Indeed while such ordinances are not intentionally racist, they are discriminatory against people who don’t eat the kinds of western food that the people making these ordinances presumably eat.

If I were in a minority community in one of these places I would support a ban on ovens and see how they like it. It’s not just Asian people who indulge in energy wasteful cooking techniques, but of course only one of those is under the ban hammer.

Is the racism unintentional? Asians always seem to be the target of western moral panics about the environment.

People in China routinely use woks on electric stoves; they're just as common in China as they are here. There's a lot of mythology about woks and wok hei, most of which is based on people confusing restaurant cooking techniques with home cooking. This issue isn't racially coded.

This is my experience as well. I've spoken to Chinese co-workers who cook a lot of traditional food at home, and they have zero issues with electric stoves (induction or no) for cooking with a wok.

As for those who claim that gas stoves are needed for wok cooking w/ specific techniques, most people who I've actually asked about what they cook on the wok is basically "fried rice", or even worse, they don't actually have a wok at all, and are using the issue as a strawman to complain about government overreach.

For what it's worth: I have a fussy gas range and I'd be peeved to have to give it up, and I don't have an opinion about whether it's good or bad to require new construction to use induction. But the racial angle on this is risible. It's evidence of bad faith argument.

It’s not made up right wing outrage bait: https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2022-06-02/gas-stove-ban-....

The issue isn’t whether you can use Asian cooking techniques on cheap electric ranges. People in China are poor and will put up with a lot of adversity. The issue is whether the burden is differential. Is going from an electric resistance range to a gas range a bigger step down for Asians than for white people? And I think the concerns about that are real.

What’s galling about this is that, in NYC, which is driving this madness, white people mostly don’t even cook at home. They shouldn’t get any say in this gas stoves issue.

> What’s galling about this is that, in NYC, which is driving this madness, white people mostly don’t even cook at home.

Citation for this?

I don't think I have ever seen a survey of this. But it's quite apparent if you have experience with white people and immigrants in NYC.

This is a restaurant. We are talking about homes. You know who else doesn't cook at home? Large chunks of urban Asia.

I lived in China for a decade and never once saw an electric stove.

I've lived in Oak Park, IL for over a decade, shopping for houses several times, and have never seen an electric stove. What's your point?

What's clearly the case is that homes in China do not generally have the ultra-powered gas wok burners that restaurants do, which is what people are talking about when they talk about what's distinctive about cooking on a wok.

woks are round (hemispherical) on the bottom, gas is better for heating that shape

Of course: https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-stir-fry-ele.... Absolutely nobody would have pushed back on the idea that “Asian cooking is better and easier on gas stoves” until five minutes ago when the left decided to make it their “current thing.”

Not even that is true! This seems like another instance of people deriving every facet of their arguments from faulty first principles. There are bowl woks and flat-bottomed woks. We're not going to get anywhere discussing this issue if we can't even agree what a wok is.

my argument comes from being a good, experienced cook, which I know that you are not, because if you were you would not be saying the things you are saying.

Now, it's possible that the small number of good, experienced cooks should not be catered to by society because the vast ocean of the unwashed, of which you are a part, are needlessly destroying the earth's atmosphere by using gas to no benefit, which argument, if you made it, I would listen to. But you very obviously don't cook anything with sophisticated preparation whereby you tilt the pan to control the temp with one hand while whisking with the other, or similar in a round bottomed wok.

you're a passionate lefty, just own it and make that be your argument

source: passionate former lefty, I could have written your playbook

My point was that in my experience they are far less common in China than in the US, as you were claiming. I guess one of us could go look up stats bit given the cost of the item and the relative affluence of the countries I seriously doubt they are close. What was your point in bringing up that they were similarly ubiquitous in both places?

I lived in mainland China and Hong Kong for nearly a decade and had electric induction stoves in every apartment. Anecdotal evidence is, as ever, weak evidence.

what is funny here is you both claim to have lived in China for a decade and your experiences are so vastly different.

Here's the thing, one of you is lying and it is clear which one it is.

Had you spent any actual time in China, and not a major metropolis you would realise two things:

1) Their electric system is.. lets just call it "shitty". 2) The vast majority of the population cant afford an electric stove, or the electricity needed to run it.

So tell us, from your decade of experience in China how do they cook?

I've been married to a Chinese for 25 years, own a home in China and have been there many times...

Our house in China lacks an electric stove, and in fact NO ONE in our entire apartment complex has an electric stove. Probably because the complex itself almost certainly cant support the power draw to run all those electric stoves.

I never checked, but i'd guess the kitchen doesnt have the hookup for an electric stove...

> Here's the thing, one of you is lying and it is clear which one it is.

Not helpful.

* * *

Please make your substantive points without crossing into flamewar or personal attack. Those things are not what HN is for, and destroy what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Edit: we've had to ask you this more than once before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32655788 (Aug 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24256585 (Aug 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23950934 (July 2020)

Worse, it looks like you've been using HN primarily to post this kind of thing. Please stop! We have to ban accounts that do that and I don't want to ban you.

Interesting. Maybe it's a north/south thing? I was in Beijing. Or maybe it was an affluence thing? I can totally imagine an indication stove being a status symbol. But they are far from ubiquitous and common in the country overall, of that I can assure you.

I lived in Shanghai and Shenzhen, and I think it was mostly indicative of how new the building was. Anything built after ~2000 usually had the option of plumbed gas or electric, but in older buildings I saw a lot of those standalone bottled gas hobs with the purpose-built alcove in the kitchen.

In Hong Kong, it was really down to personal preference. My first apartment came with a normal resistive stove that the landlord swapped to an induction cooktop at my request, and that building (on HK island) didn't even have plumbed gas. It'd been disconnected during a renovation years before I moved in.

> But they are far from ubiquitous and common in the country overall, of that I can assure you.

I actually agree with you here, I was just making a point about the precariousness of using personal anecdata to support a position as broad as "people in China rarely have electric stoves." In a country that big, even the outliers make for an enormous group.

Indeed. I was responding to the claim that they are just as ubiquitous as in the US. Seems a bold claim given my personal experience. I would bet that they will become ever more popular in China as they push heavily toward electric infrastructure with new nuclear power plants and heavy investment in electric cars.

I know absolutely nothing about the type of stoves they use in China, or in the US for that matter, but remember that experiences may go out of date quicker than you'd might expect.

Before I moved to the UK I had literally never seen an electric stove in my life, much less used one, as gas was ubiquitous in the Netherlands. I'm sure you could find it, but it was rare. In the last few years things changed rapidly though, and when I moved back last year there were a number of apartments that had electric or induction) stoves.

It's a recurring pattern: people not being able to tell "like in the country I/my ancestors came from" apart from "like in the decade/century I/my ancestors left the old country". In the emigrant's mind, the old country is forever locked in the old times. Can't really blame them for it, it's a natural mistake to make, but a mistake nonetheless.

> And will they have induction safe cookware?

Cant you just put a steel plate under any pan, and then it’s induction compatible?

Ideally you’d have compatible pans, but you don’t have to.

Yes it’s possible to use a transfer plate to adapt cookware that’s not induction compatible, but it’s very inefficient. One of the benefits I appreciate of induction cooking is not heating up my house while cooking - a transfer plate would negate that.

I understand not everyone wants to buy or can afford new cookware, but cast iron pans are very cheap. Also see brands such as t-fal that make affordable non-stick aluminum cookware with a small steel bottom to make them induction compatible.

Not all kinds of steel have strong magnetic properties. I had to buy a new pan when I moved to induction because my steel pan didn't work at all.

> what electric stove will their apartment have, resistance or induction

I'd assume nobody would install a resistance stove in a new apartment (since this only applies to those)

They certainly won’t install an expensive induction stove in housing for poor people

Induction cooktops are not expensive anymore. This would have been an argument 10 or 15 years ago but not today.

The price difference between a resistive 4 element resistive and a inductive cooktop is like 20€ maybe 30€ tops. So a cheap one will cost you between 200€ to 250€

(maybe the pricing in US is totally different but that is what you pay for the cheap stuff here in Finland)

I live in America. Builders will definitely cut corners to save $20. Hands down. Even brand new houses that sell for $500k will have "builder quality paint" that needs to be repainted in 5-7 years because it is cheap. If they cut corners on paint, they will cut corners on your stove.

Don't have experience, but I'd guess a buyer/renter won't see a difference between grades of paint quality, but a resistive vs. induction cooktop will be very noticeable and may raise the value far beyond the price difference.

It is arguments like these that make me happy I live in a country where you rent a flat and bring your own kitchen (and appliances).

When I was young and broke, without furniture, that system seemed horrifying. Now, I see the perks.

What proportion of new housing is built for "poor people" to live? I was under the assumption that most new developments are aimed at the mid/high end of the market which makes older buildings more accessible to low income households.

Also induction stoves are quite cheap nowadays (in relation to the overall cost) so it would seem absurd for me to get a resistive one even if you could save $100-200

>> so it would seem absurd for me to get a resistive one even if you could save $100-200

But if it were 30 apartment units, then the cost difference on paper would amount to $3000-$6000 (and it would probably be judged in this way, rather than the cost difference per unit).

Induction these days is almost as cheap as gas, not sure if that makes a difference any more.

I still like looking on gas a lot better.

We got a $75 portable induction unit and it’s all I ever use. Our wok works great on it, as do all our other pans except 1. Using the gas cooktop now feels like cooking with a Bic lighter. Admittedly it is not a high end expensive one.