In The Kitchen With Fissler: Cutting And Cooking

There are plen­ty of kitchen es­sen­tials that have stayed ba­si­cal­ly un­changed for hun­dreds of years. We’ve seen pot­tery that is thou­sands of years old and looks and feels pret­ty sim­i­lar to pots to­day. A pan’s form hasn’t im­proved much, and the gen­tle curves of most knives would be rec­og­niz­able to any­one work­ing long ago. Bot­tom line: we still cut in the same ways and still need a burn­er and a pan to boil wa­ter.

But we can now boil wa­ter in a minute, with no flame, thanks to to­day’s mir­a­cle of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy- the Fissler Cook­Star In­duc­tion Pro. Cer­tain­ly not the on­ly mod­el like it on the mar­ket, it is in­cred­i­bly so­phis­ti­cat­ed, and puts many oth­er stoves and any oth­er hot­plate to shame. And even knives have changed- fiber­glass and in­jec­tion-mold­ing make for a sta­ble, at­trac­tive, durable han­dle and the steel is now chromi­um molyb­de­num vana­di­um steel in the Fissler Per­fec­tion Chef’s Knife.

Hot stuff first. In­duc­tion is a pret­ty fun ad­di­tion that changes the old gas/elec­tric bal­ance. You’ll need pans that are in­duc­tion-ca­pa­ble, though many are, just not cop­per or alu­minum (ba­si­cal­ly any­thing that a mag­net would stick to). We’ve checked out a bunch of them, in­clud­ing some we test­ed re­cent­ly that are per­fect for in­duc­tion use, and found this cook­top the per­fect size for a va­ri­ety of pur­pos­es. At first, you might won­der why you would need an­oth­er burn­er, and so did we. But af­ter a few weeks with the In­duc­tion Pro, it was hard to imag­ine larg­er par­ties with­out it. Serv­ing as an all-around warm­ing plate or portable stove­top, you can cook things right at the table or next to your bed, or keep the pot of soup warm while you’re serv­ing it. We loved the range of set­tings- it’s not as ana­log or con­trol­lable as a gas range, but there are nine pow­er lev­els in to­tal and that’s plen­ty of flex­i­bil­i­ty. And while it isn’t ex­act­ly lightweight at 9 pounds, it is easy to set­up- a sin­gle cord and you’re cook­ing with… er, mag­nets?

We didn’t try out the fea­ture, but feel that we should il­lu­mi­nate nonethe­less: there is a one-touch “Boost­er” func­tion for choco­late fon­due, re­mov­ing the need for a dou­ble-boil­er. What we did no­tice was the awe­some sur­face, much eas­i­er to clean than any oth­er cook­top. And this is a burn­er that is sexy as well, sleek glass and black, with touch sen­si­tive con­trols. We did no­tice a few quirks- you don’t want to leave any­thing that could be harmed by mag­nets near the unit, and re­mov­ing a pan (say to flip some­thing) will shut it off- but these are true of any in­duc­tion prod­uct. It’s faster, and more ef­fi­cient, than any oth­er stove; we were able to boil a large pot of wa­ter in about half the time of a gas range. All in all, this is a great ex­tra ad­di­tion, and is durable enough to be used as a pri­ma­ry cook­stop for your dorm or of­fice. At al­most $300, it’s cer­tain­ly not cheap, but does feel worth ev­ery pen­ny. Does ev­ery­one need one? Not re­al­ly. But we’re thrilled with the nov­el­ty, safe­ty, speed, and style.

And then there is Per­fec­tion. Fissler al­so pro­duces a Pro­fes­sion­al line of cut­lery, but why would you want any­thing but Per­fec­tion? They al­so have two sizes of chef’s knives, a larg­er and small­er, and ours was the short­er 16 cen­time­ter or 6.25 inch mod­el. While not the most strik­ing knife in our cab­i­net- the KAI Shun Ken Onion still gets im­me­di­ate cu­ri­ous stares- this is fast be­com­ing our go-to knife for tasks re­quir­ing a short­er and more pre­cise touch. Made in Ger­many, the blade was su­per-sharp, and the tip as well, mean­ing we could poke and pry in­to our veg­eta­bles when need­ed. The er­gonom­ic han­dle was good, but a bit slip­pery for us when in use- a cou­ple of peo­ple asked for a bit more tex­ture on the grip or some in­den­ta­tions to al­low a more sol­id grasp. The sur­faces were love­ly, cleaned up well, with no rough cracks or edges or burrs. At $70, it’s priced com­pet­i­tive­ly with any oth­ers out there, and of­fers el­e­gant looks along with a great edge.