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How bad is my gas stove?

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Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#461

Post by amluto »

jmu1234567890 wrote: post #456
amluto wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently bought a Polyscience/Breville Control Freak, and I’m increasingly convinced this is the future. It heats dramatically faster than a supposedly high end gas stove I compared it to despite being a lowly 1.6kW or so device. (Gas stoves are stupendously inefficient. That 15kBTU/hr stove may well deliver 15kBTU/hr to the air but not to your pan.). It heats quite evenly. And best of all, it has closed loop tempe…

The problem with that is, how do I use it under a range hood?

Put it on your stove. It looks dumb but it works fine.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#462

Post by seanmcdirmid »

GuB-42 wrote: post #460
clusterfish wrote: post #122

Apparently unpopular opinion: despite growing up with gas stoves and cooking every day I do not find them any better at it than decent electric ones (not talking about induction). Granted, my kitchen is not Michelin rated, but I have no idea what fancy temperature control people are constantly raving over with gas. Electric has a bit of thernal inertia, yes. If you cooked more than a few times on your own, you know w…

I hated my old electric stove, took forever to heat up, and forever to cool down. Thermal inertia was a problem because I am not Michelin rated, when it is too hot or too cold, I like being able to fix my mistake quickly. I have a gas stove now, and being able to turn a knob when my pan is about to overflow and have it instantly settle down is nice. I think there are some nice electric stoves that use infrared heatin…

> Another problem with cheap electric stoves (especially induction) is that a lot of them have absolutely terrible capacitive switches that work half of the time. I never had this issue with knobs on a gas stove, even the cheap ones.

I didn't think people were using electric stoves to be a superset of induction stoves. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a cheap inductive stove, and the break down (where I live) is: low end - electric stoves, mid end - gas stoves, high end - induction stoves. Induction just has a lot of advantages in speed and cleanup.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#463

Post by artificialLimbs »

dionidium wrote: post #402
JasonFruit wrote: post #386

Well, that was a nice read. Now I'm going to go cook lunch on the woodstove. To me, not everything is about safety and health; some things are about what my family likes . We like to work together cutting wood and stacking it for the winter. We like the feel of wood heat. My kids are proud that they can cook on an appliance most people never even attempt. We like the feeling of a tie to the past, that we're doing tas…

> I'd rather live the way I want to live, and I'm not really bothered if my happiness cuts ten years off my life; I'd prefer seventy years of living to eighty years of not dying. This is a mis-framing of the relevant tradeoffs. Your options aren't a truncated life of joy vs. a longer life of asceticism. The tradeoff might instead be that one of your kids gets asthma and suffers with the condition for their entire lif…

This is what you fantasize about for everyone at the drive through at mcdonalds? You utopian idealists ruin everything with your fanaticism.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#464

Post by mwint »

maxwell86 wrote: post #448
542458 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very bizarre to me how you can get very inexpensive single burner countertop induction plates ($50-100), but multi-burner built-in cooktops are dramatically more expensive ($1000-4000). Anybody know why this is?

The professional machines don’t look nice, don’t have fancy buttons or electronics. They are not fashion items for fancy looking kitchens. Instead, They are practical. They have insane power (4.5kW is low range… and it goes directly into the pan…). They are easy to clean, and they have physical knobs: one for on/off, and a dial for power, which they display in a cheap display in kWs.

Any pointers on where a residential customer could get one of these?

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#465

Post by lultimouomo »

pkulak wrote: post #403
samwillis wrote: post #110

To anyone considering switching to an induction hob and hearing anecdotal stories of how some people don’t think they are “as hot” or “slower” than gas. I guarantee these are all related to the pans being used. It is of upmost importance that you get a really good set of pans “designed” for induction. We have found “tri-ply” stainless steel pans work really well, better than on gas. Cast iron is also brilliant, I inh…

My favorite way to show people how my induction stove works is to put some cold water in a kettle, pop it on a "burner", then turn it to "power boost". You can instantly see tiny bubbles forming on the bottom, and 20 seconds later it's at a rolling boil so intense you fear it may explode. I have no idea how anyone can say induction is slower than gas. And on the other end, low will slowly melt chocolate or heat a hol…

All the induction stoves I've tried, here in the EU, are great at boiling one pot of water. They suck at everything else.

E.g. want to boil two pots of water in parallel? No can do - after warming up seemingly forever you will have one pot boiling for 5 seconds, then stopping and letting the other pot boil for five seconds, and so on.

I want to love induction - no gas pipes, so much easier to clean, so much better for air quality - but the regular stuff you can buy in stores just isn't there yet. Just the fact that they use a plug which can carry at most 3kW should be enough proof that you cannot use them for serious cooking.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#466

Post by [deleted] »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #463
dionidium wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather live the way I want to live, and I'm not really bothered if my happiness cuts ten years off my life; I'd prefer seventy years of living to eighty years of not dying. This is a mis-framing of the relevant tradeoffs. Your options aren't a truncated life of joy vs. a longer life of asceticism. The tradeoff might instead be that one of your kids gets asthma and suffers with the condition for their entire lif…

This is what you fantasize about for everyone at the drive through at mcdonalds? You utopian idealists ruin everything with your fanaticism.

[deleted]

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#467

Post by [deleted] »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #463
dionidium wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather live the way I want to live, and I'm not really bothered if my happiness cuts ten years off my life; I'd prefer seventy years of living to eighty years of not dying. This is a mis-framing of the relevant tradeoffs. Your options aren't a truncated life of joy vs. a longer life of asceticism. The tradeoff might instead be that one of your kids gets asthma and suffers with the condition for their entire lif…

This is what you fantasize about for everyone at the drive through at mcdonalds? You utopian idealists ruin everything with your fanaticism.

[deleted]

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#468

Post by aemreunal »

maxwell86 wrote: post #167
aemreunal wrote: post #16

I enjoy cooking a lot and I cooked on gas stoves, electric ones (the ones that have those red hot spiral things under a glass) and top-of-the-line induction ones. In my opinion (and probably many restaurants' opinions from what I can see through their reactions on bans for gas appliances in new buildings), a gas stove is just unmatched in how much easier and better it makes cooking. I totally get the desire to switch…

> I totally get the desire to switch to electric appliances for many reasons, but I am yet to meet an electric stove of any kind that I remotely enjoyed cooking on. Is this everyone's experience? We bought a profesional induction plate, 4.5kW, 100$ on ebay. Performance wise, its ~4x better than the 4kW gas stove it replaced. The time required to heat 50L of water to 60C went down from 60min with gas to about 10-15 mi…

> What kind of cooking do you prefer doing on a gas stove over an induction stove?

I haven't cooked much on induction stoves. I only do so at my parents' place. So among the few things I cooked on both induction and stove, I know I prefer gas for cooking steaks and making scrambled eggs.

I know part of my frustration is with the touch controls, though, and I presume some of it is due to my lack of intuition with what setting is good for what sort of "cooking I want to apply to food".

I do agree with one of the replies to your comment, though: it seems like everyone just talks about how good induction is at boiling water and not much else specifically. I have an electric kettle for that job so it's not some alluring aspect to me.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#469

Post by thurn »

aulin wrote: post #418
thurn wrote: post #360

What kind of air quality monitor is being used here? I've been looking for a good one to purchase for myself, would be good to get one with N02 capability.

Any cheap sensor (electrochemical? single electrode or even dual) sold for amateur use is unlikely to provide any useful measurement, especially if you want to draw any conclusion about concentrations exceeding safety limits like the author is doing. They are a pain to calibrate, the absolute values you get cannot be trusted, the most you can use them for is to say something about trends and spikes. "Look the gas sto…

Hm, so you'd dispute uHoo's claim of "±20 ppb or ±10% of actual value" for their NO2 sensor?

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#470

Post by thurn »

garrettgrimsley wrote: post #398
thurn wrote: post #360

What kind of air quality monitor is being used here? I've been looking for a good one to purchase for myself, would be good to get one with N02 capability.

I reached out to the author and they're using an uHoo Smart Air Monitor and will be writing a review of it in the future. Most reviews of air quality monitors seem to focus on details like the size of the screen, or whether the monitor app is easy to use, and fail to actually test the accuracy of monitor itself. Hopefully this author's review is different. See this EPA testing table for some measures of accuracy: htt…

So, there are basically no consumer products on this table that have a respectable accuracy, right? The ones with good R² values all seem to be $1000+ scientific tools.
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