“Thermo-Cook” - Changing the Way the World Cooks, Serves and Delivers Food

Thermo-Cook goes beyond “taming the flame”. It delivers better quality food, higher productivity, substantial energy savings, and safer operating environments. At the heart of every Thermo-Cook product is an extraordinary heating technology - faster than gas, yet precisely controllable, unmatched for efficiency and adaptable to perform extraordinary tasks. Thermo-Cook is the leading innovator, developer and manufacturer of induction powered equipment for the foodservice industry, with a focus on cooking, buffet holding and hot food delivery. Designed to be simple to operate, rugged and durable, all products are supremely energy efficient - “green by nature.”

“Thermo-cook” Induction Cooktops

With a single-element, free-standing induction cooktop, you can now take your kitchen range where you could never cook before. Safely and in places where open gas flames are not permitted or ventilation is poor. Great for exhibition cooking in restaurants and at home, use as an omelet or pasta station. Ideal in the boating industry for extra-safe shipboard use. Can be used as a portable home buffet, and for entertaining on the patio. Induction cooktops are perfect for an extra cooking area during the busy holiday cooking times. It can also be used in an RV, and away from home in college dorms, or for the elderly in retirement communities.

A unique way to cook!

Cold heat?!? It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but that's exactly what induction heating is. The induction element stays cool, while the target object heats very rapidly for extremely efficient heating.

If you're interested in clean, fast, safe, efficient heating at lower operating costs, read on.

• Induction is Flameless — You get the benefits of a gas flame, including rapid heat-up and cool-down, without the dangers and disadvantages of gas and other types of electric heating.
• No Heated Surface — With induction the energy is magnetically transferred.
• Cooler Working Environment — With no open flame, there is no excess heat introduced into the working environment.
• Increased Safety — There are no flames to ignite clothing and no hot surface elements that can cause burns.
• Saves Energy — Induction costs less to operate than other heating methods. Induction is 85% energy-efficient while conventional electric heating is, at best, 50% efficient, and gas is even less efficient at less than 40%.

Induction heating is a non-contact method of heating. A magnetic field transfers the electric energy directly to the object to be heated. Because of this direct transfer of energy, there are fewer losses, which translates to a higher level of efficiency.

This principle can be applied to many different heating applications. Commercial and residential cooktops, as well as non-contact brazing and soldering.

Safety is a key advantage with induction in any application; there is no open flame nor hot element to come in contact with.

By inducing an electric current into the object to be heated, heat is generated in the target object (cooking utensil, connector to be soldered, etc.). The cooking surface only gets hot from the heat reflected from the object being heated; no heat is directly produced by the induction element.

Efficiency is another bonus for the use of induction heating. Depending on the application it can be 75-85% efficient. Gas and electric cannot compare.

With other heating methods, the excess heat or lost energy goes into the working environment. Think about using a gas cooktop on a hot summer day! This requires removing the wasted energy from the working environment with a ventilating system or air conditioning. This is reduced or eliminated with the use of induction heating and can result in a substantial reduction in overall operating costs.

Induction may not the answer to every heating need but if increased safety, faster heating times, the cleanest of heating methods, cooler working environment, precise heat targeting, and lower operating costs are important to your needs, then induction may be the answer.

 Instant Adjustment

To serious cooks, the most important favorable point about “Thermo-cook” induction cookers--given that they are just as (or more) "powerful" at heating as any other sort--is that you can adjust the cooking heat instantly and with great precision. Before induction, good cooks, including all professionals, overwhelmingly preferred gas to all prior forms of electric cooking for one reason: the substantial "inertia" in ordinary electric cookers--when you adjust the heat setting, the element (coil, halogen heater, whatever) only slowly starts to increase or decrease its temperature. With gas, when you adjust the element setting, the energy flow adjusts instantly.

But with induction cooking the heat level is every bit as instantaneous, and as exact, as with gas, yet with none of the many drawbacks of gas (which we will detail later). Induction elements can be adjusted to increments as fine as the cooker maker cares to supply, just like gas, and--again very important to serious cooks--such elements can run at as low a cooking-heat level as wanted for gentle simmering and suchlike (something even gas is not always good at). Someday, perhaps not so many years away, the world will look back on cooking with gas as we today look on cooking over a coal-burning kitchen stove.

No Wasted Heat

With induction cooking, energy is supplied directly to the cooking vessel by the magnetic field; thus, almost all of the source energy gets transferred to that vessel. With gas or conventional electric cookers (including halogen), the energy is first converted to heat and only then directed to the cooking vessel--with a lot of that heat going to waste heating up your kitchen instead of heating up your food.

As a comparison, 40%--less than half--of the energy in gas gets used to cook, whereas with induction 84% percent of the energy in the electricity used gets used to cook (and the rest is not waste heat as it is with gas). There are two important heat-related consequences of that fact:

cooler kitchens: of course the cooking vessel and the food itself will radiate some of their heat into the cooking area--but compared to gas or other forms of electrically powered cooking, induction makes for a much cooler kitchen (recall the old saying: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."); and,

·     a cool stovetop: that's right! The stovetop itself barely gets warm except directly under the cooking vessel (and that only from such heat as the cooking vessel bottom transfers). No more burned fingers, no more baked-on spills, no more danger with children around. (The photo at the right--one of several similar ones to be found on the web--shows, like the one above, how only the cooking vessel does the actual cooking.)

Safety

We have already mentioned that the stovetop stays cool: that means no burned fingers or hands, for you or--especially--for any small children in the household. And for your kitchen nothing can beat induction for both safety and convenience

Furthermore, because its energy is transferred only to relatively massive magnetic materials, you can turn an induction element to "maximum" and place your hand flat over it with no consequences whatever--it will not roast your non-ferrous hand! (Nor any rings or bracelets--the units all have sensors that detect how much ferrous metal is in the area that the magnetic field would occupy, and if it isn't at least as much as a small pot, they don't turn on.) And, while an element is actually working, all of its energy goes into the metal cooking vessel right over it--there is none left "floating around" to heat up anything else.

Moreover, gas--induction's only real competition--has special risks of its own, not all of which are as well known as they perhaps should be. While the risk of a gas flame, even a pilot light, blowing out and allowing gas to escape into the house is relatively small, it does exist. But a much bigger concern is simply gas itself, even when everything is working "right". Use any web search engine and enter the terms gas health risk cooking and see what you find (really:); if, for example, you visit the  web site, you may never again want to even enter a house with gas laid on (take some time to really poke around on this site--you may be shocked). And, of course, all combustion releases toxic carbon monoxide.

Ease and Adaptability of Installation

Unlike most other types of cooking equipment, induction units are typically very thin in the vertical, often requiring not over two inches of depth below the countertop surface. When a cooking area is to be designed to allow wheelchair access, induction makes the matter simple and convenient.

Ubiquity

It is an obvious but still very important fact that induction cookers are powered by electricity. Not every home actually has a gas pipeline available to it--for many, the only "gas" option is propane, with the corollary (and ugly, space-taking, potentially hazardous) propane tank and regular truck visits. But everyone has clean, silent, ever-present electricity.

 Cleanliness

Burning gas has byproducts that are vaporized, but eventually condense on a surface somewhere in the vicinity of the cooktop. Electrical cooking of any kinds eliminates such byproducts.