54 new of 60 responses total.
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.
Have canned on both using both open kettle and pressure. No problems with either. The biggest problem with a gas stove is low temp cooking. I have what is known as "waterless" cooking pots. Bring the pot to temp then turn to lowest temp possible to finish. Gas stove can't hold that low a temp without going out.
In Europe there are combination gas/electric stoves. They were popular in Macedonia since you never knew which fuel would be available when.
I just acquired a 7-heat electric stove, meaning you can set it to 7 different wattages (with a dial numbers Simmer 6 5 4 3 2 High Off), and this is accomplished by connecting up either of the two coils (inner and outer) or both, at 115 or 230. HIgh is both at 230 volts. This stove heats things up a lot faster than did my newer one, which uses a different temperature control method (it cycles on and off - but starts at a cycle instead of constant on). I don't know why they switched to the newer technology. It is slower and 7 heats are plenty. I get a nice range of lows. The oven has only one element, which serves a broiler below it, and an oven above it (shielded by a sheet of metal so you do not need to put a cookie sheet on the bottom rack). Apart from burners burning out not much to go wrong - no clocks, or timers, or even bulbs. No gasket but since I rarely bake who cares. It has two more advantages - a pull-out tray under all the burners so you don't need to stick your arm inside the stove to clean up spillovers, and front controls so you can use the back burners without burning yourself on hot pots adjusting the controls. Seems like as soon as someone perfects any equipment, everyone rushes to change it to something less useful and more flashy. There are also 3-heat and 5-heat burners, the first of which I had on a hotplate and the second probably on my push-button stoves, and I have a portable oven with two heats, high and low, achieved by plugging the plug onto middle-plus-right or middle-plus-left plug. Nothing to wear out or get stuck. We found two books, dated 1974 and 1964, explaining how home appliances work. By 1964 there were already smoothtop ranges and by 1984 microwave ovens.
I had a stove like that once, with pushbuttons for the different heat settings. It was annoying when you wanted a specific heat (say, to keep something just on the edge of boiling) and had to keep switching back and forth between two adjacent settings.
Two of our three 5-heat push-button stoves have three of these 5-heat burners, and also one infinitely adjustable burner for cases like yours. I use a stove mainly for bringing pressure cookers to a boil on high and turning it off, ditto for oatmeal water (add oats, turn off, cover) and for stir fry I turn it to medium and then down to near simmer. When do you need to keep something at a near boil? My 7-heat works perfectly and has lots of settings at the low end. One of the pushbutton stoves has one burner that is switchable between inner coil only (6") and both coils (8"). I have never found a use for 3 6" burners. My mother's push-button stove also had a 4" setting (3 coils). Our outlet does not work - Jim will fix it when he replaces the burner, which may be hard to find. It is 2-prong (ungrounded) which implies that the 7-heat dial type stoves predated the 5-heat pushbutton models (3-prong grounded). Odd that they should replace something good with something less good, but that is fashion. 8 buttons was probably too much to fit on the back of the stove easily. Buttons were all the rage in the sixties - blenders could have 10 of them. 'Just push a button'. Washing machines had rows of square buttons. What else had buttons instead of dials? THe newer washing machines appear to have round buttons instead of dials. Of our three 6-button burner stoves: 1. Double oven, large button on top of the backsplash, one burner infinitely adjustable and 6 or 8", window in one oven and stainless lining, two outlets of which one is timed (nice when you are plugging in an electric appliance). 2. 24" model with small buttons all on the front. 3. Stainless rangetop only with small buttons on a stickup panel near the back between the two pairs of burners. All three designs make it less likely you will burn yourself adjusting the controls while you are cooking on the back burners. All the new electric stoves I have seen have controls in back on the vertical surface. My current receiver has buttons for speaker selection, and tuning, and tuner-tape-aux-phono. My older one has buttons for all of these. Both have a dial for Volume but it seems to be more fashionable to use buttons for that too (a lot less convenient in my opinion). What functions are best done using dials, and what functions with buttons?
Most things can be done with either. But, when it comes to stoves, I like being able to use a dial to turn a flame down on a gas stove. I also like dials for the volume control on the stereo.
Yeah, for maintaining a simmer on a stove, having a dial is best. What really surprises me, keesan, is that you stir-fry on medium. I like it as hot as possible, and cook as quickly as possible -- especially for vegetables.
The oven in Caitlin's apartment has a broiler. I've never broiled before. What can you do with one of those that you can't do with a regular oven?
I guess I just steam vegetables with a coating of oil under them. The newer stoves seem to all have combination oven-broilers (the electric ones, anyway). THe bottom element is used for baking, the top for broiling, and sometimes both for preheat. Ovens used to often have them separate for people who wanted to bake a pie and broil a chicken at the same time. Now people have two ovens instead, I guess. Or a broiler oven. My mother used to broil all her meat. I have never broiled anything - does one broil vegetables? Seems sort of wasteful leaving the door open. Some stoves are designed so the broiler element won't stay on unless you do that. The continuous-level stoves do in fact stay on continuously for high. But mine heated things up much more slowly than the 7-heat model. Either it is lower wattage, or the thicker coil element takes longer to heat. Jim's solid-coil (Euro) design is extremely slow. He was explaining how the infinite-control models work with thermostats in them that are heated by a special little heater in them to bend the bimetallic strip so that the burner goes off when its insides reach a certain temperature. In the special elements like Scott has, that keep the pot (rather than the inside of the burner) at a specific temperature, this thermostat is connected to the pot itself in the little round part that stick up in the middle and is pushed up bya spring. I had no idea so much design work goes into ovens. Some have removable bottoms, and or sides. THere are various ways to strenghthen the places that the racks slide onto in case people try to bake something heavy. (Not having baked anything heavier than rice pudding I never thought of the problems of the turkey crowd). There are various ways to adjust oven temperature. One older gas stove let you adjust flame size but most use thermostats somehow - how would you cycle on and off an oven in which you had to light the pilot light every time you used it like we used to have? THere were long match holders that helped you stick the match in the hole to light them after you turned on the gas. Some electric ovens have different wattages dependending on whether they are on preheat, bake1 or bake2 (have not seen this type). Sometimes they have two dials - one for on off bake broil preheat and the other for temperature. My little 'new' one has one (no broil - same element does it all, just put the food under instead of over it). The model of simplicity. Set to 550 and open the door and it is sure to stay on. The book from 1964 says broilers on the bottom are not good, they make you bend over. Poor housewife! It also says that adults need 15 gal of hot water a day and children 25 gallons. I wonder how much they 'need' this year.
When it comes to Indian cooking, I find gas so much better. Roasting eggplant for baingan bhartha or making papaddams on an electric stove just isn't the same. And I like the instant temperature control that gas gives you.
re #49 We've got the same issues so I have a sideburner on my gas grill outside. Roasting peppers or eggplant on electric elements is almost absurd (and stinky!)
Pepper skins actually char much better on electric burners (the flat not the coil type) so you can peel them off.
They char best on my gas grill. (If you want to peel peppers or tomatos, put em in boiling water for 60 seconds and then place em in cool running water while you peel em.) I peel roma tomatoes for some of my best pizza sauze..
Why would you want to peel a pepper? I've taken to roasting eggplant in the oven. Not quite the same, but it will have to do. As for papaddams, it's a good thing I don't like the stuff, but when I had a microwave, it would go in there. Which is a shame, because it doesn't have the same smokey flavour as a fire-roasted one.
You peel the peppers after cooking them to make them less tough to eat when you eat lots of them (or pickle or freeze them or grind them up into aivar).
Hmmm - never ate them that way. Always had the skins on my peppers. What's aivar?
I peel the peppers for my kids cuz the skins remove themselves from roasted peppers pretty easily and are annoying like popcorn kernel.
aivar is ground up peppers mixed with garlic and olive oil and spread on bread. You can also add ground-up eggplant and tomatoes and salt. The peppers need to be sweet red ones (usually the flat type, they are easier to roast and deseed and peel). You can eat them just as salad with garlic and olive oil too. In Macedonia in Sept everyone is out roasting them in large flat round metal pans over an open fire, then they deseed, peel, and pickle in jars in vinegar for the winter. You can buy them in jars at our local dollar store, and aivar from Mediterranean stores (Yugoslav or Turkish or Hungarian - sometimes hot).
Eggplant spread is a regular side in my house.
Eggplant spread = babaghanoush? Anyone have a recipe - sounds delicious.
Not babaganoush. I'll get a recipe for ya.
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