i just received my new zhuni dhp fudong pot from ys last night and was confronted to boil / season it with my new induction stove.
i wasn't really sure how to do it right, but managed it and thought it might help to share my experience with others who would face the same situation.
here is the pot i used, it has an aluminium core throughout the pot, so it it heated evenly, not just the base, the coating is stainless steel.
i tried to heat up 3 liters in a 200mm pot on a 180mm induction plate on low heat, but after 30 minutes i realized it won't ever happen
so i removed the yixing pot and just used the boost function to heat up the water in the metal pot with the lid on and was surprised to see it boiling in less than 3 minutes.
i turned off the stove and put the yixing pot directly onto the base of the metal pot, the yixing lid next to it. i thought it would be better to put something below the yixing pot, so it wouldn't touch the base of the pot or the edges of the metal, but couldn't find anything, and i thought to myself, lower heat and not just focused on the bottom like with normal stoves should be ok.. as long as no water is boiling and i can't see any bubbles at the metal surface, the temperature of the metal cooking pot should be within safe limits (below 100 °C), so i just put the yixing pot directly onto the metal surface.
i had a look at the manual of the induction cooking stove and at the manual of the metal induction pot and found out that half power (4.5 of 9) should be the perfect setting for simmering water (just below boiling, about 95 to 99 degree), so i set it to 4.5, removed the lid of the metal pot like the manual said and waited for 30 minutes, moving the yixing pot and yixing lid maybe 5 times (i'm pretty sure it wasn't really needed to move it around). you could watch the steam coming out quite heavy throughout the whole 30 minutes, but no real boiling occured, just like planned.
for a continous boiling the manual said to use a power setting of 6-8 of 9, maybe depending on the metal pot size and amount of water used, but simmering at 95-99 °C should be quite ok regarding several infos on priming a clay pot.
so yeah.. that's about it. i removed it after 30 minutes and poured some of the hot water a few times and put it aside for drying for the next 2 or 3 days.
i'm not the seasoning type of guy though.. i like to boil the pots to have a neutral and clean pot to start with, everything else will happen when using it.
one note: the cooking stove manual said to not use ceramic or other metals on the induction stove directly. i am not quite sure if some of the electromagnetic energy will reach the yixing pot inside the metal pot, so i won't rule that out, but obviously the aluminium core of the cookng pot is a lot purer and better for transforming the electromagnetic pulses into heat than ceramic, it guess it will use about 90 % of it and the other 10% won't really heat up the yixing pot inside, even if it is a dhp zhuni clay with more ion in it. but i'm no expert. if anyone has more information on how yixing zhuni clay would react to electromagnetic induction power, let me know.
