Many friends ask me the same question, “should
I buy a plancha of high power?” For the
last decade since gas plancha has become a popular way of outdoor cooking,
consumers tend to go for the higher power.
The initial rationale could be that a higher power plancha can cook faster
and serve more people. This could be
true when years ago a plancha available in the market generally offered low
power and it took long to cook.
Nowadays, however, the opposite is true.
The market is inundated with plancha claiming anywhere from 3 kW to 3.8 kW (in an extreme case) per burner. One
might ask:
l Do we really need such a high power?
l Does a high power plancha come without any other cost?
Let
me take you through, from a professional cooking point of view, what high power
means for a plancha grill. Power is
measured in terms of watt, or in American unit, btu/h. High power merely means a high input of
energy, but not necessarily a corresponding high output of it. Simply put, an efficient plancha grill has high
power "in" and high power "out", whereas a less efficient plancha grill has high
power "in" and low power "out". For an
inefficient plancha, one will notice the LPG using up fast, or temperature on cooking plate takes long to go up. See the
following example. A low power - high efficiency plancha (A) cooks very much the same way as a high power - low efficiency one (plancha B), except that we need to pay more for gas for plancha B.
Just an example
|
Plancha A (Energy Efficient)
|
Plancha B (Traditional)
|
Heat
Input
|
4
kW
|
5
kW
|
Thermal
efficiency
|
50%
|
40%
|
Heat
Output
|
2
kW
|
2
kW
|
A high power could mean a cooking
temperature too high.
- First
of all, nearly all plancha in the market do not come with thermostatic control
or some call “temperature control”. The gas valve (tap) has only a setting of high
flame and low flame. When the power of
plancha is too high, it not only reaches the cooking temperature in a short
time, it will definitely overshoot to a much higher temperature which overburns
the food surface. The food is spoilt,
and burnt food is carcinogenic. For
example, I notice that some plancha claim to reach 350 deg C in just 3 minutes
with its 3.8 kW per burner, however, without a thermostatic control the
temperature of cooking plate will overshoot to a much higher temperature (450
deg C I would guess, or even higher) in a matter of 20 minutes. No chef on earth should be required to handle
temperature that high. Inevitably, this
plancha grill must be turned to a low flame setting immediately after
preheating stage to avoid burning the food, and the cook will be busy flipping
flame size high and low as the cooking goes on. Ironically, plancha is designed for ordinary
people and weekend chef such as some investment banker Daddy or working
Mum. I cannot imagine what good high power does, making people busily tweak the plancha knobs.
Some
plancha is deliberately designed to dissipate the heat away.
- One
may ask “Can we have a high power plancha but not the high
temperature?” Some plancha, indeed, are deliberately designed so that the heat
does not go into heating up the cooking plate but dissipates away so that the
cooking temperature never overshoots,
but there is a price to pay. The plancha performs like a low power one. By that I mean an inefficient plancha. It is like having a 3.0 liter car engine delivering
the horsepower of a 1.6 liter engine.
The energy is wasted away. What
would be the point of having high power then?
In a world where green living is pursued, energy wastage is a sin.
Tips when you look for plancha of the right power. Ask the distributor:
- How soon does it take to preheat the
cooking plate from room temperature to 300 deg C?
(Tips: as a guideline, anywhere from 7 to 12 minutes is acceptable).
- What temperature does the cooking plate
rise up to when the plancha is left unattended at high flame setting (Tips: 350
to 380 deg C is a good range. If it
exceeds 380 deg C, it is rather inconvenient because the cook needs to switch
the setting about between high and low all the time).
What
should the power be? In fact, in the
market, there are plancha available at 2.5 kW per burner and meet the above
criteria. I sincerely hope that the above information helps.
Regards
Brian
