Best Induction Burner Adapters
Can a $20 investment really make any pot or pan work with induction?
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Induction cooking may be the single best kitchen technology that Americans struggle to embrace. In Consumer Reports’ tests, induction cooktops and ranges crush traditional gas and electric cooking appliances, heating rapidly, simmering steadily, all while using less energy. And yet, conventional electric cooktops and ranges are by far more popular. Why?
One reason may be that many people think that you need special cookware for induction to work—which isn’t exactly true. What you actually need is magnetic cookware, which is far more common than you might realize. Stainless steel, cast iron, carbon steel, and enameled cast iron all work with induction. And increasingly, ceramic, aluminum, and even copper pans are coming equipped with induction-compatible bases. In short, if a magnet sticks to your cookware, then it will work with induction.
Still, some traditional copper and aluminum pans remain incompatible with induction ranges and cooktops. And that’s where an induction burner adapter might possibly come in handy.
Pros and Cons of Induction Burner Adapters
While there are many advantages to using an induction range or cooktop, and just a few (albeit significant, depending on your home design and budget) drawbacks, the opposite can be said of induction burner adapters. Here’s what our testers discovered.
Pros
They all work. In our home and lab tests, we did not see any complete duds. They all turned noncompatible cookware into workable ones—though some were better than others, and none were outright stellar. (See "Cons," below.)
They’re relatively affordable. At about $20 each, it’s a relatively small cost to be able to use your favorite cookware on your new induction stove—until the drawbacks (again, see "Cons," below) eventually turn them into your least favorite.
Cons
They’re slow to heat. In our tests, using induction-compatible cookware, the induction cooktop heated the water from room temperature to boiling in 4 to 8 minutes, depending upon the volume of water and the cookware. But when we performed the equivalent task using an induction adapter, it added anywhere from 11 to 29 minutes to the total time. That’s even longer than the time it would take most electric stoves to boil water in a pot placed directly on the burner—which means you’re giving up one of the biggest advantages of induction: fast heating.
They’re slow to cool. Much like a pot on a gas burner, induction-compatible cookware placed on an induction burner will respond almost immediately when you change the temperature mid-cooking. That means if you’ve got a pot of pasta boiling over, or some tomato sauce that’s scorching, you can simply dial back the heat and the pan will adjust quickly. But when you turn the heat down with an induction burner adapter, that adapter must cool down before your pot and food can cool down. So you’ll need to physically move the pan from the heat if you need it to cool quickly, or else end up with burnt tomato sauce and overly browned eggs (as I’ve found in my home evaluation using a standalone portable induction burner). As a result, cooking feels more like what you’d experience on a conventional electric smoothtop stove.
The handles can get hot. Induction adapters have handles of their own, and they can get hot. In our assessment, the handle temperatures ranged from an easy to grab 90 F, all the way up to 212 F, which can cause burns.
Should You Buy an Induction Burner Adapter?
An induction burner adapter is worth it only if you have realistic expectations. As a group, induction burner adapters will make any pot or pan work with induction, but, as our tests have found, they won’t necessarily make any pot or pan work well with induction.
Still, if I owned an induction range or cooktop, I might use an adapter— if only to make stir fries with my giant 5.5-quart anodized aluminum sauté pan, which isn’t induction compatible. Sure, an adapter would slow down the cooking process, but I could see myself living with that inconvenience if I weren’t ready to shell out another $100 or more to replace my pan.
All told, induction burner adapters are far from a silver bullet for those looking to upgrade to an induction range without losing any cookware. For the best results, cook using induction-compatible cookware, but use induction burner adapters when cooking with a treasured copper pan you’re not quite ready to part with.
Best Induction Burner Adapters (and a Few of the Worst)
Below are the seven models we tested, listed in order of fastest heating to slowest. Because only the CozyKit delivered what we’d consider even heating, we ranked the others on a relative scale, so you can compare each model’s evenness rating with another—from 1, indicating that it heats most evenly to 8, indicating that it heats least evenly.
This adapter from Flovia is the best of the bunch. It heats more evenly than many of the others, and crucially, it’s the fastest to heat up. In our home evaluation, we found it to be more responsive, making it better suited than many of the others for tasks that require careful control of heat, like scrambling eggs or simmering tomato sauce. As with most induction burner adapters, the handle can get hot.
Despite struggling to heat evenly, the Gourmia induction burner adapter is the best in our test for use with big pans. It matches the diameter of the largest models, and was the fastest of them to heat—the other adapters of this size added 20 to 29 minutes to the time it takes to boil water, while the Gourmia only added 13.
The smallest adapter in our test was also the model that heated most evenly. It’s designed for smaller cookware, making it best-suited for 1- or 2-quart saucepans, or frypans that are 8-inches or smaller in diameter. Just keep in mind that the handle can get extremely hot—hotter than any other in our tests.
The Runzi induction adapter is slow to heat, has a handle that gets hot, and it heats less evenly than any other model we tried, leaving us with little, if any, reason to recommend it.
This larger Flovia heats more evenly than its smaller counterpart and boasts a stay-cool handle. But it proves significantly slower to heat. Consider it only if you’re willing to sacrifice speed for the sake of even heating. This may be the case if you like making, say, pancakes—for which hotspots can easily turn into burnt spots. Otherwise, if you need an adapter of this size, go for the Gourmia.
The Upromax adapter is unique in that it has three small metal divots on the bottom, leaving a slight gap between the induction element and the adapter itself—the divots make direct contact with the burner. It’s among the slowest adapters to heat, but it heats more evenly than some of the others and has a handle that stayed cooler than that of any adapter we tested. Still, that isn’t enough to recommend this model.
This two-pack from Geiserailie earns points for being the only brand we tested to bundle adapters of different sizes, but that’s pretty much the only positive thing we can say. Neither adapter heated evenly, each has a handle that can get hot, and they’re sluggish, too, with the larger of the two adapters adding a staggering 29 minutes to the time it takes to boil water—more than any other adapter we tried.
How CR Tested Induction Burner Adapters
We tested all the models both in the lab and at home.
For the lab portion, we used a 36-inch induction cooktop capable of automatically determining the size of a pan (or adapter) placed on its surface and adjusting the heating area accordingly. To determine how evenly each adapter heated, we fitted each with six wired thermometers, called thermocouples, to monitor the temperature from one spot to another when the adapter was used over high heat. Those with the least deviation from one spot to another perform best since they heat most evenly.
Next, we timed how long it took to bring different amounts of water to a near boil when using each adapter. Results were scaled to each adapter’s size to allow for comparison. We also ran the same heating tests using induction-compatible cookware to provide a baseline, and see just how much time each adapter added to the process.
Lastly, we measured the temperatures of the handles on the same spots to see how hot each became during cooking.
I performed tests in my home on a standalone portable induction burner, using the adapters to fry eggs on a small frypan and simmer tomato sauce in an induction-incompatible anodized aluminum pot. I picked these two assessments because if you’ve ever scorched tomato sauce or burned the bottom of a fried egg, you know that both of those tasks require a burner that can change temperature quickly.
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