[ggreg84]

Buy professional appliances, for restaurants.

For some reason, they are often better along many axes: cheaper, easier to clean, more customizable, more powerful, more flexible, etc.

I really like the professional induction stoves, with actual physical dials, no touch crap.

And the best part, there is a huge used market for professional appliances in really good shape, for even lower price.

[giraffe_lady]

Commercial induction is pretty solid in a home. Microwaves too if you have a spare 220v hanging around in your kitchen. Mostly just because of the better controls as you mentioned though. A non-commercial appliance with a free spinning knob would be about as good.

Other than that though, and I have a lot of professional cooking experience, I wouldn't. They're generally uninsulated, made of just sheets of stainless steel. Touching them can burn you, they can have sharp edges and corners that can badly cut.

Their safety assumes frequent and thorough cleaning regimes. Where a residential system will have safer failure modes if not maintained correctly, a commercial one may just become a grease fire instead.

Also the dimensions and their dynamics just are often not good for the kinds of cooking you do at home. It takes an hour to heat a full-size uninsulated commercial stove's oven to baking temp. Commercial gear is generally built around that assumption: that you will turn it on once, every single day, and run it for 12-18 hours straight. That completely changes the design, efficiency, and maintenance constraints in ways that may not work at home.

I used to want a big two-basic stainless commercial sink with sprayer. I stayed in an airbnb with that once, and it turns out it takes several gallons of water to fill that even a few inches, a minimal amount to wash dishes. A restaurant's water line can do that in seconds, it can take minutes on a home one, depending.

There are definitely specific, individual pieces where the commercial versions are easily adapted to home use and superior. There are many more cases where they aren't. A blanket "buy commercial" is not good advice imo.

[mypalmike]

Thank you. I learned quite a bit from this.

[jgoldshlag]

This. When my Cuisinart food processor bowl broke for the 2nd time, I went and got a RobotCoupe professional model. The cheese grater attachment I got for it says that you shouldn't run it for longer than 4 hours! at a time. Once you start going commercial, you will not look back. Pay more (if you buy new), work forever and if they do break, there are people/places you can get them serviced.

[numpad0]

Until the day it starts asking your support contract number…

[dunham]

I think they're designed to be more durable too. A consumer microwave / food processor isn't intended to run 8 hours a day.

Any particular brands on the induction stoves? I may want to move on from gas someday.

[civilized]

Can you recommend any particular sellers?

My oven stops working with some nonsensical error message when I try to use it above 350F, so I'm in the market for a new one.

[rootusrootus]

Not OP, and not making any recommendations, but even something mainstream like webstaurantstore.com carries a fair amount of commercial cooking equipment. Enough to give you some ideas, at least.

[bluGill]

Odds are there are a few restaurant supply stores around you. Most independent of any chain. They tend to be open the the public only 'working hours'. Find one that wants to serve you

[wkrsz]

Aren’t they too big for a regular home kitchen?

[genocidicbunny]

Not necessarily. Some might be, but generally there's demand for smaller appliances in commercial kitchens too. For example, think of the now ubiquitous food trucks -- they don't have a ton of room for the fridge or freezer, but still need one.

If anything, the consumer grade stuff tends to all be made roughly the same, and in many cases is just someone slapping their brand on an OEM appliance.