Gaggenau just raised the bar on induction cooktops
When Blanco had me over in Germany last month I saw a nearly overwhelming number of new and innovative products at The Living Kitchen, the trade show I attended in Cologne . Until I got to Germany, I never really thought about how alone in the world the US is with regard to its design sensibilities and I never fully grasped that really innovative products don't debut here. More than anything else, my trip to Germany was an education in how the world works and it was pretty humbling.
I've talked about a lot of the innovations I saw there. The skinny counters, the drain switches, the overflow drains on kitchen sinks, the wide use of laminates and the total dearth of raised-panel cabinet doors were fascinating to see and to report on. More than anything else I saw in Germany though, a new induction cooktop from German manufacturer Gaggenau was the real star at The Living Kitchen.
I'm interested in the concept of zoned induction. By zoned induction I imply induction cooktops that dispense with the concept of round burners and flip the complete cooktop surface into an induction quarter. There are more than one European manufacturers playing around with this idea, and none of these fashions are being exported to the United States. Not yet anyway however they may be coming. Eventually.
Gaggenau has raised the bar on zoned induction with something referred to as FreeInduction.
The Gaggenau CX 480 uses forty eight micro inductors that paintings together to feel the scale and variety of any pots or pans set down on the surface. So if you have a rectangular roasting pan and also you need to make gravy in it and you've got a round pot for steaming broccoli and a 3rd spherical pot for boiling potatoes, you place all 3 on the cooktop however they may healthy. The cooktop can inform their shapes and sizes and simplest turns on the induction region below every one. Make sense? No? Watch this video.
Even extra superb than the generation under the glass is the touch display interface that controls the cooktop. Did you catch how that works on the video? It's extremely good. That each manipulate that pops up in reaction to a pot or pan has its personal, separate timer simply provides to the genius of this component.
Induction cooktops are here to stay so get used to them gang. They're a small but growing presence in the US and Canada and you can count on their increasing prevalence. Innovations such as Gaggenau's FreeInduction are a real thrill to see because they represent a complete rethinking of The Way We Do Things. Not only that, they're just cool. Now if they were only available in North America...