Cooking with electricity is nothing new and comes with the added benefit of eliminating the indoor emissions that come with cooking on gas stoves in the home. Small induction cooktops have made this easy and the folks at Bonbowl wanted to make it even easier to cook with electricity anywhere. We need to electrify everything on our path to a net zero world and cooking is just one more thing for us to work on. Not to worry, Bonbowl has your back.

Disclaimer: Bonbowl sent the author their cooking system free of charge for the purposes of this review.

They developed a low power induction burner that only pulls 500 watts and is optimized to cook a single bowl of food at a time. Most full-sized induction cooktops pull 1,500 to 2,000 watts for a single burner which is fine for use in home or at the office, but can be a challenge to use while on the go. Pulling just 500 watts makes it possible to power the Bonbowl off of an in-car inverter or even a portable power station battery without having to purchase a massive battery system.

The low power draw was made possible by Bonbowl’s unique induction unit that makes a small, but direct connection to the cooking bowl. A small metal puck sticks up from the induction unit and directly transfers heat to the bowl for a more efficient transfer of energy. The drawback of the lower power consumption is that it takes a bit longer to cook food. To boil two cups of water in the Bonbowl took 7 minutes, 19 seconds compared to 2 minutes, 15 seconds with my 1,800 watt Duxtop induction cooktop.

In addition to the lower power draw, the Bonbowl induction unit is much more compact than traditional induction cooktops. It’s a mere 8″ x 8″ x 2.5″ making it a good option for apartments, offices, and RVs where space is always at a premium. Traditional cooktops are typically closer to 12″ x 12″. The smaller size also translates to a lower weight, so the Bonbowl could even be taken with you and used anywhere there’s an outlet.

They wrapped the stainless steel cooking bowl in a custom silicone enclosure that insulates the food and makes it easy to go right from cooking in the bowl to eating out of it without having to worry about getting burned. Plus, that’s one less dish to wash. After cooking up a serving of fancy top ramen in the Bonbowl, it was nice to be able to simply grab the bowl right off the cooktop and start eating. If there are leftovers, the Bonbowl even comes with a lid that can be used to seal up leftovers, to keep heat in while cooking, or even as a strainer for pastas or everyone’s favorite, one pot mac and cheese.

Around out house, fancy ramen is a staple. We take Indo Mie or similar quick ramen packets and add fun stuff like peanut butter, scallions, frozen spinach, Trader Joes soysage, Soyrizo, freeze dried vegetables, and more to make it healthier and tastier. Each person in the family makes their own ramen their own way so it’s handy to have another station that can pop up when needed and retire back into the drawer when we’re not cooking multiple meals in parallel. The Bonbowl handled this like a champ to the point that it almost found a new home up at my desk.

The Bonbowl has 3 temperature settings — High, Medium, and Low — and a timer that lets you set it up to cook at a specific heat level for just about any duration needed. It’s a handy function that makes it that much easier to use. For Ramen, we found that dropping the noodles and all our additions in at the start and cooking them for 9 minutes turned out perfect. It was nice to be able to just set it and forget it, with a hot bowl of ramen popping out the other end of the process.

The Bonbowl is a neat implementation of induction cooking that’s sure to appeal to the masses, with specific use cases where it really excels. That specialization comes at a cost, with the Bonbowl coming in at $149 at the time of publication. That’s a steep premium compared to the $50-75 most full power induction cook tops cost. It does come with a much lower power draw, lighter weight, and smaller package but it is still a significant premium. Add in the stainless steel bowl for $15-20 and the custom silicone wrap for the bowl and the value becomes more apparent.

The Bonbowl retails for $149 and can be purchased from the official Bonbowl site or from Amazon.

 

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