Lets have a discussion on ranges...

[norgeway]

What does everyone like...gas or electric,what brand and why,just my two cents worth...Everyone knows Im a Norge nut,my post earlier of my 55 Norge 41 inch range sort of tells the story,...but the rest of the story is, I think Frigidaire and Westinghouse are overall the best ranges ever built,for many reasons, but mainly because they are insulated better, and the surface units are better,but another thing is that the oven doors on them almost never get out of adjustment,ge Hotpoint,Kenmore and even my Norge cant equal Frigidaire and Westinghouse in this respect..oh yeah, I also like gas too, but have found in our house it just isnt practical because of one thing...a window ac unit causes a draft that will drive you crazy, it was the ac or the gas stove so you can guess which one had to go,anyone want to buy a nice 59 Caloric....what are your thoughts on this. Hans

 

[tlee618]

Hans, my vote goes for Electric all the way. I do believe thought that ones choice depends a lot on what they learned to cook on. My biggest complaint with gas is that so much of the heat on the surface burner is wasted. Also unless you have a vented to the outside range hood I don't think they are the best thing to have in your home. My problems has also been never being able to get the heat low enough on a gas range top. Never seems to be a problem on Electric. I also think that Electric ranges and ovens are much easier to clean. My vote for the best would go to GM/Frigidaire for sure. One fantastic range. Just my thought here guys. A fun thread, thanks for starting it Hans!

 

[toggleswitch2]

Gas: Cheap and easy. Visual and intutive. Better Feng Shui: "Natural" cooking over an open flame.

Electric: Faster, cleaner, safer, cooler. As a class there are more electric stoves in this country than gas, yet there are fewer accidents with electric.

Studies have shown that a gas oven operating for 1 hour at 350*F (175*C) provides enough moisture, carbon dioxide, sufuric oxides, and nirtous oxides to be a detrimental to your health and should always be used with a window open or an exhaust fan running.

Similarly studies in the UK have shown that children who grow up in homes with gas cooking have TWICE the number of repspiratory ailments than those in homes with eletric coooking do.

In my area (in homes with gas cooking) one has to paint every 5+ years to cover and degrease the filth that comes out of a gas oven's vent, being byproducts of combustion and grease/dirt. Went to a home in Florida, all-elctric and no combustion source in the home. I asked how the popcorn-style ceiling (scores of hanging dingle-berries) was painted. Their response: The house is only 25 years old and the ceiling has never been painted. Why would you need to paint the ceiling? They asked.

From that time forward I paid attention and indeed electric cooking is MUCH cleaner. The few extra drachmas every month in energy cost is worth not having to wash walls, ceilings windows, floor and indeed EVERY other surface in the house.

I quickly went to an electric smooth-top (glass/ceran) in my upstairs kitchen and had both a standard-sized 30" (75cm) electric and smaller 20" (50cm) gas in the basment (entertaining) kitchen.

I was able to run the cables and pipes myself. (I seem to have a talent with pipe).

My current (rental) residence has a gas self-cleaner and it a marvelous Magic Chef (think Maytag). Still cant stand that gas surface burners heat the handles up on pots, heats up the room like crazy, and one has to breathe in those poisonous fumes when stirring.

Both types/enegy sources have their merits and disadvantages. It's what is most important to you that determines what is preferred. That, of course, and the availability of gas. Supe hot climates from what I have seen don't nomrally have gas cookers. Less of an issue now that "everyone" has cental air-condtioning in this country.

 

[toggleswitch2]

And remeber your manta, girls: in America it's front-rea

As a person who grew up with gas cooking in a 100% gas market, the rule of thumb (as i see it) when changing over to electric cooking is:

1- Never ever leave anything on the stove unless you are actually cooking with it at that moment. It is VERY easy to turn on or raise the heat of the wrong burner.

2- Confirm that you have energized the correct burner (stovetop element)

3-Start on HIGH until your food or liquids fry or boil. Reduce heat to medium. Move heat setting up or down slowly allowing two minutes for the burner to repsonde. Keep fine-tuning your adjutsmment until the heat seting is "perfect".

4-Use less heat than you think you need. Since heat goes into the pan rather than the air (with elecric) those who are used to cooking with gas don't beleive the electic biurner is on full-crank.

5- Electric cooking is like a bi-polar personality; the highs are higher and the lows are lower. With a little tweaking of your expectations you can get what you need out of it. (Ducks and runs!) *WHOOSH* LOL

6- Pot of pasta gets about 7.5 out of ten (medium high) on the dial and frying or simmering gets a 2 or less. Not all that complicated.

Coolest thing I ever saw (breaking rule #1) was one of those pushbutton GE cooktops with (was it 7? ) fixed heats having a pot of rice on it for hours on "WARM" and no burning. I was AMAZED at that when I saw a fiend of my mother's do it!

If I has to choose one only, it would be electric.

 

[toggleswitch2]

Of coure making my transition to electric easier was that my set of pots at the time had glass lids!

No need to lose heat to peek.

Highly recommended for cooking rice!

 

[retroguy]

I vote for electric....

My condo has a Magic Chef Chateau gas range. Danger prone me burned everything.

The house has a Frigidaire Gallery Series glass top electric. Now I'm not such a frightening cook. =)

 

[toggleswitch2]

I just knew you weren't a flamer!

 

[westingman123]

I'm certain it's no surprise to anyone that I vote electric. I've cooked with both, actually learned to cook on all three (wood stove being the third), and I find electric to be the most versatile. Currently, I have a Westinghouse range with double ovens and the deep well burner. I'd not trade it for another. Period.

 

[retroguy]

who me?!

you betta check yourself before you wreck yourself - Guuuuurl, betta CALL somebody! =P

Me? No. Absolutely not. *lix Toggles*

 

[toggleswitch2]

Propane?

Cant stand the smell of it burnt, or unburnt. It's like petro-chemical refinery.

Plus there are more yellowish-orange flame tips with propane That means incomplete combustion(unburnt gasses) and CARBON!

CArbon means black soot all over everyting. NFW (no "feasible" way!). Even the bottoms of your pots and pans get filthier and need more scrubbing.

 

[retroguy]

Oh Toggles....

*Hank Hills voice* Carbon is practically a vitamin!! Long live propane!

 

[maytagbear]

I prefer

a gas cooktop, and an electric SELF-CLEANING oven.

I started to cook on a gas stove, and then I've used electrics for the last 14 years, but am wanting a gas stove again. Landlord said I could, if I bought it myself, and I will be in a position to buy one in due course.

Been looking at dual fuel stoves, and most of them have features I DO NOT want, like either a warming drawer or an oven drawer. I want a self-cleaning oven, a high output burner, and a storage drawer.

I have tried, but I cannot stir-fry on an electric. I have tried flat-bottomed woks, skillets, almost everything. I have had one element on "thermonuclear," and a lower element at the same time, and still not happy with the results. Other styles of Asian cooking, yes, but not stir-frying.

I wish American manufacturers would offer 1 electric element and three gas burners on the same stove. Electric is great for simmering.

"Why not get the induction Kenmore range?" Because it requires a (truth) 50 amp circuit, and my landlord has said "no."

As for the health concerns.....my Mother was a heavy, sloppy smoker throughout the childhood of my sister and me. I am convinced that her smoking did more damage to my sister and me than our gas stove. Ma smoked every hour she was awake, and our stove was on no more than two or so hours a day.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[dj-gabriele]

I'm not sure about the detrimental effects of gas cooking, but there might be a little (not much) truth behind the alarmism.
I don't know how it works aboard but here you need to compulsory have a vent proportional to the size of the burners to have the combustion products flushed out of the room, so indoor pollution is not a great issue.

I think I'm saying the same as many that gas offers the best control and quality of cooking and then comes induction.
I'd get induction, despite the price, for the ease of cleaning the top and for the reactivity of the controls but it would be almost impossible to have one fitted and used at full power when the highest domestic contract you can get is 6 kW and standard one is 3 kW.
So I'm going to stick with gas, SMEG made only, with ultra fast burners with double independent command for inner and outer burner, I love them!

Either one of these:

http://www.smeg.it/Catalogue/Product/P106.aspx?SID=1181405

http://www.smeg.it/Catalogue/Product/PTS726NE5.aspx?SID=1181414

http://www.smeg.it/Catalogue/AestheticLine.aspx?LID=18

 

[alr2903]

i vote with Maytag bear, gas burners and a well insulated electric oven. "you really can have it all". alr2903

 

[laundromat]

I hate gas cooking

I may sound like a hypocrate because I sell and pump propane all day,everyday but,thanks to John LaFever in Beltsville,MD,I converted to electric cooking and learned how to make some incredible meals.I burned everything with gas including myself.I'd have headaches every day that went away after I converted.

 

[panthera]

I've

only once in my life had the opportunity to actually choose among gas, resistive and induction and chose induction for everyday and resistive for the two things I have that won't work on induction.

Gas has many advantages, but I would have had to have a forced ventilation system installed which would have taken a week, been an enormous mess and cost a fortune. The British gas cookers with their (admittedly dangerous) wonderful eye-level broilers and their "let's not crowd" things approach to working comfortably in small spaces were great. Used then often in England on visits and, once you get past the drama, nothing comes close.

Everything I've read the last few years on cooking with gas has been clear that the combustion gases together with the added load of dirt which is blown out of the oven cavity just plain make for filthy, unhealthy air. (Many cheaper gas stoves in Continental Europe don't have encapsulated flames under their ovens, for those who are spoiled with luxurious gas cooking and are now reaching for their keyboards to inform me that the combustion gases don't flow through the oven. They do in many here.)

In terms of speed: Induction, hands down. At least when you have 230V available. The jump from 1500W to 2000W is gigantonormous.
In terms of safety: Induction. Very hard to start a house fire with it.
In terms of precision control: Gas. Very close: Induction. If monitoring the cooking process is important: Induction.

Plain old resistive electric comes in a very, very distant third on every single criterion I can think of. If I weren't attached to a few stainless-steel pans, I'd never use it.

 

[toggleswitch2]

~Many cheaper gas stoves in Continental Europe don't have encapsulated flames under their ovens.

Does this mean the "air-circuit" of the oven's flame never gets into the oven cavity? ((Never saw that)

Or do you mean the flame is under the oven bottom (with openings to allow heat/air in)?

Or do you mean those ovens (was it in Australia or the UK?) That shoot up a fountain of flame right in the oven cavity?

 

[58limited]

I grew up with electric and once I switched to gas (as a teenager) I never looked back. There was a learning curve, but once I got the hang of it, no burned food. My O'Keefe & Merritt has simmer caps so I can get the heat down really low.

I'm about to start restoring my Chambers Imperial. The Chambers was the best insulated of any range I've seen, hence their advertising about "Cooking with the gas turned off." You preheated the oven, put in your food, ran the gas a little longer, then turned it off and did other things like go shopping. The food continued to cook for hours. I like the thermowell too. I make stock fairly often, the T-well will allow me to keep the stock below the stove surface (i.e. - out of the way of any other cooking that I'm doing.

 

[kenwashesmonday]

The Chambers has stove bricks to hold the heat, but where there's fire, there must be exchange of air.

Ken D.