Gas or electric stove? What is the flex?

Yeah, it’s counter intuitive that turning the burner up doesn’t heat the food faster, but once the flame is larger than the pot, you’re just wasting heat, and you might even be sending less to the pot than if the edge of the flame was all underneath it.

We have gas and I have to partially agree with Twig. It does get noticeably hotter close to the pot than electric, but I haven’t noticed more heat in the rest of the kitchen. We have 3 burner sizes and all our pots fit without the flame extending past the bottom of even the tiniest pot, but the pot handles get much hotter than with any electric stove I’ve owned. I have to use a potholder to remove the lid and/or move the pot and I didn’t have to do that with electric. IMO, gas is superior in every other way, so I just keep potholders handy.

Our current house came with a glass top stove that was scratched to hell. I would never buy a non-induction one after that experience. We converted to gas after a few years. Inductions sounds cool, so I would consider that if a future house didn’t have gas as an easy option. Our house had a gas line running a few feet away, so it was a simple conversion.

Also, they’ve made huge advances in how easy it is to clean a gas range. My first one was a bitch to clean. Food would fall into cracks where it was really had to get it out, and even the accessible places had crannies that were hard to get at. My current one is very easy to clean. Probably not as easy as a sheet of glass, although there’s a trade-off between needing special tools and needing to lift the grates. But it’s easy enough.

All my friends with induction love it. The heat is actually created in the base of the pan, so there really isn’t any leakage except what radiates out the top. On high, it’s extremely powerful, but you can also turn it low. I love my current range, and have no plans to replace it until it fails. But if i were getting a stove in a vacuum, I’d probably get induction.

It doesn’t work at all with a wok, though. And I’d need to replace a few pans, like my nice anodized aluminum omelet pan.

I don’t have the option for gas in my house. My cooktop is the glass kind but it was used when we bought it so I’m not picky about how it looks. Hubby used to be super careful about using the special cleaner but I don’t get it. Unless you are using something abrasive how will your cleaner damage the glass? I usually just wipe it with water but if it needs more I use Thieves and a soft cloth.

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When I had the glass top, I didn’t buy the special cleaner. I made do with Bon Ami and the scrubby side of a sponge and I never had problems and I never had scratches. I loved it.

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Yeah, I’m not sure what the prior owners used. We didn’t use special cleaner and it didn’t get any worse. It was a white stove and between that and the scratching, it never looked clean.

I think we have a Kenmore gas range, not 100% sure and too lazy to walk down there right now. It has a glass base and the burners fit very tightly against it. And then on top of that sit the metal grates that you cook on. So to clean it I just remove the grates, clean the glass, and put the grates back. Oh, and clean the grates if they are dirty as well.

It’s not very difficult and doesn’t take much time. I can often just clean it with a wet paper towel, sometimes I use a melamine sponge (aka Magic Eraser) since I bought 50 on Amazon.

The “unless” is a condition that is not always followed. I think people use Soft Scrub on them and that is mildly abrasive. Or they’ll use an abrasive sponge.

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ITT I realized that I basically don’t care what my stove top looks like anymore.

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I’ve come to the realization that you guys would really argue about anything.

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Just now?? :joy:

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Well, the stove sure, with a lighter. But not the oven, as it is set electronically, which requires electricity. Would be nice to have a recharging battery included in the oven settings.
Our power can go out. Due to high winds, it might go out tomorrow, requiring us to cook the turkey on the grill somehow. Lucky I have two spare propane tanks.

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I’m with Twig on this one. I strongly prefer electric to gas but for one simple reason. My spouse is extremely careless and having an open flame in the kitchen would mean the house would burn down. I had to put a fire out in the bathroom one time because they thought it was a good idea to elevate a tea light inside of a candle holder with tissue paper.

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Yeah, it doesn’t seem like the thermostat can use that much electricity. Having a rechargeable battery backup so you can use the oven in a power failure seems like it would be a very marketable feature of gas ranges. I’ve never heard of that though. Perhaps the exposure to heat is a problem for batteries.

Little hand grabbing at the knobs could be worse with a gas stove.

In my house we prefer to heat tortillas over the fire. Nothing else works as well for the result desired. And that is the end of discussion in our house. That we waited 12 years to convert to gas is due to my reluctance to put in a gas line from one corner of the house diagonally to the other corner.

What is the flex?

The Flex Duo is a divider you put into the oven’s single cavity that divides it into two separate cooking zones , so you have the flexibility of being able to cook two dishes at different temperatures at the same time without the investment of a built-in double oven.

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Being that even my nice double oven doesn’t cook two separate things at the same time very well, I’d be reluctant to bother trying to do it in a single oven.

I confess to occasionally roasting a marshmallow over the gas burner. :wink:

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