Food + Health – Econundrums – Pilot Project

Cooks like me have a deep attachment to gas stoves. But it’s time to put out the fire.

- By Tom Philpott

PICTURE A CHUNKY gas­fired stovetop. Twist a knob, and whoosh—a potent ring of fire licks at a metal grate. With a typical induction range, you push some buttons, and the reaction is silent and invisible. As a home cook who toiled on the fiery line of a Texas steakhouse through college, I see a gas range and something stirs in me, making me want to subject raw ingredients to the transformations of fire. Induction stovetops? They leave me cold.

Plenty of chefs share my view. “Flames are at the heart of what makes cooking visceral and fun,” says Andrea Reusing, chef­owner of Lantern in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “For me, cooking is about the basic elements: fire, water, air,” says Bruce Sherman, chef­owner of the Chicago farm­to­table temple North Pond. “If you extract one of those, what’s left?”

But according to a strand of environ­mental thinking that’s gaining force, gas cooking may be as much of a mindless in­dulgence as a Hummer. Berkeley, Califor­nia, recently became the nation’s first city to ban natural gas hookups for many new buildings, meaning their cooks will have to rely on electricity instead. Berkeley may be on the vanguard, but it’s not alone: In April, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti re­ leased a plan to convert all of the city’s new buildings to carbon­neutral technology by 2050, requiring all home and commer­cial cooking appliances to go electric. About 60 other California cities are considering similar tweaks to their building codes. In July, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law an ambitious climate plan that could phase out gas hookups in the state by 2050.