Kim's DD 309X in Action

Getting used to adjusting your heat settings takes time. These units are hot. Just imagine adding a "extra high" setting above and beyond the highest setting on your normal stove and you will have what is "high" on the DeDietrich. Here I am frying bacon with onions set on "8" and in the green pot is a sun dried tomato rosotto set on "7".

Click Here To See The Manual For The 36" Kuppersbusch Induction Cooktop

Sent in by Jan Markham

Click Here to See The 36" Hob Comparison, By G. Bernard Kron

Wiring Made Simple By Richard Hibbert

click here to see a larger view.

Click Here To See Thermador's New Line of Induction Cooktops Sent In By Jan Markham

Things That Can Happen In Shipping

I owned a pack and ship store for over 7 years and I know how important proper packaging can be. Just because something arrived unscathed several times does not indicate the packaging is acceptable. In the business, we always stressed that if the item can sustain a drop from 10 feet and survive, then it is properly packaged. Many of the carrier's have conveyor belts that are several stories high. To coin a gardening phrase, "compost happens".

Not pretty, but it works....so far.

G. Bernard Kron's 308

We'd originally decided on a 30" commercial style gas range until we were faced with the expense and difficulty of bringing gas into our home. This prompted us to do a serious search of alternatives to gas cooking and led to discovering the
benefits of induction.
The result was a combination of a De Dietrich DTI308X induction cooktop and a Fisher & Paykel 302 convection oven, each of which offered distinct benefits over our initial choice for a similar total cost and without the additional expense of the gas installation. The 308 not only provides the high heat and instantaneous response that attracted us to "pro" style gas ranges, but it has superior low heat and simmer performance as well.
In addition, the cooking surface is larger and more flexible. The F&P oven is larger than those found in 30" pro-style ranges, has a hotter broiler, and comes with a better and more varied array of cooking modes. Induction technology permitted us to take this modular approach which in turn allowed us to achieve our goal of getting peak cooking performance at reasonable cost.

This involved Osso Bucco (left side), Risotto (broth at the back and rice on the right), and a chocolate/raspberry sauce made without a water bath in a single pan (front). The Risotto pan is the largest of the Le Creuset Buffet Casseroles (I use it as a paella pan and for steaming clams or mussels because of its large surface area) with a 30 cm (11.8") outer diameter and a 24.5 cm (9.65") bottom. It pretty much defines the maximum pan size the 23 cm De Dietrich 3200 watt zone will handle. De Dietrich indicates a 26 cm (10.25") maximum diameter for this zone and this is definitely not the case! The LC pot on the left is a 3 3/34 qt. 27 cm. (10.6") Deep Covered Skillet. It has an 8" bottom and fits the 23 cm. zone perfectly. 10-11" pots and pans are ideal for the 23 cm. zone. This pot sees constant duty for soups, stews, chilis, - anything that requires eventual slow cooking. It is probably my most frequently used LC. Induction is ideal for these heavy enameled pans because of its even, deep heat. --GBK

Kim's 309X Combined With Kitchenaid Oven

The single most important element of installing these powerful units over ovens is ventilation. Induction cook tops produce a lot of heat below the unit. Each hob has cooling fans that immediately run when a zone is engaged. The cooling fans need to draw in fresh air and dispel the warm air through vents out of the front of the unit. Because of this, it is extremely important to have ventilation in the front of the cabinetry, as well as the sides when installing over an oven. We have cut notches into the cabinet face under the granite to match up with the cook-tops vents.

In the close up photo, you are seeing the cook-tops vents (which would normally be hidden) over the oven . This photo is a close up taken with a flash, however they are hidden from normal view. Once we did this, I can feel the air flowing out from these front notches when the cook-top is engaged.

Mark Joiner's De Dietrich 309X In Action

Photos by Mark Joiner

Installation, by Mark Joiner

RE: De Dietrich 309x installation

• Posted by: smilemakr (My Page) on Tue, Oct 11, 05 at 0:19

Well, it looks like I won't be getting a Darwin Award after all...I actually got the De Dietrich 309x cooktop installed without finding out personally what 240 volts feels like! I followed the directions and photo provided by Rick Liebold of Ceramaspeed, and I need to point out that Rick's directions (posted above) were not quite correct. Rick says "Basically, one phase is connected to poles 1 and 3 of the terminal block, and the opposite phase of the 240V is connected to poles 4 and 5" Not exactly. If you hook it up as described, only the left two burners work. To get all five burners working, pole 2 needs to be connected along with poles 1 and 3 to one phase, and poles 4 and 5 to the opposite phase as described. I was afraid I was being a little too self-confident forging ahead on my own (it was the weekend so I couldn't check it out with Rick), but the diagram on the underside of the cooktop shows different wiring schemes that, although not specifically for American 3- or 4-wire 240V kitchens, seemed to indicate that pole 2 indeed needs to be included with 1 and 3. I took some pictures of the hooked-up terminal block and the wire-nutted splices at the other end. I'll e-mail these to Kimba so she can post them to her induction blog--I'm sure she'll provide a link, right, Kimba? And boy, does this thing COOK! I put a quart of room-temperature water in a 10 1/2 inch saute pan and heated it in "boost" (maximum) mode on the center, 3600 watt burner. In less than a minute the water was too hot to touch, and it was at a rolling boil in 2 minutes, ten seconds. By contrast, the Gaggenau single element gas burner we also have in the kitchen, running full-tilt at 17,000 BTU, required 4 minutes, 15 seconds to do the same thing! I think the Gaggenau's about to start gathering dust. By the way, since the center burner is larger than the diameter of the pan I used by an inch and a half or so, it was probably not putting out a full 3600 watts, since it senses the size of the pan and doesn't waste energy where there is no pan. In other words, a 12-inch pan would have heated the water even faster! Very impressive.

A Revolution in Home Cooking!

Induction cooking uses 90% of the energy produced compared to only 55% for a gas burner and 65% for traditional electric ranges.

Cooking food at home may have just gotten safer and easier, thanks to the help of an induction cooktop that controls and intensifies heat using electromagnetism. However, this is no new phenomenon. Induction cooking has been around for decades but until recently never made it past a restaurant's kitchen.

How does it work?
Traditional electric cooktops use some form of electric resistance to create heat, which is transferred to the saucepan and its contents. Induction cooking is based on magnetic fields: each ‘element’ (an induction coil) generates a magnetic field that induces heat in steel cookware placed on top of it. In essence, the pot becomes the element that cooks the food, so the cooktop surface doesn’t get as hot as other cooktops. Induction cooktops have the same instant control as gas and are the fastest of all cooktop types to heat and cook food.

The only stipulations include:

• pots and pans must be made of steel, cast iron or other combinations of metals that will react with the magnetic field.

• a kitchen must be wired for 220 volts (which is not likely if you are using gas).

• Induction cooking uses 90% of the energy produced compared to only 55% for a gas burner and 65% for traditional electric ranges.

• Induction provides extremely fast boil and re-boil, over 50% faster than gas or electric

The surface of the cooktop does not heat up, so overflows and spills do not stick. The cooking surface stays cool even during the cooking cycle.

The Magnetic Factor

Induction cooking uses the transfer of magnetic energy (magnetic coils) -- rather than flames or electric elements -- to generate heat. Within this magnetic field, molecules in the pan jumble around at very high frequencies; the friction creates instant heat.

If consumers are curious if the pans they already own are capable of induction cooking, all they have to do is hold a magnet to the bottom of the pan. If the magnet sticks, the pan will work with induction.

Cleaning
Induction cooktops are easy to clean. They have a continuous surface with no dirt traps, and the controls are touch-sensitive, so there are no knobs to clean around. Because the surface doesn’t get as hot as other electric cooktops, most spillages won’t bake on, although you do have to be careful with sugar because it can still pit the surface. On the downside, some models don’t have a lip around the edge to contain spills, and you may have to buy a special cream to keep it streak-free.

A Comparison Of Induction Units

This spreadsheet was compiled and formulated by Gil Roschuni.