Definitely need to stir porridges with MB units. Ran an experiment this morning with cooking oatmeal in a small, 1 qt saucepan (5" diameter magnetic base). The MB had trouble with low heat settings with the small saucepan. At a "2" setting, the small pan would intermittently boil furiously in a torodial pattern and then shut down, boil, shut down, etc. A "3" setting was manageable with frequent stirring. With the previous experiment with the 2 qt sauce pan, the small bubbles started out in a ring shaped band, but quickly spread across the whole bottom and gave an very even boiling. Did not think to look with smaller pan this am, but note the cooking description above. I agree that overnight in a crockpot is much the better way to cook steel cut oats. I was only experimenting because of amck's posting. I use my MB for pretty much the same reasons you do and for "cooking stations" at some large parties. Sounds like Tuesday Morning could be a good deal. We used to have one in the nearest big town (actually, our state's largest city), but they pulled out a year ago. Apparently, our market area was deemed too small for the turnover they wanted.

I have an entirely different reaction. I do not see why GE's response should be surprising. The manual for the induction ranges clearly says that minimum pan size for the six-inch burner is 4.75" and the minimum pan size for the two 8 inch burners is 5.75." If they put that in the manual, why should a customer service rep say something different in what will be a public posting on their web-site? And look at it from the perspective of the GE customer service reps. My4thGarden is looking at spending $2900 for a GE Profile slide-in induction range or $2600 for the freestanding one. A decent and serviceable smoothop electric range can be had for half of that from GE or, for that matter, from LG which is the subject of My4thGarden's other thread. No issues with using small pans on those stoves, although there certainly will be waste heat around the edges of the small pans. When someone says that they cannot afford to replace the present battery of small diameter cookware and doesn't want to, it makes a lot of sense to say to them: "why don't you consider a different stove that seems better suited to what and how you like to cook?" Plus, you may buy the induction stove and find that your particular small pans don't work. That leads to hassles with returns and refunds. If you work for a company, would you want to start that process? Now, it may very well be possible to use pans with slightly smaller diameters if they have enough ferrous mass in the base. Induction burners have sensors to identify pan size and ferrous mass -- too little of either and the burner will not activate. Trouble is, there is no way to find out how GE engineers programmed the sensors. All we know is that GE engineers have identified minimum pan sizes that can reasonably be expected to work. GE customer services reps are is not going to tell you, "don't pay any attention to the manual, you can do X____ instead." berner43's post shows that pans with diameters 10% less than minimum specified diameters work, at least on the mid and large burners and assuming that My4thGarden's pans have similar ferrous bases. Timdeb's post shows about the same for the 6-inch burner. If that relationship holds for the smallest diameter burner, as well, then even My4thGarden's 4.25" pans might work on the GE's smallest (6") burner. Or might not. Again, we do not know how GE programmed the sensors for the burner. Maybe the bases of My4thGarden's smallest pans won't have sufficient ferrous material in the base to be recognized. Also , bear in mind that a smaller pan is using smaller amounts of energy. If you cover, say, 70% of the burner, you will be only getting 70% of the power. (That is not exact but it will do for this dicussion.) Depending on what you are cooking in those little pans, that may or may no be considered optimum. If I'm manufacturing and selling stoves, and I'm training customer representatives, m I going to have them telling customers that they should use my stove for less than optimum conditions and then want to deal with warranty complaints from customers who may or may not understand what "less than optimum" means? What if the customer is using pans with "less than optimum" ferrous content and the pans don't work? Do I really want to have my engineers testing every possible line of cookware and then publish advice on less than optimum use? If I have to manage that kind of situation, I will be thinking I don't want that expense or headache. The unfortunate reality is that the only way to know is to run a test with the particular pans on an actual GE induction stove as berner43 and timdeb did. Can't find a GE to test your pans on? Then, it seems to me to make a good deal of sense for GE to recommend options other than induction for My4thGarden. "Buying and trying" is an option, of course, but only if you can buy from a vendor like Costco which has an absolute satisfaction guarantee: "I don't like it" is enough for Costco to take it back after a month or so. No restocking fee, either. Those kinds of guarantees are hard to find these days. The only induction range that Costco sells is the Maytag freestanding range and it only carries them in the online sales department. The Maytag is far less costly than the GE (about $1500, delivered). It has twin 6" burners in front with a 9" and an 11" burner in the back. Maytag/Whirlpool has not published minimum recommended pan sizes but apparently have marked them on the cooktop. My recollection from the one I saw last fall when I was stove shopping was that the six inch burners would take pans down to at least 4.75" and the nine-inch burner would handle a 7" pan. (But that was months ago and the memory is faulty on such details.) Virtually every brand of induction on the market will operate pans slightly smaller than the minimum recommended diameter. (Heck, I recall a post from a year ago where somebody here reported using a 5.5" diamter pan on the 11" burner of a Samsung induction range.) Anyway, the Maytag/Whirlpool burner arrangement, with twin 6" burners in front, seems well suited to My4thGarden's cooking preferences. Of course, there is the apparently lame "Aqualift" oven self-cleaning method which may be an issue. (This issue will not matter if you are somebody who avoids running self-cleaning cycles and, if you do, at least you don't need to worry about the self cleaning cycle toasting the control boards.) I noticed a Maytag on display recently when helping a friend shop for a stove. Might have been our local Lowe's or Home Depot that had one on display and mIght have been the identical Whirlpool model. I live in a very rural state, so maybe one of the big box stores in My4thGarden's area might have one, too. Worth looking at. This post was edited by JWVideo on Thu, May 23, 13 at 16:06

I saw this only after I responded to a similar question at the end of the other thread on "Induction Question." http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0708501023840.html?24613 I'll just summarize. You can move large pans onto small hobs just as you can on any other kind of stove. And, you will have the same kinds of considerations that you have when putting a large pan on a small burner or any other kind of stove. Obviously, a small burner puts out less heat that a large one, so performance drops off in that sense. You should be able to avoid one problem that occurs with oversize pans on radiant smoothtops, Oversize pans on smoothtop radiant burners can confuse the sensors that regulate heat cycling and result in large pans not being able to boil water or result in taking an extremely long time to bring water to a boil. Induction does not use those kinds of sensors. See this link for a more detailed recent disucssion of this subject: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0708501023840.html?24613

Sooooo! Our Electrolux has arrived! We're thrilled so far! 1. Some comments said the clock ran fast, ours is working fine aftee 12+ hrs. 2. Noise: the buzzing sound from the elements really only makes noise when the pot is empty, and itsit's louder than my parents (old) KitchenAid, but nothing much overall. 3. Oven fan sound... So far, we've had the hood fan on to deal with the new oven smell (per instructions) but the fan noise didn't seem too bad at all. We've made a curry in a 22cm wok, kamut in a small pot, pancakes, moka coffee (on a bialetti induction plate with a non-induction moka) and with an induction moka, and also baked a cake. Everything turned out fantastic. There will be some adjustment on the heat levels as we get used to things, but that's pretty normal! So in barely 24hrs we've cooked a a good amount and are still in love. Setting the timer and turning on the oven to specific modes will become muscle memory, but I like the knobs vs the digital buttons. The digital display is clean and the stovetop display of the element heat level is handy. Cleaning-wise, my wife is in love. So easy to wipe with just a sponge and soap. The look is sooo sleak and the lack the back display is amazing. I swear it makes the small kitchen look bigger! We did the install of the anti-tip bracket ourselves, which was a bit annoying, but it works! Glad we made this decision.