We have been canning on propane in our barndo.  We are building a house and we need to decide between propane and inductive.  Canning okra puts a lot of heat into the house in August, but I was able to run the oven/range, among many other things, during the snowpocalypse using a medium sized generator.

I should mention this is water bath canning.

Keep in mind that induction needs a ferrous pot/pan to work.

If you have an aluminum canner like I do, you may not get the desired results.

Be aware that most glass top cook surfaces are not suitable for canning. Breaking the glass surface due to excessive heat. I too was considering induction for canning but after reading the warnings about the glass surface am going with propane.

We use a mobile 3 burner propane fired burner for most of our canning.  It can be placed where my wife chooses to work, and a 20 lb tank lasts for a number of batches.  My wife often cans on the side porch (concrete, not wood floor), on the driveway outside the garage, or in the garage with the doors open if it is raining or windy.  For small batches like the pints of strawberry jam she made and canned today, she used the propane range in the kitchen.  For very large batches, we may set up and use our wood fired outdoor canner.  It is basically a wood stove with the top cut off, and has a stainless steel tank designed to set on top of the open wood fire in the stove.  We can get about 60 quarts per layer in the outside canner. We would only use it for items being canned using the water bath method.  Tomato products, apple sauce, veggies and fruits, and such.  

Basically, if the windows can be open and it is a small batch she can use the kitchen.  Otherwise to keep the heat and moisture out of the house she chooses another method.

Our previous farmhouse had a second small kitchen, called a summer kitchen, off the side porch with a propane stove, chest freezers, and storage shelves.  It was designed for food preservation and storage, and to keep the heat out of the house in the summer.  Our garage would be the most similar area that we would have at our current house to this.

We have never used induction.  We did use an electric coil style stove top when we were first married, and money was tight.  We found that propane is far better than the coil style burner for canning, and we recommend it.

Gas. Cooking is done with fire.

OP, I have an induction cooktop, it's AMAZING. But I have yet to find an induction compatible canner. Pressure canners are all aluminum. Most water bath canners are way too thin to be effective with induction. I use a small magic chef LP range/oven hooked to 20 lb tanks to can. I do it outside on the porch which keeps the heat out of the house too!



I canned hundreds of batches on my glass top before I moved. 100% not an issue. The primary concern is the weight and setting down a heavy canner not so gently... be kind to the glass and it will work fine.


Not to start a thread jack here because we're talking about canning, not cooking. But this is clearly spoken by somebody who has never tried induction.  People who have used induction know, people who haven't just cannot fathom something could exist that can make gas look like it is barely adequate. Yet that is the reality, induction makes gas look "barely adequate" and I could never go back. How many minutes does it take to bring 2 gallons of water to boil on a gas stove? 10 minutes at least! Induction? 5 minutes! How about stop a pot from boiling over? 10 seconds or so for boiling to slow down enough? Induction? About 1 second.  Boil a 1/2" of water in the bottom of a pot with gas? 3-5 minutes. Induction, about a minute.

I have used induction in vacation rentals. It will boil water fast but i dislike everything else about it.  You can always get a cheap countertop induction if the extra minutes boiling water for canning matter.  Doesn’t to me but my stoves both put out a lot of btus.

I've canned a gazillion quarts of pickles and salsa on my old glass top, but never anything that required a pressure cooker.

This time of year I do most of the cooking outside on a Coleman 413 using gasoline. No matter what time of year I do most canning or cooking with the pressure cooker outside in the open air because it’s easier to clean up. Sometimes I use propane when I’m feeling extremely lazy but the design of the Coleman works better in wind.

My point being:  Canning inside using a conventional Range, especially in the summer time, is doing it the hard way.

As mentioned above, induction doesn't really work well at all for canning.

But I'm curious what you didn't like about the induction. Everything about it is better than gas. Higher highs, lower lows, extremely fast response both when increasing heat and decreasing, much more even heating, much higher efficiency, no "cloud" of hot air rolling up the outside of a pot on higher heat levels, easier to clean (much, much easier).

I get personal preference and gas is what you're comfortable with, but I've never heard of someone that actually gave induction a chance and didn't fall in love. Maybe your vacation rental just had crappy cookware which made for a crappy experience.

Honestly, there are ONLY 3 downsides, but the 3rd that gets an asterisk. #1 Cost: they're expensive. $1800 for my 36" 6-burner and that was significantly cheaper than retail. #2 You have to have induction compatible cookware, and cheap stuff labeled "compatible" is a classic example of "you get what you pay for". #3 Compatible cookware that is layered/laminated with multiple sheets of metal on the bottom will "sing" or hum on higher heat settings. But it's like crickets chirping, you get used to it and eventually your mind blocks it out. Solid cookware (like cast iron) doesn't do it.

Are you relating actual experience or just trying to offer a hypothetical perspective from the other side?

I mean no offense by this, but have you actually used induction before? It seems like your points are just repeating what you may have heard about induction from others.


Not true...induction is equally capable outside the realm of normal home cooks. It does have a couple drawbacks in a commercial line cook environment but OP isn't talking about commercial environments, and line cooking is completely different from normal cooking. People that make amazing cooks, amateur and professional chefs, routinely cannot hack it as a line cook because the environment is totally different.


I don't understand this comment. I don't know of a single cook surface where cast iron cannot be used. It is truly the most versatile cookware that exists in my opinion. Are you under the impression that CI isn't induction compatible? It is compatible!



I don't mean any offense, but if you don't know of a professional that prefers induction then you likely don't know many professionals. But then again, most restaurant line cooks aren't what I consider professionals, they're just people whose job it is to cook food. There are numerous pros that swear they're never going back to gas. Many chefs use them estensively. Induction got its foothold through the popularity with professionals, primarily in Europe. The US is this weird bastion of resistance to new things. The rest of the developed world has been using induction in homes and commercial kitchens alike for a couple decades. The US is holding out due to preconceived notions like yours.

And "isn't much of a hot cloud" is still a hot cloud. I understand pan sizing helps, but induction totally resolves it.


A few thousand? 36" 6-burner gas cooktop will run you near $1,000, so an extra $800 for the cooktop (comparing to what mine cost) isn't bad. I bet much of your cookware is already compatible, even if it doesn't say it. I only had to replace my cheap non-stick skillets, I spent about $120 on new cookware (2 large commercial non-stick skillets w/ lids). If a magnet sticks it will work, if it sticks really well it will work better. But I totally understand that cost is an issue for some. But you're using a commercial cooking environment as your basis of comparison for several points. Not only is that irrelevant to OP's decision between the 2, but that's also the environment where appliance cost is largely irrelevant.

And why on earth would you EVER throw out grandma's cast iron? As I said above, cast iron skillets are the ones that downside #3 doesn't apply to. They work excellent on induction. I never would have chosen induction if it meant giving up my skillets.


There are commercial induction units that can take the abuse. But on that note, quality counts. My old electric radiant glass top had numerous scratches from my cooking when we left it behind in our move years ago. The induction cooktop appears to be impervious to scratches. I don't baby it, and it seems to be very robust. It is not a commercial unit, it's high end residential. I have accidentally dropped heavy cast iron on it from several inches before and no chips or breaks. I really think one would have to be extremely abusive or careless to damage one. That being said, I will admit that it was a concern in the purchasing process. Some induction tops have touchscreen controls built into the top glass. Sounds great until an accident breaks the glass and the replacement costs almost as much as a new unit bc you have to buy glass with touchscreen stuff in it. I intentionally bought a unit with separate controls so that if the glass ever did break it would be far cheaper to replace.

The reason induction isn't a good fit for that type of cooking is because lifting to shake the pan stops the heat. So if you're set on lots of sauteeing with pan shaking, you could get a small gas burner to compliment induction. It's also possible to love something or admit that it is great without owning it. Just because induction isn't compatible with your budget or cooking style doesn't mean you have to hate it. You can choose gas to get better sauteeing, just know you're making a tradeoff to do it.


The reason it doesn't work well is because of the lack of compatible canners. Induction would actually make a truly fantastic canning setup if you could find a canner that would work on it. The fundamental wrong is that the US has been so averse to something new that nobody has created a canner for it yet. My advice to OP is go induction in the house and use an LP burner to can outside...


Hogwash... I'm not even sure what you're getting at here... are you trying to say induction doesn't work well when it gets dirty or with dirty cooking? I don't even know how to respond. Induction is the easiest cleanup because it doesn't scorch the spilled/splashed foods onto the surface, just wipe it up and done. And induction, by it's very nature, is the most impervious to spills impeding the heating process bc you're heating the pan directly.

I'm a serious cook. I watch professionals. I heard about induction from professionals, I researched it in publications for the professional (among other resources). We frequently entertain in our home. I routinely cook for groups as large as 50 on my induction cooktop with multiple cooks in the kitchen. I have used at length all 4 major cooking types: electric coil top, electric radiant (glass top), gas, and now induction. As a matter of fact, when we remodeled the kitchen a few years ago I was absolutely set on putting gas back in. But I decided to go try induction before making the final decision. I have NO regrets about choosing induction over gas. The performance difference is NOT insignificant. A residential gas top will not compete with an induction top on the highs. To even get close to the highs of induction you would have to use a commercial gas unit, but it wouldn't be in the same ballpark for the lows.

For anyone that was following this thread, here is a running thread in the cooking subforum. https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Induction-cooking/163-2473023/

TLDR: the guy is new to induction, works in a commercial kitchen, familiar with commercial kitchens and used to have gas at his home. He is astounded at how great the performance of the induction is. He needed a lot more cookware than I did and he seems to think it's still worth every penny spent!

My low on the NG Thermador is lower than induction with automatic intermittent flame.  It also gets very hot.  My Viking on Propane is super hot. Low is low enough.  I like to see the flame not a dial.  

You can’t tilt a pan on induction or it turns off.  Will overheat frying (mine is cheap). I can hear the grit sliding as I place the pan like nails on a chalk board. That cloud of heat is necessary for a wok.  I make tons of stir fry in the summer with the garden veggies and my girls eat it up. It doesn’t work with All Clad except my tea kettle. I cant keep a porcelain serving dish warm.  

I can go on.

Have been using a propane stove out on the porch for a while to do most canning.  Because like you said, puts out a lot of heat and steam.

*have used the indoor regular kitchen induction cooktop to can when it’s just a small batch of jelly or other small jars, in a deep all clad pot.  It does fine for that.  
But for things like the quart jars I use an enamel coated canning pot - which apparently aren’t to be used with induction cooktops.