upvote
> eg. I've had my parents say the "taste" of food is worse on electric instead of gas stovetops

If you are using the cooking technique of "bhunai" [1], which is quite common in South Asian cooking, there is a large difference in food quality you can make with an electric and with a gas stove. Gas stoves are able to provide higher heat at consistent levels, and you can tilt the pot to concentrate heat in one corner to intensify the cooking. So I don't disagree with your parents.

[1] bhunai is when you cook meat with spices at very high heat while rapidly stirring it. I think the willingness to burn the spices during this process is what sets this apart from similar techniques in other cuisines, but I am no expert.

reply
My mom doesn't cook bhunai - she's pushed for a low oil household since I was a kid and is extremely health conscious verging on "crunchy".

I've also done bhunai with electric stovetops and ceramic cookware like Dutch ovens and green pans and gotten close enough to an authentic taste - the marginal differences that exist are due to differences in ingredients in the US (eg. lower milkfat percentages, onions instead of shallots, different cultivars of vegetables, etc) and some inexperience of non-Westerners with Western cookware.

It's a very solvable problem. For example, the Indian restaurants my parents like and feel taste "authentic" use electric stovetops as well in the back, but discriminate on ingredients and masalas.

reply
Yeah, my induction range will get a carbon steel wok really fucking hot really fucking quick.

Like, I can't really stir-fry on max because my range hood can't keep up and I set the smoke detector off. Outside of crappy rentals, I'm pretty sure electric ranges here are up to whatever, high-heat cooking wise.

reply
Yep! My SO's Vietnamese and we've both been able to cook pretty decent Viet and Korean (Hallyu wave is a thing) food with electric stoves despite her being used to LNG and charcoal in VN.

The marginal difference in taste is literally just due to certain cultivars not being available here. Ofc, a half decent Vietnamese sourced nuoc mam solves everything but those are available at our Costco.

reply
>"the "taste" of food is worse on electric instead of gas stovetops"

it highly depends on what and how is being cooked. Foods that rely on particular dynamics of cooking temperature profile often can not be made the same quality / taste. Regular electric range is absolutely not capable of driving Wok properly for example.

reply
There's currently a gas crisis in India. A country that had a $10 billion investment in an Iranian port to trade oil and gas directly with them, except they decided to become America's bitch and halted the project after American sanctions.

Anyways, everyone's affected - gas cylinder booking requests which usually take a couple of days to fulfill currently have a 30 day period to fulfill in some major cities. Roadside vendors are shutting down temporarily, as are many restaurants.

At least EVs have had a good success rate in adoption, so commuting isn't as much affected. But freight is pretty much fucked.

Again, this is a country that could have gotten a sweetheart deal from Iran, just like China, but apparently decided to become a little bitch.

reply
Poverty doesn’t have the luxury to choose or take moral stands. When a dollar worth oil price fluctuation can lead to thousands going hungry for a day, you as a leader will do everything to avoid catastrophic sanctions.
reply
Freight will eventually go electric as well. It's crazy how fast it's happening in China:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

reply
> It's crazy how fast it's happening in China

The benefits of living in an authoritarian state. The CCP says "we will provide for cheap electric trucks" and it happens, no matter if that displaces tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers in ICE car manufacturers.

reply
> Again, this is a country that could have gotten a sweetheart deal from Iran

India has a deal with Iran as well and the first ship to sail via Hormuz after the conflict started (the Shenlong Suezmax) ended up in India [0]

India giving sanctuary to an Iranian naval ship and offering sanctuary to a second one - which their captain rejected and is now at the bottom of the Indian Ocean (IRIS Dena) [1] - bought India the goodwill needed to implement the deal mentioned above.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-12/india-in-...

[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2e4yxj0pd3o

reply
deleted
reply