I recently removed my mostly-new (4 years old?) Maytag gas stove for a 1960's
electric beast.  Why would I give up gas?  Well, the stove is a really cool
high-end stove which fits the space better.

But anyway, to which heat source do people swear allegiance?  I'm not
completely happy to be going back to electric burners, but on the other hand
I was never very happy with the way a gas oven behaves, so the electric ovens
(yes, there are two in this monster) are an improvement.  With gas ovens
there's more air movement due to the combustion, and it typically results in
more burning of food on the bottom of a deep pan.  

60 responses total.

I have never redone a kitchen so I tend to get what comes with the house. 
The last two homes have come with Jenn-Airs, which I tend to like for the
downdraft venting.  And the ceramic cooktop with radiant burners heats
within seconds and the cleanup is an ultra-easy wipe.

I have had experience with gas, and prior to this latest experience I would
have elected to go the gas route.  But I'm not so sure anymore. 

Gas pollutes, and the last gas stove I used at a friend's house would not let
me turn it down enough to simmer with the pot cover on.  Electric is much more
easily adjusted, and gets hotter.

We are in the process of modernizing a WWII era kitchen (at least it looks
like the last time it was touched was WWII).  We are using a cheap electric
stove right now, which will be moved to the basement (being turned into combo
teen hangout, media center, ham shack, craft center, dark room, etc.) when
we get fully remodeled.  The ultimate range would be gas burners and
electric/convection over.  The model we will order is a Dynasty 60" double
oven (gas/convection) with 4 burners, a griddle, a charbroil grill, and a
dedicated wok burner.  Professional quality.  Along with top of the line
dishwasher, frige and garbage disposal I'll be living in heaven.

From what I understand, you get more control with gas.  I hate the stupid
things...give me electric any day!!!

My gas stove had a couple of "power boost" burners which got hotter than most
electric stoves.  There's no real limit on how hot you can get either electric
or gas burners; it's just a matter of design.

Gas burners are nice because there's very little time lag in the control. 
Potatoes boiling over?  Just turn down the gas and the water settles down.
On an electric you'd have to lift it off the burner for a bit while the burner
cools down.

I like gas for the quick response to emergencies, like spaghetti boiling
over, or something starting to burn.  I also find it easier to adjust,
because I can see how big the flame is, how high it is going, and how
much of the bottom of the pan is being heated.  It takes much longer to
discover the cooking rate of an electric element, and longer to adjust
appropriately.  

For cooking that requires heat control like omlets, or stir fry, gas is
much better.  If the lag time for heating and cooling dont matter
(simmering a stew for example), and you can capture that pre-heating fuel
use by starting the dish cold and slowly warming it, and can let the pan
sit on the cooling burner to capture the heat after it is turned off,
then electric is fine.  It takes longer to get it set to "simmer", but it
does sit there for several hours.  

For most stovetop cooking, gas wastes less fuel.  It is burned directly,
and does not require large powerplants to convert the fuel to
electricity, and then the electricity to heat.  

I figure I use $1-2 a month worth of electricity for cooking, so why pollute
my indoor air with gas?

For a half-day simmer I'd just use my crock-pot, so whether the stove can do
it has been moot.

Radiant burners (under ceramic cooktops) are pretty close to instant
on and off, unlike coil electric elements.  High is up to temperature
within seconds and cools almost as quickly.  

re: #8:  I too use direct heat electric utensils instead of my electric
cook top elements.  Crockpot for long cooking, electric kettle for boiling
more than a cup of water, and the microwave for most things that take less
than 8 minutes to cook.  8 minutes is the break even point that I
calculated earlier this year after a discussion about how to measure
electrical usage for ovens and cooktops.  

My impression is that it takes very fancy & expensive gas burners to have
the heat range of cheapo electric burners.  I can easily melt large blocks 
of chocolate in a simple saucepan on an electric stove, which is something 
that people i talk to & cookbooks seem to think is a double-boiler-only
task.  Even the fanciest electric burner (with it's special use & care 
needs and pot/pan limitations) can only approach gas for fast & visible
response to controls.

Last i heard, there were real respiratory health downsides to cooking with
gas.  Nothing resembling smoking, but statistically quite significant.  I 
don't have overly healthy lungs and both my folks have worse, so that's it
for me & gas stoves. 

Gas stoves, particularly ovens or stoves with pilot lights, produce a lot of
poison gas - the natural gas (methane) itself and also carbon monoxide. This
is particularly harmful for anyone who already has respiratory problems
(asthma, low hemoglobin = anemia) and for children.  Studies have shown more
respiratory problems in children who live in houses with gas stoves (or with
smokers).  Venting the fumes helps some.  A friend of ours who worries about
everything is still using a gas stove.  We brought over a carbon monoxide
detector and it registered unhealthy levels in his kitchen, even though it
is open on two sides to a large 3-story drafty house.  He now cooks with his
window open.  He has decided that electric fields are more worrisome than gas
fumes, but after detecting strong EMF (ELF) fields all over his house due to
knob and tube wiring, has not bothered to get it changed. Some people just
like to worry.

The older smooth-top stoves were extremely slow to heat and cool since the
ceramic is an insulator.  The newer ones I think compensate by using higher
wattage burners.  Coil units may still be  more efficient.  It helps if they
are kept flat (no depressions in the coils) and contacting the pot (also flat
on the bottom).  Has anyone used induction burners?  

We have electric frying pans, woks and even a pressure cooker.  We tried an
electric pot but the lid fit very poorly and also it was not well
thermostatted and had only two temperature settings - on and off - so did not
work well.  I have not seen any new ones (this was 1940s).  Electric
percolators with the innards removed heat water well.  Our electric kettle
has a much larger spout hole so is less efficient at retaining heat.  
Crock pots do not heat efficiently because the insulation is to the interior
of the heating element.  I have a few 'natural ovens' in which the liner is
non-insulating porcelain enamel coated steel. Low wattage so they heat slowly
but efficiently as there is fiberglass in a double-walled enclosure, into
which you put the porcelain-enameled inner pot.  They come in pot size and
oven size and have temperature controls.  

Sounds like Mary may be using induction burners, from the description.

I've had a CO detector in my kitchen for about a year now; I think it once
registered a very low amount; normally even when I'm cooking it sits solidly
on "0".

Perhaps the newer gas stoves are less polluting than the older ones?  There
are also ceramic-top stoves with halogen burners, which are instant (though
probably not as hot as the coil type, and the bulbs need replacing).

Pollution might also be a result of a mis-adjusted air mix on the burners.

I'll have to look at the manual to see what I've got.  I thought I 
knew until you guys threw out so many options. ;-)

Clearly somebody who doesn't know what they have doesn't deserve such a
high-end stove.  ;)

Hey, I walk up to it, make my unborn veal in white truffle sauce, and move
on to other things.  I let others worry about details. ;-) 

Anybody ever use a stove with one of those old "heat minder" electric burners?
This is the kind where one of the burners will have a sensor in the middle
of the coil and a control knob calibrated in degrees.  I don't think I've ever
used a stove with a correctly-working unit.  

I just replaced the control unit on the defective heat-minder on my new
antique stove with a standard control knob instead of fixing the sensor stuff.
It's not *that* hard to get the temperature I want.

The only electric stove I've ever liked is the one we have now. It is 
from around 1948. It is very narrow, about 22 inches, but since I seldom 
use more than two burners at once, everything fits. The control settings 
are S, VL, L, M, H. I love having a "simmer" setting! Best part: the left 
rear burner space is a sunken slow cooker! It has a ceramic coil in the 
bottom, and holds a pot (with cover) that is flush with the cooktop. I 
gave my crockpot to Goodwill.

I think there is insulation around the sunken slow cooker.  I never saw one
of those on a narrow stove.  Sounds like a really nice stove you have.

Jim fixed the sensor control for the burner on our Euro-style electric stove.
It is not calibrated in degrees, but it has lots of markings for fine control.
The idea is that you can set it to simmer at a particular setting, which is
not dependent on the pot size or contents.  I have never used that feature.
The burner itself only heats up at half the regular speed, which is a nuisance
since that is the only burner the right size for our pressure cookers.  The
other large burner is for large frying pans.  We also have a temperature
sensor thing on our double-wide sixties stove, in a burner that can be 6" or
8" (separate inner and outer coil) and that stove has push buttons, probably
five settings like otter's.  The book at the library explained how these
worked.  I think it involves some combination of 120 and 240 voltage producing
different amounts of heat in different parts of the coil.

I've always cooked on electric stoves until I moved into this house, 
which has a gas stove (but an electric oven). I like the adjustability 
of the gas burners, but as someone pointed out, the lowest setting 
seems to be too high to really simmer stuff. Also, the heat output at 
the high end seems to be lower than the electric burners as it takes 
longer to boil water on this stove. Overall, it's probably a wash.

The most efficient and also fastest way to cook is with electric appliances,
where more of the heat goes into the pot or pan.  We have a couple of
insulated 'natural ovens' with insulation outside the heating element, some
electric frying pans and woks, electric water boilers and even an electric
pressure cooker.

If you use an electric stove on city power, fuel is being burned to produce
heat, the heat is being converted into motion, the motion into electricity,
and the electricity is being turned back into heat.  A gas stove just burns
the fuel and is done with it.  Are gas stoves really more wasteful?

There are also differences in how efficiently the heat of the stove is used
to heat the pot or pan.  If you turn a gas stove up high and the flames lick
around the ends of the pot, the heat is being wasted.  I still think heating
the pot or pan directly (electric appliance) is probably even more efficient
than gas.  It is certainly much less likely to put carbon monoxide or methane
into your lungs.  Anyone with both gas and electric burners want to experiment
by measuring the temperature of the air just above burner height and next to
a pot on a hot burner, to see how much is escaping?

Efficiency seems sort of not very important in the case of cooking considering
how little fuel is used for it compared to heat or hot water (or motor
vehicles).  If you want to be efficient, use a pressure cooker or at least
boil things with the covers on.  Baking is much more wasteful than boiling
because a larger space is heated and a lot of the heat goes out a hole in top
of the stove.

When I take my teakettle of the (electric) burner because the water is
boiling, the burner stays red-hot for a couple minutes after I've turned the
burner off.  That's wasted heat.

So turn off the burner a few minutes before the water boils.  Or boil a cup
of water in the microwave oven, or in an electric pot.  When we cook with a
pressure cooker we turn it off before it comes to full pressure, then let it
cool off naturally.  Rice can be cooked (brown rice) by bringing it to about
10 pounds, turn it off, it goes to 15 pounds, then cools and it is cooked.
Same for presoaked beans.  

I don't like electric stoves.  An electric frying pan or an electric 
crock pot or wok or bread machine can be very handy, but gas is best 
for ordinary stovetop cooking, at least for my money.

What do you cook most often on your ordinary stovetop?

All kinds of stuff.  One thing that makes gas better is that you can 
turn it down instantly.  Roaring flame to nothing in less than a 
second.  No pasta boilovers, for example.  Also, there are infinite 
gradations of adjustment, all visible to the eye merely by looking 
under the pot or pan.  I can tell by the way the olive oil smells 
whether the heat needs to be adjusted a tiny bit up or down.  The 
difference between tender golden bits of garlic at the end of cooking 
the veal medallions, and darker overcooked bits mixed in with the 
medallions might be a slight reduction of the flame.  You sort of look 
at it and nod.  If you have any kind of cooperation at all going on 
between hand and eye and nose and brain, all this is essential.  (Also, 
when the power goes out, I'm still cooking.)

I understand that some people are inexplicably married to electricity.  
They are welcome to their obsession.  I wouldn't think of trying to 
convert them.

[Btw, fwiw, we heat the house with gas and dry our clothes with gas, 
too.]

What we usually cook requires either the highest possible heat (pressure
cooker brought to pressure) or the lowest possible heat (simmering the
stir-fry) which electric seems to do okay.  I solve the boil-over problem by
removing the pot from the burner.  The gas stoves that I have used at friends'
houses don't get as hot or as cool - maybe yours is much better quality.
I agree that it is nice to be able to adjust instantly, but the range of
temperatures on these gas stoves is not as great as on electric.  My primary
objection to gas is the need to breathe methane and carbon monoxide.
We have one thermostatted burner on one of our stoves that claims to offer
lots of fine adjustments but unfortunately it is one of those solid burners,
meaning it takes a lot longer to heat up or cool down.  The electric frying
pan  offers the same control, but faster.  
        I cooked one year on a completely non-adjustable alcohol burner.  Took
a bit of getting used to, but still a lot easier than cooking over a wood
fire.  It did not provide a very hot flame but you could fry an egg on it.
The fuel was much cheaper and more readily available than camping fuel. It
had the added advantage of putting a little heat in my unheated drafty room.
        Has anyone tried cooking on a woodstove?

A very little, long ago.  (My grandparents had a cabin whose only (internal)
heat sources were wood stove & fireplace.)  You can adjust cooking heat
somewhat by moving the pans around on the stovetop.  (Obviously, adding fuel,
stirring up fire, etc., and closing off air sources, work but are clumsy,
inexact, & slow.)

(Most of my times at this cabin were when I was a kid, & I did not do the
cooking.  Moreover, it was way up in the Rockies, and adjustments had to be
made for lower boiling point, etc. - I was much more aware of these (from
adult conversation) than woodstove-specific issues.)

From my understanding, as was said earlier, yes, gas stoves are 
superior in heat control, and so its obvious strength is in sauteing 
and the like.

However, you can't can fruits and vegetables with a gas stove-- 
something I suspect not many Grexers do (and md doesn't sound like one 
of them-- resp:30).  I forget precisely why this is, but perhaps it's 
because of what Sindi said in resp:23 in that you're heating the pot 
directly.  Anyway, a friend of mine just told me that you need an 
electric stove for things like that, which probably means steam 
juicing is out, too.

I don't have to worry here in Washington, where we have 
hydroelectric.  This has been a new reminder that Michigan is gas-
powered. 

I have recently discovered that an electric stove with do better at bringing
a large pot of water to a boil.  We had gas in the apartment and could never
get a good rolling boil in the spaghetti pot.  We have a very cheap (as in
we needed something to cook on until the kitchen renovations are done to the
point that we can bring the good range in) electric stove.  Spaghetti pot
comes to a rolling boil in about 5 minutes.  I am hoping that the good range
(a 60", double oven Dynasty gas range) will have enough omph to do a proper
boil.  STeve won't give up the dedicated high-temp wok burner.

I dont have any trouble getting a good rolling boil in large pots of 
water on my gas stove (which is one of the cheaper models) but it does 
take longer than 5 minutes. It helps to keep the pot covered when 
bringing the water to boil *shrug* 

On average electric burners can be turned up hotter than gas burners, but
there are some very high-power gas burners available particularly on
restaurant stoves.  We have pressure-canned so gas ought to work just about
as well, if a bit slower.  Glenda's new gas stove will probably be very fast
at boiling large pots of water.  When does it arrive?

First priority is roof, then plumbing.  After that we can start on the
kitchen.  Floor has to be replaced, window as well from the water damage from
roof leaks.  Then all the old cabinets and counters go.  Stove will come in
about the time the new cabinets do so that they can be planned around it. 
Since it is commercial quality I don't anticipate any problems with boiling
anything.  The slowest (the simmer) burner is something like 15,000 BTUs. 
I think the wok burner is about 24,000.  Ovens are both conventional and
convection.

resp:37  I'll have to ask again.  Ben just said gas stoves weren't as 
advantageous for canning.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss