chac_mool: I get your point and agree with you for day to day cooking. I may not have explained my point as clearly as it might have been explained. I have cooked on some older model induction stoves and cooktops before but never thought to test out this particular thing which is not about getting max power from all four burners but, rather, about simply using all four burners with largish pots. Maybe my question sounded like some of the questions we have seen here where somebody wants to ask about running all four burners wide open. Say, running four woks or four massive pots of pasta! I did not mean to ask a "max power" question. What I am trying to get is a sense of is the stove's ability to handle four largish pans at one time. A typical example for me would be having couple of stockpots simmering on the back burners while I run two largish frying pans on the two front burners. This is something I do numbers of times per year when I am cooking for largish events that I host. I recognize that using smallish saucepans on the small back burners would be preferrable for the best efficiency, but sometimes i just need to use four large pans. For the suggestion on "reversing the diagonal," northcarolina's Samsung FTQ range has been replaced by the NE697 & 695 in Samsung's line up of induction ranges. The new ones are the models available to me. The new models have more conventional burner layouts than the FTQ models. Northcarolina: I forgot that the FTQ's large burer is that large. Thanks for taking the time to run the other tests. Glad to hear the stove is working so well for you. The "hassle free" 30 day-return policy is something that Best Buy initiated earlier this year for all products including appliances. It sounds like the message is clearly understood at your local store. At mine, it seems that there may be a need for education becuase I was given three three different stories: (a) the policy is hassle free returns, period; (b) induction stoves can be a problem because it is easy to scratch them in use or hauling and that can mean the store won't take it back; and (c) the induction stoves are all special order items -- they only have a floor model in the store and the actual purchase has to be ordered from a regional warehouse --- and the policy does not apply to special orders. Its probably a good thing that I'm taking my time about this.

i see this conversation is a few years old, however it's 2016 and i'll bring it up to date: last night ..... very badly burned olive oil in the bottom of a not-very-spendy stainless steel pan .... the fixer: BARKEEPERS FRIEND .... HANDS DOWN ... i read this site and a few others to get the fix and b/c i own barkeepers friend {bf for easier typing} i tried it ... amazing ... completely AMAZING ... the oil was heavily burned on and i figured i would probably not get it off ... i shook the bottle, squirted a bit in the bottom of the pan, enough to cover the oil burn, let it sit for ...... uh, maybe 15 mins {i'm impatient} took my non-abrasive green and yellow scrubber and in a circular motion started scrubbing the oil off .... took me about three tries, each time leaving it on the burn a bit longer, not overnight, and voila ... amazingly the burn is gone .... thanks for all the advice here .... i appreciate it ... bf is a great product and i will not be without it now .... i've belonged to gardenweb for about 20 years, before it became so *sophisticated* and this is a wonderful site, sooooo much information on so many topics ... i love it here .... thanks again .... darlene

I do not have this unit and am not recalling seeing much about this 36" Viking model here in the last couple of years since this thread was active. You might have better luck attracting responses from current owners and users here if you started a thread of your own and put the model number in your thread title. As for using your large LC pans, I'm not sure I know what you are asking. Have you used induction before? If not, maybe you are not quite understanding how to ask the questions. Let me take a stab at what you might be asking. * Are you asking if the full size Viking induction cooktops like this one have the same problem recognizing LC pans that that the old Viking single-burner portable induction cooktop units (PICs) once had back in the previous decade? The answer to that is that the full size cooktops and the Viking induction ranges have never had that problem. The problem was limited to those old and long discontinued PIC models. * Or, are you asking if there will be a problem operating a burner with a pan larger than a particular induction hob space. Say, your LC pans have 12" diameter bases overtop the 9" square hob spaces of the Viking cooktop? The answer is that your LC pans will all work, but may intrude sufficiently into the adjoining hob spaces that the LC pans don't leave enough space for pans on the other three burners. For example, maybe you want to use a couple of 12" LC frypans --- one on the front right hob and another on the left front hob --- and then want to plant a large LC dutch oven on the middle hob in the back. So, how big are the pans you want to use at the same time on the other three burners? For that matter, how often do you figure you will be using all six burners at the same time and need to be running two or three 12" diameter (or larger) LC pans? Frankly, the best thing to do to find out how the cooktop will or will not work is to take your array of pans to a dealer and see if and how they all fit. If you can't find a showroom example, try using the dimensions shown on the installation instructions to draw a full scale layout with a sharpie or magic marker on a piece of newspaper. * Or, are you asking if a nine-inch square induction hob will evenly heat the entire base of a large LC pot or pan with, say, a 12" diameter (or larger) base. The answer is that you will have the same behavior with LC pans that you will have with any cast iron pan on any burner (gas, electric, or induction). IOW, no problem with braises, soups and stews, where you have liquid to even out the heat, but you will need lengthy pre-heating to get an even spread of heat across any cast-iron base when you want perfectly uniform heating as for searing or browning out to the edges of the base. This is a property of all cast iron, not just LC. If the VIking cooktop had some burners with larger diameter induction fields (large enough to encompass the entire base of your big LC pans) the cast iron would still heat unevenly. Preheating to evenness might take a bit less time with the larger burner, but it still will take quite a while. That's just the nature of cast iron cookware. FWIW, Cook's Illustrated has been recommending that you put cast iron pans in a hot oven for a half hour or longer to preheat CI skillets for stovetop searing like cooking steaks. Then you run the stovetop at lesser heat which is sufficient to maintian the searing temps for the cooking session. Again, the preheating and unevenness will be no big deal for tasks like braising, boiling water, deep fat frying, stocks, soups and stews with a lot of liquid. Probably not a problem, either, for making a very long simmered tomatoey ragu or long-cooking of beans. But where you will need workarounds will be for stir fries or browning where you need every square inch of base surface to be perfectly evenly heated for the meat or bacon or veggies or whatever that you want to brown. Again, you would need the same workarounds with any stove where the burners are not sized for large pans, whether gas or regular electric burners as well as induction.

With conventional flat circular coil hobs, the heated zone is over the coil windings, and should be symmetrical about the coil center (it more or less has to be). The coil center should be aligned with the surface markings, but might not be and this can be checked by watching boiling water patterns. Correction requires cooktop disassembly and coil adjustment. Heating will be indirect above the very center of the coil due to fewer field lines there. The toroidal field above the coil will cause a ring shaped heating of the pan base extending from a bit away from the center to the edge of the coil, which may extend to the pan base edge, but might be smaller than the pan. If larger, then edge heating might reveal some added heating there as the farther radial field lines have to intersect the inductive material at the edge of the pan. Detection of the heating pattern somewhat depends on the pan base construction. Thin 400 series stainless steel without copper or aluminum layers will most easily reveal the field pattern; heavy layers will spread the heat and make the field structure difficult to deduce.