Ya know, I primarily cook on a resistance cooktop in a property I don't own and over which I have no say about the type of stove available to me. So I put myself in that category. And as I've already said, this cooktop is preferable in some ways to the crappy gas ranges I've had in other previous properties. But it's not especially better with respect to health and indoor air quality, because the primary consideration in that respect is ventilation -- not the heat source. My resistance cooktop produces almost no emissions (in the house -- the powerplant is a different story) but if I sear a steak inside, it smokes out the place like nobody's business. That's why I sear outside. Same deal with deep frying.
All that said, I don't really understand the dialectic of this thread. The detractors of electric resistance stoves have made their points well enough, but I still don't know what the points in favor of it are supposed to be. DitmasPork cited an article urging us to "go electric" in which the author crapped all over electric resistance heating and urged people and policymakers to adopt induction instead. That's a message that all of us "haters of electric" have been getting behind throughout this thread. On balance, induction > resistance. Electric coils? Nobody said they are "the devil's messenger." What people are saying is that they're inferior to gas and induction on pretty much every measure except being cheap (and even that's debatable). I understand that if you live in NYC and have limited options, you have to take what you're given. Maybe gas isn't the best option in your cramped, unventilated, pricey abode. But is resistance electric the best option? Even the article quoted, the answer is "no."
Defenders of resistance heating have been big on saying things like "oh, a good cook can produce good food on any kind of range," or "I like to be flexible and cook on whatever is available." And again I'll note that everyone thinks this is true. Nobody walks into a kitchen, sees an electric range, and says "No good cook could cook in here!" or "**** this ****, I'm out of here," or "I'll burn this place to the ground before I cook on that POS." We all adapt and make due with what's on hand, and the best cooks can excel within all kinds of limitations. Nobody truly finds coils "unacceptable." They might crap on them, strongly prefer other things, or whatever... but nobody is literally going to throw their hands up in the air and say "No -- I draw the line at cooking on resistance stoves!". That's a straw man. Just like the stupid idea that motivated the article that started this thread: "You have to have a gas stove to be a good cook." Nobody has ever argued for that.
Mostly I can't believe that people are having this debate on this forum, of all places. Here people debate about what kind of diamond or obscure Japanese rock is the best to polish whatever obscure meteorite vanadium alloyed magic steel that 99.95 percent of the population has never heard of and have no use for. The fake folksy "my Grammy used an electric coil stove, and her cooking was just fine with Grandpa!" type of reasoning strikes me as either disingenuous or strangely compartementalized. So I'll say it again, since people have apparently not gotten my point -- nobody would seriously prefer to cook on an electric resistance range if they had enough space, money, ventilation, or ownership to cook on something else. If you're going to try to offer an argument against anything I've said in this thread, please argue against that specific claim.
I'll end by echoing the last point in HHC's last post. "How's about we just encourage people to cook and get excited about that?" I whole-heartedly endorse this position. I wouldn't argue against that at all. Just like I wouldn't tell people not to cook if they had crappy knives or crappy stoves or sub-par ingredients or whatever. Nobody is saying not to cook at all if all they have is a resistance range. They're not saying that they'd refuse to cook on one, or that they'd refuse to adapt to whatever's on hand, or that no poor person in a crowded and overpriced urban market should ever cook on one if that's all they have available. The point is just that gas and induction are each better in their own ways than resistance electric is. This isn't a reason not to cook -- I have an electric resistance range and I cook on it (almost) all the time! But it's still inferior to the alternatives.
