We will be the first to admit that this next product may be hard to consider a bargain, unless you place a great deal of value on having the absolute latest and greatest tech in all aspects of your life. It is reasonable to expect that if you are going to plunk down five gee’s for anything in your kitchen, that it is going to be pretty darn special, and frankly, the Thermador Freedom Induction Cooktop is a very special piece of cooking technology.

You have probably seen induction cooktops. They are becoming standard in more and more kitchens, especially in high-end homes. They are the cooktops that appear to be a plain glass top with circles drawn where the elements should be. While you have seen induction cookers, you may be scratching your head as to how the darn things work.

In a traditional electric rangetop, the electrical element heats from the resistance of electrical current running through it. This heat is transferred to the cooking vessel and then to the food. With induction cooking, the element itself doesn’t heat, rather it causes the cooking vessel to heat, thus heating the food. Basically, the induction cooker creates a high frequency electromagnetic field, when a piece of ferromagnetic material, like a steel or cast iron pot, is placed in the field it begins to heat up.

What makes induction technology more efficient that other cooking methods it the amount of energy that it uses to actually deliver heat to the food being cooked. Consider this; when a kilowatt of electricity is send through the resistance cook of a traditional electric cooker, a lot of the heat energy that is generated is lost to the surrounding atmosphere and the metal in the cook top. With induction, a much greater portion of that energy is converted to heat in direct contact with the food, lowering the overall energy use.

What makes the Thermador Freedom special is that the cooking vessel can be placed anywhere on the cook top. Using technology similar to the touchscreen on an iPhone 4S, the cooktop senses where the cooking vessel is, and its shape, and creates the induction field in that one area. This means that the entire cooktop surface, up to 65% more surface than a normal induction cook top, is available for cooking.

While there are many advantages to induction cooking technology we must admit that the biggest draw of the Thermador Freedom is the fact that you can bet the neighbors don’t have on yet.