Currently have an electric range. Looking at appliances, trying to decide if should go with another electric, or switch over to gas. Hook up is not a problem, easily accessible.
Which do you like to cook on, gas or electric, and why?
Thanks
Gas. I had one apartment with an electric range, and I think I burned every meal I cooked. The range always seemed to take forever to reach a sufficiently hot temperature, so I'd keep notching the heat up in a futile effort to rush the process. As someone else already mentioned, it's just too hard to control the heat.
I don't know anybody else who's had an electric range and liked it, either.
On the 7th day as God rested, the devil invented attornies, electric stoves, and bubble packaging. And if that wasn't enough, the devil also invented mothers-in-law.
My next house will have a gas stove and a gas furnace.
Dick
You'd be hard pressed to find a single professional kitchen with an electric range. That said, electric ranges are usually less expensive, both for the applicance as well as construction to support. They appeal to people with a fear of open flames and take slightly longer to come up to temp.
What fumes? I grew up in a house with gas space heaters, plus the stove, and I'm okay.
LOOK! A SQUIRREL!
Sorry. There's nothing fumous about a gas range.
Both, gas on top for better control with pots and electric underneath for more even heat control.
Recently converted from electric oven & cooktop to a gas cooktop and electric (convection) oven Very happy
Gas is a bit cheaper than electricity where I am, so there is an operational saving on using a gas cooktop
The real benefit of a gas cooktop is the speed at which food cooks with no residual heat after you shut it off. Naturally that supposes that you have some big burners for the job
If you go gas Get the biggest burners you can for the money you spend. (One of my grates flips over to become a round-bottom wok rack) For the oven, most definitely go with a convection over a regular. Choice of gas or electric should be on what you like and the cost of gas vs electricity
And if you have a few more bucks get an oven control where you can pre-program more than one temperature for the the oven (e.g. Start my bread at 410 for 10 minutes, then drop it to 380 for remaining 15 minutes)
I'm also using the oven instead of the slow cooker, because the oven is more efficient with less heat loss to the surroundings.
Oren wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
We've never had electric, and in general the economics are against it. Induction is intriguing, but we would need to buy a lot of new pans. We'll stick with the GE Profile Performance gas cooktop/oven we have, in spite of its mediocre heat output.
snipped-for-privacy@panix.com (Dick Adams) wrote in news:jdah9a$b26$2 @reader1.panix.com:
Ummm, our gas furnace for heat doesn't work without electricity, nor does the cooking oven. The gas water heater does, as does the range.
I liked gas but when we moved here 35 years ago, we could not get it and cook with electric. My wife prefers the electric. We did have to replace the range about 10 years ago and a couple of years ago needed to replace the electrical panel which cost about $300. Oven cal-rods have needed replacement a few times on old and new ranges.
I do not like the ceramic surfaced electric ranges. My son has one and it looks scuffed. There is always the danger of cracking it.
This is always a Coke/Pepsi sort of argument. I started with gas for my first 35 years and was pushed into electric when I moved 30 years ago. Electric does seem to do better on slow cooking things (flat top, not coil). You just want to be sure not to get a white one. They will discolor pretty fast and never recover. The black one we have is easy to clean and I have not seen any of the problems people talk about. You do need flat bottom pans but we already had them. I agree you can't drop a cast iron skillet on one but there are lots of things that you shouldn't do.
BTW the reason commercial kitchens use gas is they cook hot and fast
99% of the time, never walking away from the range. That is not typical of most home cooks. Their pans stay moving, as does the food in them.
I don't but when forced to, I'd rather have a smooth-top electric. It's easier to keep clean. Don't go by me, though, because SWMBO just replaced our electric stove to a gas model (burners only). After 40 years of using an electric stove, she *loves* the gas stove top. The oven is still electric, though. Dual fuel gets the best of both.
Gas will still work when the power is out. can toast marshmallows can heat plates over the flame preferred by most professional cooks with good reason
Electric is slightly more efficient, but generally is more expensive to operate.
You will always get the "I had a xxx and it was hard to use". Cheap ranges will not work as well as good ranges no matter the fuel.
Consider an electric oven with gas top cooking too. Rather than a simple four burner grate, one that allows you to move a pot across it is handy to have.
I prefer gas top, electric oven. Kitchen stays cooler with electric oven.
Greg
I've had both. Both cooked about equally once i got used to the differences.
Something nobody's mentioned is health, especially if you have kids with allergies or respiratory ailments.
There are some good studies (though a bit old) that show consistently higher rates of minor respiratory illnesses with gas stoves.
Most others have said it, so I'll just jump on board:
Gas, without a question.
We grew up with gas and I've been lucky enough to always have had gas available. (It was a criteria when I was shopping for my house)
My parent's got stuck with electric when they moved back to their home town to take care of their parents. Their oven quit working over the Thanksgiving weekend and it was the tipping factor for my dad to start getting estimates to have gas run from the street, replace the oil burning furnace with a gas boiler and have gas run to the kitchen for a new stove.
He will not pay for parts to fix the electric range even after 20 years of "getting used to it".
I just got back from a trip to their house for Christmas and it was a pain cooking on the electric stove top. We were using every burner and as things were getting done or too hot, we couldn't just turn off/ lower the heat because of the delay in electric burners to cool down. Since all burners were being used, we had to put pots on hot plates. On a gas stove, we would have just turned the burners off/down and left the pots where they were.
I just switched to gas from smooth top electric and I like the gas better.
The main reason for the switch had nothing to do with cooking. I wanted the 50 amp 220v circuit for use as a back feed circuit for my emergency generator. I installed an interlock on the load center, and a power inlet box on the outside of the house. So it is safe, legal, and up to code.
Back to the stoves. I'd say the gas cooks a little better. Not a huge difference, but noticeable. If I had to put a number to it, I would say I like it 10 to 15% better. It is quicker to boil water and heat a large pot of soup. Also, the visual feedback of the flame size is nice.
I got a upper low end model with continuous grates and five sealed burners. Frigidaire Gallery Series Model FGGF3031KW. Plain white, no stainless steel and no convection oven.
It is a real luxury to be able to slide pots and pans on the cast iron grates; I had been babying the smooth top electric for four years.
After removing the grates, the sealed gas burners clean as easily as the glass top electric.
On the plus side, my pampering the glass top paid off. It still looked like new, and I sold on Craigslist for almost as much as I paid for it when it was new from Lowes.
One last drawback to the glass tops (or at least the GE stove that I owned) - replacing a ribbon (burner) costs almost as as much as the stove. Look before you leap.
GAS. PERIOD. Watch any TV cooking show. EVERY ONE OF THEM IS GAS. You can see gas. You can turn it right to the same level time after time. You can see to turn it up just a little, or down just a little. When you turn gas off, it is instantly off. With electric, it takes a while to cool off. Same for heating. Up just a little. Instant results. No guessing. I've cooked for a long time, and I cook well. I would never have anything but a gas STOVE. Oven don't make any difference. I currently have a 36" Bosch cooktop, but an electric double oven. Logistics is a main thing. Some places, you can't get natural gas, as with us. We had to buy a propane tank, but chose to do so instead of living with the crappy electric cooktop. Find one with the different sized burners, one being large in the center, and one with a simmer setting. People will argue for whatever they like. I've been cooking for more than fifty years, and I would not have anything but a gas range top.
Steve
Huh?
Electric: Burn gas > boil water > spin turbine > heat element > heat food.
Gas: Burn gas > heat food.
m
fwiw, they make single pan stand-alone induction units that look like hot plates, for a cupla hundred bucks. Require dedicated 15-20 A circuit. Seems nifty.
Gas range, electric convection oven, induction hot-plate.
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