NY TIMES DINING Section 01/02/08

[tomturbomatic]

Interesting article begins on first page on the section:
HEAT The Invisible Ingredient In Every Kitchen
by Harold McGee

Continuing on page 5:
"Among major culprits here are inefficient appliances. According to the United States Department of Energy, a gas burner delivers only 35 to 40 percent of its heat energy to a pan; a standard electric element conveys about 70 percent. Anyone thinking about kitchen renovation should know that induction cooktops, which generate heat directly within the pan itself, are 90 percent efficient. They can out-cook big B.T.U. gas burners, work faster, don't heat up the whole kitchen, and are becoming more common in restaurant kitchens."

 

[gyrafoam]

The introduction of a "free-standing" stove using the Induction cooking method should go a long way towards making this method of cooking more popular. Hopefully, this will also bring the cost of purchasing one down as well.

 

[polkanut]

Sorry, I'm still hooked on my gas range.

 

[toggleswitch]

I like the ones that have two induction "burners" and two radiant (conventional) ones.

This way, between the two types in one unit, one can use their existing pots and pans

http://www.subzero.com/products/category.aspx?cid=11

 

[launderess]

Considering how few people these days use their ranges and ovens for more than reheating pre-cooked foods or take-away, don't really see traditional gas or electric going the way of the Dodo anytime soon.

Even persons with large "professional" style kitchens seldom use them for more than the above, or pehaps the occasional full meal (whatever that is these days to most). OTOH there are those with the same who never set foot into their kitchens, since the staff does the meals, and in most cases they aren't overly concerned about someone else taking the heat so to speak.

Really is galling sometimes to hear people speaking of installing show place kitchens, complete with an AGA or similar range, when they are just that, for show. You have no idea how much of those appliances and such are resold vitrually brand new or with little use several years later.

L.

 

[toggleswitch]

...and past your 20's cheap and easy is not necessarily

~Sorry, I'm still hooked on my gas range.

Many of us are taught to believe gas is better. But I say don't knock the newer electric smooth-tops and of course induction until you have tried them.

Electric cooking is faster, cleaner, cooler and safer.
Gas is cheap, easy and instinctual.

 

[toggleswitch]

FEH! Show kitchen!

My maternal grandmother had a 1920's Royal Rose brand gas cooker in Queens county (NYC) that was 40" wide. It had a 20" section on the left with four burners and storage beneath. To the right was another 20" section with the oven and broiler. There was a connection for a "stove pipe" (oval flue).

It did not have pilot lights (automatic ignition) nor an oven thermostat; the oven was tiny. The thing had ornate curved legs (the stove not grandma and a flip-down top to hide the burners, a tradition that exists to this day in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

It did NOT have push-to-turn knobs and clockwise was "ON" not "OFF". [Clockwise is normally ""OFF" on a gas cooker so when you rightites are not thinking, the normal motion of the right hand turns the gas jet off.] In other words it was a relic in the mid 50's when she moved into the place.

She owned:

ONE IBRIK (BRIKI) Turkish Coffee pot
ONE SS stock pot
ONE SS frying pan
ONE cheap 3qt/L enameled steel pan
ONE cheap 2qt/L enameled steel pan
ONE cheap 1qt/L enameled steel pan
ONE cookie sheet for PITA
ONE baking tray for roasting.

and let me tell you the equipment may (help) make the man (impressive), but it DOES NOT MAKE THE COOK! It's not what you have, but how you work it/use it.

Anyhoo, that woman was talented!

Just remember kiddies status is not gained via possessions, and you can't hitch the u-haul behind the hearse.

 

[gadgetgary]

It did not have pilot lights (automatic ignition) nor an ove

So how do you adjust the oven temperature?

 

[tomturbomatic]

The joke in the 80s defined a yuppie as someone who had $700.00 worth of Calphalon hanging over a restaurant type range and always dined out. If they had been from the old world, there would have been a real working kitchen downstairs and they almost never would have dined out. In fact, almost the whole house was duplicated downstairs and the upstairs was a stage set.

 

[toggleswitch]

The size of the flame of the oven/broiler burner (one tube heats both-- oven above the tube, broiler below-- was adjstable exaclty the same as a top-burner.

She had a hanging thermometer to get a feel for how large to make the flame and to adjust it as needed.

I personally believe that older gas cookers that had constant flames in the oven where the size of the flame increased and decreased (rather than today's full-on and full-off cycles) just cooked better. Think: "Robertshaw" brand controls! These controls allowed for a "minimun bypass flame" to keep the burner lit when the thermostat was satisfied.

 

[toggleswitch]

Looks like re-birth of induction is due any day now.........

Interesting how smooth-tops (glass-ceran) came out then disappeared for a few decades. Ultimately quality improved and prices fell.

Ditto induction?

 

[tomturbomatic]

Toggle:
Westinghouse demonstrated their induction cooktop at the 1971 Atlanta Home Show, so the technology has been there, even if the products have not been available on the market for various periods of time.

The glass smooth top electric units could not match the efficiency of a pan sitting directly on a standard Calrod, Corox, Chromalox, Radiantube or other sealed rod type element where the heat was conducted directly from the element into the base of the pan with some radiant heat transfer involved. With the glass, the heat radiated from the coil or tube that was producing the heat under the glass, through a gap between the heat source and the glass and then into the bottom of the pan more through radiation with secondary conduction from the hot glass.

The gas oven thermostats where the flame modulated up and down but was not cycled on and off were replaced starting in the 60s by the cycling type. The huge ad campaign showed the thermostat dial with settings from 140F to 170F as the first settings on the thermostat so that it could even hold a roast cooked to rare without cooking it further. The older modulating burner control could not dependably hold temperatures lower than 200F or so. On some ranges, these lower temperature settings of 140-170 were used in a Roast & Hold feature.

Toggle, I briefly lived in a house with the Western-Holly oven and cooktop. I had to use an oven thermometer and then, once the temperature I wanted was reached, turn the thermostat way down, sort of using it as just a gas valve, until the flame was low enough to hold the temperature needed for whatever I was cooking. I guess the modulating guts had aged to where the valve did not close sufficiently to make the flame small. Left on its own, it burned along at about 450F. Sometimes there are successful ways of coping.

Westinghouse came out with a complex system called Roast Guard or something like that to hold food without overcooking. When the meat thermometer/roasting probe was put into a roast or poultry or whatever, plugged inot the receptacle in the oven and the temperature corresponding to the degree of "doneness" was selected, the oven was started at the temperature the user selected on the oven thermostat, but the oven's temperature was stepped down as the meat thermometer moved toward the target temperature so that when the desired temperature of the meat was reached, the oven would be at a low holding temperature and further cooking would not take place. Westinghouse range ovens from the mid 50s on were very heavily insulated and that is why the control had to start stepping down the oven temperature before the roast thermometer setting was reached in order to be able to avoid overcooking. The Roast & Hold feature was easier to implement in a gas oven because the larger vent let the temperature drop faster to the 140 to 170 holding temperature.

I have a 1965 Westinghouse range that allows the oven to be used manually or be set for timed baking or Cook & Hold. The Cook & Hold uses the start & stop timer for the oven like for timed baking, except that the temperature is alowed to drop during the last part of the time selected so that the food is held at serving temperature without overcooking.

 

[toggleswitch]

Interesting thank you!

My Avanti Brand (Turkish, not Italian) 20" (50cm) wide gas cooker has a modulating flame size for the oven.

I bought it for the high-end features such as sealed burners and waist-high broiler normally found in the USA only in larger cookers. Also a "plus" is the match-ignitable oven and (technically) broiler burners/tubes.

This cooker uses a spark to ignite a standing pilot light for the oven tubes/burners. The inital push-in of the knobs (all five) initiates the spark ignition.

One must hold the oven control gas valve in for a period of time until flame is "prooven" From that point forward, it is basically like any pre-60' gas oven with a modulatime flame-size oven burner system.

Yes, you are absolutely correct that ovens of this type do not have a "keep-warm" setting of 140*F to 180*F. Mine certainly did not. I believe the lowest temp on the dial was over 212*F (100*C). Can't recall-- donated it to a friend when the house was put up for sale.

Speaking of oven temps the celsius markings were convered to *F so instead of 200*F, 250*, 300*, 350* etc. temps on the dial to 550*F there were some STRANGE temp settings maybe like..... 230*F, 270, 315*F or some such nonsense.

Oddly there was a minimum bypass flame, but if the oven temp. setting was drastically reduced the flame would go out. Probably maladjusted, as are most characters in my life. I say this because I had to correct the sparker gaps on a few burners to establish successful automatic ignition. I belive the heat sensor to prove flame had moved out of place as well, and needed to be repositioned.

 

[bajaespuma]

Toggle, we must be related...

Your grandmother and my grandmother bought their kitchenwares from the same store. What's more amazing is how they managed to keep them in service for an entire generation. I wish I'd saved all of them so I could photograph them and put them here for you to see. I still have a few pieces of her enamel ware and we still have her 1946 KitchenAid K-3B.I still have the brass Ibrik that hung in our family's kitchen for generations. I still can't use it as well as my grandfather.

I read Mr. McGee's article and I loved it as I am a great fan of his writing. I beg, however, to disagree about the future of induction cooking in professional kitchens. Anyone who has ever worked in one, especially recently, can vouch that most restaurants are outfitted with cheap, banged-up aluminum pans that wouldn't work on an induction burner. The few times I've worked in a French-owned or run kitchen equipped with state-of-the-art cookware, it took the American cooks and American dishwashers months to learn how to handle and care for those pots and pans. Europeans are trained from birth how to respect the work place and how to care for expensive tools; we're used to throwing things away and we've trained our immigrant staff to to the same.

 

[dalangdon]

Induction is a great technology, and doubtless the wave of the future, but I like the primal aspect of the flame (or even the orange coil) while cooking. I suppose I could get used to the new way, but I'll hold off as long as I can.

In respect for the environment (and for my wallet) I did go to a gas cooktop without standing pilots, but that's as far as I care to go right now

I did wonder about the frigidaire electric ovens, and how efficient they are, but I have to say they heat up fast, they hold the heat in, and they don't seem to cycle on and off that much. The oven doors don't even get that hot, so I don't think they are that inefficient.

 

[toggleswitch]

Electric ovens don't have a huge vent to relase the poisonous byproducts of combustion that gas ovens require. They therefore don't leak as much heat into the room as fast.I'd say gas and electric ovens are pretty close in overall energy consumption (in a residential setting) and would not concern myself with it.