re talk­ing about the Fagor Portable In­duc­tion Cook­top 1800W, the up­grade to a pre­vi­ous mod­el, adding a pair of quick launch but­tons for im­me­di­ate warm­ing or boil­ing, and up­ping the pow­er by 500 watts. The max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture that the cook­top can reach has not changed- you’re still look­ing at be­ing able to set it be­tween 140°F - 430°F. But op­er­at­ing is faster- you’ll be able to get pas­ta cooked in the time in might take you to get the wa­ter boil­ing with an elec­tric cook­top. A lot of this is just ef­fi­cien­cy in ac­tion: in­duc­tion di­rects the en­er­gy at the pan rather than much of it be­ing dis­si­pat­ed as heat. In fact, you can save a lot of en­er­gy by us­ing in­duc­tion, and it has the ad­van­tage of be­ing more pre­cise as well- you can set it and hit a spe­cif­ic tem­per­a­ture, which is well nigh im­pos­si­ble on most stoves.

The oth­ers that we have tried have some ad­van­tages- the Hearth­ware Pre­ci­sion is less ex­pen­sive though less at­trac­tive and ca­pa­ble, and the Fissler Cook­star is sex­i­er but quite a bit more cost­ly. They all ben­e­fit from easy clean­ing, with a sur­face that you can pret­ty much wipe down, and the safe­ty ben­e­fits of be­ing cool to the touch even when cook­ing. And they all re­quire the same at­ten­tion to cook­ware: be­fore buy­ing in­duc­tion, make sure that you al­ready have com­pat­i­ble pans, or be ready to buy them. As we’ve men­tioned be­fore, cop­per and alu­minum won’t work, but most oth­ers will- any­thing that a mag­net would stick to. The Fagor mod­el seemed a bit loud­er than the oth­ers, but was al­so thin­ner and eas­i­er to put away when not in use.

This is per­haps the best val­ue in­duc­tion sys­tem that we’ve used. We can see it be­ing per­fect for a per­son­al chef, at par­ties (fon­due!), for cook­ing demon­stra­tions, as well as for some trav­el sit­u­a­tions like in an RV. Avail­able on­line and in stores for around $200.