How to Judge Stovetop Heat Without Pan Surface Temperatures

Question

When we cook we tend to be very careful about temperature. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cook the chicken until the breast temperature is 160 degrees. When we say cook over medium heat (or high, etc.), what should the surface temperature of the pan be? On my range, the temperature in the directions will almost always be too high, but I'm have trouble figuring what the actual setting should be.

Elizabeth Mindreau · Accepted Answer

Hello Bob –
Unfortunately we do not give guidance on surface temperatures as we assume home cooks do not have laser thermometers to measure this and stovetops can vary in power. Generally we develop our recipes on gas cooktops, but they also are tested on induction. We typically accept that any setting, be it "medium" or "medium-high" on any type of cooktop will have an acceptable variance for our recipes to work properly.
The best advice we can give is to get to know your cooktop; if the burners run on the hot side, drop the setting down when following recipes. In fact, when we cook our recipes on our particular brand of induction cooktops, we find we need to jump up one setting to more closely match the corresponding heat setting of a gas range. For instance, the settings on our induction burners range from 1 to 9; medium heat should be at level 5, but we raise it to 6 as we've found that setting to be compatible with a "medium" setting on a average-sized gas burner. We also find that electric cooktops, be it coil or glass, run a little hotter than induction.
The type of pan used can also vary in terms of surface temperature. If you are cooking in carbon steel, or using a wok, those conduct heat much higher and faster than regular stainless steel or non-stick pans, so adjust accordingly.

How to Judge Stovetop Heat Without Pan Surface Temperatures

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