Cooking on a Portable Induction Cook Top

[Cattail]

Hello out there! We recently purchased a Nuwave PIC Gold with variable wattage for use in our 30 amp travel trailer. Nuwave recommends setting the wattage to 600 watts rather than 1300 or 1500 when cooking in the travel trailer, but they had no idea if or how that might change the cooking time for the recipes in their Owner's Manual & Complete Recipe Book. I assume that wattage must have some effect or it wouldn't be variable. Any advice for the Nuwave Newbie? Any recipes to share?

[travelin texans]

Originally Posted by Cattail

Hello out there! We recently purchased a Nuwave PIC Gold with variable wattage for use in our 30 amp travel trailer. Nuwave recommends setting the wattage to 600 watts rather than 1300 or 1500 when cooking in the travel trailer, but they had no idea if or how that might change the cooking time for the recipes in their Owner's Manual & Complete Recipe Book. I assume that wattage must have some effect or it wouldn't be variable. Any advice for the Nuwave Newbie? Any recipes to share?

Our 5th wheel was 50 amp but the DW used 2 of those same cooktops, one on each end of the island & has never ever tripped a circuit breaker in the past 4-5 years. To be honest I didn't know that the wattage could changed & fairly certain neither of us changed any settings.

[Chris P]

Google ohms law, that will give some idea on what is going on, the lower wattage is probably recommended due to everything else that may be used in the camper like ac,refrigerator, lites etc.

[sourdough]

I have 2 of the units myself and have never had an issue either but I'm 50A as well. I figure it all depends on what you are cooking. I cook all kinds of stuff all the time but just do it by sight/feel/taste - no recipes. Look thru the recipes and see where the max temps are required and what they're cooking. Lowering the temp may or may not affect anything but probably will.

With an electric cooktop setting the temp range seems to just lower the frequency of the burner coming on as the temp gets lower. I've had my induction units for 3 years but couldn't tell you exactly how they work (power draw) other than they are really handy. I do believe that as you lower the temps it lowers the magnetic power? or something because my pans don't seem to just stop bubbling like they do when an electric stovetop hits the "off" cycle.

I'm thinking the sear mode would take the highest power draw. After that I would think that you could run in the 350-375 range fine....but that's a guess. I would just try it and see what happens. The worst thing is you trip a breaker. That might happen running the AC but I doubt it would any other time....but again, a guess.

[Cbrez]

Our induction cooktop is not variable wattage so I can’t speak to that, but we’ve never had a problem with it tripping breakers even when on 30 amp service. We only use it outdoors to cook things we don’t want to cook indoors such as fish, bacon and stuff we boil like shrimp and corn on the cob. One thing we learned (OJT - on the job training) is that when using it for boiling the cooktop needs to be very level. Any water that spits out of the pot onto the cooktop acts like a super lube and causes the pot to slide off the cooktop if it’s not level. Found out squirrels will eat cooked corn on the cob as well as raw

[Cattail]

Thanks, everyone! This forum is a font of helpful information.