Oh! For the Joy of Cooking!
In case you don’t know, I come from an Italian family and we LOVE to cook, but it has to be mama’s way or the highway! As you might have guessed my mom is definitely the head of the family, and when it comes to cooking she guards her recipes with her life.
However, what does annoy me is the way in which mom will NOT update her cooker. She is always mumbling about how she can’t get the right temperature, and now that her memory is going she often ends up with her pasta boiling over. I have often told her she should at least have a new cooktop installed but that was just met with “I don’t need any of those fancy cooking gadgets”.

You might think I was put off at this stage, but I have inherited her stubbornness. Since her birthday was on the way, I thought I would make the decision for her and buy an induction cooktop, the 36″ GE PHP960DMBB Black Electric to be precise. I got my brothers and sisters together, and we all decided to share the cost. All we had to work out was how we got her out of the kitchen so it could be installed. We did manage it, but that’s a story for another day.
When we led her into the kitchen and removed the blindfold (which wasn’t easy to get on), everyone took a deep breath. Silence.
At this point I thought we had made the wrong choice, but then something amazing happened. Mama threw her hands in the air and burst into tears of joy whilst at the same time running over to her new cook top, and what followed was a peppering of questions about the beautiful cook top that was before her.
What You Get For Your Money
We had all done our research before making the purchase. After all, cooking is my mom’s favorite thing to do so it had to be right. I told her the cooktop uses induction heating, but after a blank stare I thought let’s try it a different way.
- There are five burners, all of varying sizes, which will give you between 1800 and 3700 watts (that’s different amounts of heat for mom’s sake), and one of them is 11” in size which is perfect for the pasta pot. This also makes it very energy efficient (something mom was very interested to hear).
- Heat is instant so no waiting time. In fact, this little beast will have a large pan of water boiling within minutes.
- There are 19 levels of power which means you can cook just about anything your heart desires.
- It’s safe because of the “pan presence sensor”. This means if you take a pan off the cooktop and leave the burner on, it will know what you’re up to and automatically switch off.
Other Points I Went Over
Not only does this cooktop look super elegant, it’s really simple to clean. In most cases it won’t need anything more than a wipe with a damp cloth. Because of the induction heating technology, if you do have a spillage, water or food doesn’t hit a hot surface, which prevents food and liquid from becoming burnt on. The controls don’t stick out so there are no annoying knobs to clean around.
I didn’t tell mom this part but you can also get this cooktop in stainless steel as well as black so no matter what type of décor you have in your kitchen, it will fit right in. Overall, this was one of the best gifts we’ve ever made as a family for mom, and she’s delighted with it.
Of course, you could always just buy one as a treat for yourself 🙂
Both the black and stainless steel models can be found on