[Sca-cooks] OOP: Stove info wanted

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

Hi!  Ok, here's my take.  I had one of those sealed-top glass things in
one rental home.  I knew going into it that I wouldn't like it, and I
ended up despising it.  It scratched so easily, it heated very unevenly,
you couldn't safely use things like cast iron on it, and if you boiled
over it flooded over the hot burner (and any other hot burners) burning
and reeking and making life difficult.  As for heating unevenly, this
may be a function of a cheaper one, but it didn't actually have
intensity settings.  It was on or off.  If you put it on high, it was on
all the time.  If you put it on anything lower, it cycled on and off in
some rhythm.  This made some delicate things difficult.

I am partial to gas stoves in general.  I used to say I would never like
an electric stove, but the Jenn-Aire that my new home came with has
changed my mind.  I don't know if they make them like this old one any
more.  If they do, I recommend it!  The burners aren't coils, they are
solid cast metal fully integrated into the stovetop, so there is no drip
pan underneath to get grungy.  They heat very evenly and quickly. The
only disadvantage is they don't cool down quickly.  They are really easy
to clean, like a sealed-top glass stove, but since they're not flush
with the stovetop they don't have the boil-over problem.  And, the
stovetop comes apart in pieces that you can replace or rearrange easily.
  The burners come in cartridges of two, one on the left and one on the
right, that plug in.  You can pull one cartridge out and replace it with
a grill or griddle.  Rather than a hood, it has a down-draft system in
the middle of the stove, which is great if you want to install it in an
island or any other place where a hood is difficult.  The down-draft fan
works really well for all but my tallest pots, but those tall pots
generally only create steam, not smoke.

Other than that, I love my convection oven.  I find it useful for almost
everything except cakes.  (It makes cakes lopsided.)

-Magdalena