Oh please, I've caramelized onions on the shittiest of shitty electric stoves using the cheapest of cheap pans Walmart sells. It's not difficult and doesn't take any special equipment - just time.

Most people don't want that though most of the time. In 99.9% of applications they simply aren't nearly as pleasant as onions that have been cooked until soft.

Yeah, same here - I've used the cheapest pans it was possible to buy when I was a student, on the worst ceramic stove it was viable for my university accommodation to provide. For something like this where precise responsive heat control is unnecessary anything is OK.

(Making actual caramel, OTOH, that's far easier on gas or induction.)

Lord gawd almighty.

Let me tell you a story. If you go off road just about anywhere in Mexico that's dry enough and interesting enough, and it's possible to go slow enough to have enough clearance, you will find cheap 2WD rear drive cars that are already there. I have seen some amazing accomplishments from these vehicles that almost no US driver would dream of taking off road. Still, I wouldn't trade my 23 yo lifted 4wd truck for them at all. Over time, I'm going to come out ahead, there's simple no dispute.

I don't doubt that you could caramelize onions on the shittiest stoves possible, probably you could do it, with enough patience and care, with a magnifying glass on a hot summer day. But the OP was emphasizing that it's really no big deal, you don't even have to pay attention. I at least have great equipment, but I've stayed in dozens of AirBnBs that didn't have great equipment, same with friends and family. Got to pay attention then.

The idea that there is no difference is completely ridiculous.

Now I can cook some range of dishes reasonably well, but when I was a student long ago I was very much a beginner - and it still worked out alright.

If you happen to already have a big 4WD truck which you need for other things then obviously it makes sense to use that anywhere it might give you an advantage. Sometimes that advantage turns out to be pretty marginal in practical terms but for you, because you're used to to handling the terrain with ease, switching to a crappy 2WD car would feel like a massive downgrade.

Another kitchen analogy, some people spend their whole lives chopping things with a blunt knife. When I offer to help out and realise this state of affairs my first reaction is "how the hell can anyone chop tomatoes with this?!" ... but of course they can, it's just slower and more annoying.

I disagree completely! There are preferences of course but for instance US Southwestern cuisine with the burnt flavors ("charred") appeal to a wide swath of people and the French AFAICT from a lot of visits can't stand it.

If you read Julia Child she is emphatic that onions should almost never be browned.

Guess what? I brown onions in my French recipes (rustic, eh?), and I char my peppers. I would submit that la comida de la gente is likely more plebian than fucking elitist French cuisine, no?

Pretty much any induction stove is going to have less hot spots than a Viking, at a fraction of the price.

Pan quality is still going to matter.

But you don't need $50k in kitchen gadgets to properly caramelize onions...

Really? Our induction stove very clearly has two concentric circles of different radii that get hot, and nothing else. If you use cast iron and vary the power slowly you won't notice, but it's very obvious with thinner pots and when you control heat quickly (which is a delight to be able to do in the first place -- yay induction.)

Are you sure that's an induction element? Induction elements don't get hot, only the pan does. Easy way to tell is - does the element switch only turn on when a pan is on top of it?

Clumsy wording. I mean the pan gets hot in two concentric rings.

One minor clarification because it is important: the elements do get hot, but that isn't the mechanism which they use to transfer heat. The element gets hot because it is touching a super hot pan which will transfer some of its heat.

If you want to know how I found this out: I wasn't using my brain and touched the element after spilling something on it. I received a fairly bad burn as a result. I am saying this because saying "the element doesn't get hot" can put the wrong idea in someone's head.

> Really? Our induction stove very clearly has two concentric circles of different radii that get hot, and nothing else.

Either you have an electric stove - not an induction stove, or you have a VERY bad pan (for an induction stove).

It's induction, not electric. This happens with all my cast iron pans. Easiest way to see it is to boil a thin layer of water mixed with a little hand dishwashing liquid in it. There are clearly two rings where cavities are formed more easily, thus there are two circles of peaking foam.

Oh neat. I have a thermador star burner gas range that makes a wonderful five point star shape oil pattern on a cast iron using a similar technique. I can produce this effect by applying a very thin sheen of high smoke oil point at high heat.

No idea if that’s better for cooking than concentric rings, but it looks really cool.