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OK. As the original poster I'll add in here. I love my BlueStar. I did go with the big burners, and Im glad I did. I've sourced two woks, thrift store finds (months of searching, I'm picky), sizes vary by about 2 to 3 inches. Maybe 4. My wife works with some lovely people that have been instructing her on the finesse of Vietnamese eggrolls. With the woks and the BlueStar the results have been very nice. My wife, the baker, has adjusted to a gas oven. Great results. My recently acquired heavy Darto pan has become the implement of choice. It just gets better and better. I should have bought this years ago.

Definitely adjust the simmer burner. There are you tubes...very easy. Or ask the installer to do it I just have the 15 K burners which are plenty hot for any cooking I do. Certainly hotter than what's in a Chinese home range where lots of woks are used.

As others have noted, this has been an informative thread - thanks all! I just purchased a new 30" open-burner RCS - pedestrian by Bluestar's standards, but quite the dream of mine. I'm looking forward to getting it installed in 2 weeks or so after we get some other work done for a backsplash and hood. It will be perversely amusing seeing a kick-ass range like that in our shabby old kitchen... function over form, baby! Maybe we'll rehab the kitchen once we put the kids through college and with luck the Bluestar will still be kicking by then. Any info or tips on the current Bluestar RCS or parts are appreciated. Sounds like I'll want to give some attention to adjusting the simmer burner at least. I'm interested in the "DIY 22K Burner" option that others have mentioned. Seems like the 18K/22K burners are still available online without a serial number and the orifice is a standard part, unless something has changed recently. I could easily live with "just" the 15K burners but having a single 22K sounds awfully enticing for stir-fry work. If anyone has, like... burned their house down - or racked up a huge repair bill - that would be nice to know. I'm not sold on it either way yet. We'll have a relatively modest 450 CFM hood running at 28" above the stove, but I can't see us running more than a single burner at full blast. It's rare I have more than two pots on the stove in the first place, especially if I'm stir-frying. I'm also looking ahead to replacing my old 14" flat-bottom wok with a mix of excitement and sorrow. My girlfriend (now wife of 20+ years) and I mail-ordered that wok from The Wok Shop back in college. Ah... the days of putting a check in an envelope. The wok is the oldest pan in our kitchen. But I've got to get a round-bottom wok to use those fancy new burners, right? Do Bluestar wokkers go with a 14" or 16"? Or even something bigger? Seems like the burners should handle a 16" (especially at 22K), which would be convenient when stir-frying for bigger groups though it probably doesn't leave much space on other burners. I could maybe do both a 14" and a 16" round. Storage space isn't that tight here. Can't wait to cook on this thing.

Re boiling water for pasta. You don't need heat two gallons for a few servings of noodles, a couple quarts is usually enough. The traditional advice to use mass quantities of water is just wrong. Accomplishes nothing. The pasta doesn't know how much water is in the pot. And the big pot wastes fuel, salt and water. So if you need a wok burner only to boil water...

I don't own a blue star, but I have a GE with one larger burner, about 21k and it does come in useful for boiling water for pasta and wok cooking. That said, I looked into various options like a 3/4 inch gas pipe and a professional range before coming to the conclusion I was being a bit crazy. The reason I am posting is to caution you about going around manufacturers guidelines to save a few bucks. Part of what talked me out of the professional stove was looking into various fire codes and ordinances. When you start to tinker with a range you at a minimum void any warranty, you may also void your home owners insurance if you have a fire. I would proceed with caution.

As the wonderful cook @liuzhou has mentioned elsewhere, when the question was about home wok burners, basically no one in China has a burner anywhere near the equivalent of a wok burner in their home. How much time (provided you don't burn the shit out of it, or evaporate it completely) is someone saving making a pan sauce because she has a 22K BTU burner on her stove? You're not in a restaurant kitchen; you're home, where cooking ought be pleasurable, not performed as if you're in the weeds. And yes, I've worked in a restaurant kitchen. Personally, a 24" fridge would drive me crazy; in our tiny NYC apartment, I was very adamant with our architect about wanting a 33" full depth fridge, and got one.

Thanks for all the responses. Some good questions here. Incinerating a cow? I might need a bigger hood over the range. How often do we wok? If we had the heat output we might a little bit more. I've been doing the majority of the renovations on the house myself. We've gone low cost in some areas with the expectation that we could put those savings into some upgrades. Lower cost: Ikea kitchen cabinets, bathroom cabinets (got creative there), bathroom sink. "Splurged" on some Ikea undercounted lighting, wifi enabled. Local builders store shower pan and surround, Did the plumbing modifications myself, with the exception of the gas line extension (safety). Haggled for best deals on the other appliances, did pretty well there. Lots of painting, interior renovations, etc. Possibilities of a large deck that'll hang off the back of the house, maybe 300sqft. All said lots of changes, but not so much money involved. That said, there are $$$ in the bucket for the range that I'd like to have in the house. It'll (hopefully) be my last one. If you've ever worked in a well equipped restaurant kitchen you'll understand that the power burners are the ones most used. Makes fast and easy work of cooking, with all of the adjustments you need. I'm thinking I could be happy with the base RCS, 15k burners. Going down the rabbit hole of mumkin's links it looks like with a little bit of chicanery and a couple of hundred dollars I could save eight hundred and have higher output. Still looking for input....I've not placed the order as yet. Thanks all.

Ignoring brands, I sear in cast iron pans on my 16k burner very successfully. I'm curious if to know you use a wok often enough to need the 22k?

I have a Blue Star 6 burner in the lowest price grade..culinary, I think. I love it. Puts out a ton of heat. A wok ring would intensify the already hot burners. The broiler is nuclear powered hot. My only complaint is that the simmer is too high, even on the simmer burner. I need a eat diffuser and even then its a little hotter than I want. Overall I love it

I've been cooking on my Bluestar Platinum for about 5 years now, and about 90% of my cooking is in a wok. I have woks from 12" to 18" but I do 90% of my cooking on either a 13" or 14" wok. It won't be a problem to keep a 16" wok very hot, but you will have interference issues with other burners which you won't be able to use. I use the 18" mostly for steaming or boiling and only rarely for frying but again the limiting factor will interference with other burners - the Capitol wok burner is set off by itself to avoid this problem. I enjoy cooking on my Bluestar, which has been a game changer over my old Viking, but it's not perfect. The issue for me isn't so much power - its sufficient - as the way the wok fits in the burner, and to a lesser extent the dispersed shape of the flame. The burner basically engulfs the wok, which sits deep inside the burner, making it very, very difficult to move or toss the wok while you're cooking. If you look at a more traditional chinese kitchen setup, the wok sits much more shallowly atop a thinner rim, so that there is much less friction between the wok and the stove, allowing you to toss much more easily - almost impossible on the Bluestar. So the Bluestar can cook almost anything, but you won't be able to use traditional Chinese technique, and you'll have to toss the food by scooping it with a spatula, rather than using a ladle/spoon to help toss it with wok action. This isn't the end of the world, but if Bluestar understood how people cook, this could be easily fixed by changing the design of the grate so that it could cradle the wok rather than allow it to sit inside. Given Bluestar's lack of interest in improving the product, I've thought about trying to get a better grate forged myself, but haven't been able to put that together yet. A smaller problem with the burner, and one more difficult to fix, is that it would be better if all the heat were concentrated in the center of the wok, rather than dispersed in the star pattern. It's pretty clear that the ability to cook in a wok on the Bluestar is just a happy coincidence, and they don't seem very interested in trying to understand Chinese cooking technique - they could sell a lot more of these to Chinese-Americans if they understood how people cook, but their marketing is much more oriented towards Food TV type celebrities, and the only Chinese cooking videos I've ever seen on their site are by people who don't really seem to know how to cook Chinese food. Don't get me wrong, the Bluestar is still a very good choice for a Chinese cook, and will allow you to cook very good food in your home that the rest of the world can only eat in restaurants, but it could be much, much better with just a little effort if Bluestar cared to deal with these issues. The Bluestar griddle is another example of this tone-deafness, and clearly designed by people who never used the product to cook actual food. It's total crap, and has long been in storage and maybe tossed out at some point without me missing it. It just doesn't work, and increases the risk of grease fire markedly since it doesn't have a proper grease trap. Instead I use the largest De Buyer oval pan, which gives me an acceptable flat surface area, with less risk of fire, but still no grease trap so it needs to be drained manually (with spoon or by tipping) during cooking. Not really ideal.

Just to obsess a bit more about the Capital: I am wondering about the wok cooktop configuration. I never stir fry in a wok and though owning such a stove may inspire me, I'm mainly interesting in being able to sear meat and to quickly boil and deglaze. The Bluestar offers two 22K burners as opposed to the Capital's four 19K burners. The Capital counters with the 25K central wok burner. Presumably one can use that wok burner for other functions, but doesn't the protruding skillet handle render one or two other burners unusable? And is there enough room on that cooktop for a big central pan, plus two other large pans, say, on the periphery? I'd love to be able to bring my pans and check it out in person somewhere.

I'd say that sticking with BlueStar is a wise decision -- straight-forward design, superior burners, no electronics to fail, very easy to work on by any qualified technician (or advanced homeowner, and not that they need repairs often), and so on. One problem with the Capital is the burner design. As some may know, when Fisher Paykel purchased DCS the original owners left the company and started Capital Cooking Equipment Inc. And if you look at Capital's product line, it's basically the same as DCS, including the burner design. What's the problem with DCS burner? From BlueStar's website, the David Rosengarten review: If in fact Capital's and DCS's burners are as similar as they appear, I'd say that BlueStar's 22k burner is equal, if not superior, to Capital's 25k wok burner. Of course, the proof is in the pudding umm.. wok hay!

I have a Bluestar cooktop and I'm in love with it. However, if I was in the market for a 30" range, I would definitely take a look at the Capital 30" range. It can be configured with a high output wok burner (25k) and the simmer burners go down to 800 degrees. I've heard good things about the broiler, and it's got a built-in rotisserie. Check it out here.

If you're looking at a double oven, you might consider this Samsung Flex Duo gas oven. It's expensive, but flexible in that it can be two ovens or one. I have an older electric version of this. What I like about it is that a partition can be added or removed to allow one to make 2 small oven compartments or a single 5.8 cu. ft. oven. What I don't like about mine is that it has a single door, so that both oven compartments lose heat when you open the door. Samsung has solved that problem in its later models with a specially articulated door so that you can open only the top or open the entire door as one. The handle latch seems to be foolproof. There are other pros and cons that I'll explain if anyone asks. My best friend bought the single-chamber version of this oven earlier this year and is delighted with it so far. The hottest burner is plenty hot for the stir-frying that they commonly do, and theirs came with a wok cradle. (The single-oven version was about $1000 less than this dual-chamber version. I'd probably have paid the extra grand, considering the baking that I do, but to them it wasn't worth it.) They hated their previous smooth-top stove, and I haven't heard any complaints about cleaning this gas stove top.

In the midst (well, the beginning) of a full gut kitchen renovation, I have done a fair amount of research on appliances. One of the kicks I got out of researching ranges is how much attention is paid to burner BTUs. From salespeople to literature, how high can they go?! Certainly it's interesting that not as much attention is paid to ventilation, which is a huge thing in my book. If you're cooking with 4 18,000 BTU burners cranked up all the way, you better be venting some major CFMs, don't you think? As one who cooks a fair amount at home, I often wonder - who the hell needs all these BTUs for home cooking? Sure, sure, I get it - to wok cook properly, crank it up to 80K. But do it outside. For me, I gotta think 15K BTU burners are plenty. And now that I found out I can do some interesting things in our NYC apartment vis-a-vis ventilation, I'm thrilled.

I have the Bluestar Platinum with the 25K BTU burners, and I now find it difficult to cook on other stoves. I had also considered a Capital range, which as far as I know is the only other range available in the US with 25K BTU burners, but I preferred the Bluestar for the "Garland" shaped burners and the ability to fit a wok into a burner without a ring. While the Platinum burners are excellent, the oven is much less so, and some elements of the range design are ridiculous to the point of un-useability (i.e., I find the griddle absolutely worthless and for aesthetic purposes only because of the lack of real grease traps), and I have found Bluestar's customer service unresponsiveness to be horrible. If I had it to do over again I would consider a Capital range, or if I had enough space just go with the Bluestar cooktop (which is really better for Chinese cooking which I do a lot of), and put in a Rational or other good oven system (i.e., Wolf, Capital).

Yesterday I saw some of this stuff in person, we have a good showroom nearby. I told the sales guy what I was looking for: 30" range, gas only, reliable, with at least one high-BTU burner... "high" being negotiable... everything else open to discussion. I told him my price range was up to $6k for a range and a new hood, but obviously, didn't want to spend more than I had to. He had a strong preference for the Wolf GR304, which they did have a good price on due to one a manufacturer incentive. ($4335) It's a no-frills unit with one big burner, a convention oven, and an IR broiler. He was emphatic that Wolf was the more reliable choice among the low-end high-end. Interestingly he also thought the Wolf was easier to clean, but when I look up Wolf vs Bluestar discussions, that never seems to be the case. This Wolf also has black enamel interior, so if the blue enamel chipping problem is still a thing, I wouldn't have to worry about that. I also looked at the Bluestar RCS while I was there. The GR304 has more features than the RCS, but at least I could see the Bluestar open burners in person finally. And I have to say, I really liked the way the Bluestar was put together, and the shape of the burners, how it looks like it'd be easier to clean, AND the bigger oven. They had that Samsung with the split door too, which looked like a good value, but it's available in dual fuel only. I am not interested in adding electric service right now, so that's out. The sales guy also said that while the Samsungs are not unreliable, "if something goes wrong, good luck" getting service. As long as I am talking about this much dough, I don't think I am interested in the Bluestar RCS because I'd miss both the simmer and wok burner. Right now it feels like it's between the Wolf GR304 and the Bluestar RNB. I asked for a quote on the RNB, though I guess it's just going to be the price I see online everywhere. For hoods, I was steered to the Zephyr Typhoon, which did seem nice. It will work with my existing cabinets/ducting, it's quiet, and will move 850 CFM. I had been thinking I wanted a hood with baffles though, and the Zephyr has a different kind of grease trap. If anyone has experience with this hood I would love to know about it; the claims are very appealing. This is a tough decision!

We really love our Lacanche. They have several options for cooktops. We have a ‘French top” which is an 18k burner with a large solid cast iron plate over the burner, with a cutout circle in which you can put the included wok ring. With the cutout in place, it is great for things like big pots of tomato sauce or stacks. There are also several options for the other burners including one that gets very low. It comes in a 28” version, with either one oven and storage drawer or an oven and a smaller second broiler oven. We have a gas range with electric convection ovens and love it. I also like that there is minimal technology involved. No computer electronics, just excellent build quality to last a lifetime. And it comes in lots of cool colors, if that matters to you - was not part of our decision to go with this range, but I do like the look of the blue in our kitchen.

It's been a while, anyone have something new to share in the hunt for the ideal range? My oven just started stinking up the house with gas. I am sure it can be repaired, but since it's a 30 year old builder special, I am considering this an opportunity to upgrade. I'm looking for a 30" unit which should include a high-output wok burner. I'm flexible on other features and price, but reliability is critical to me. (Baker-friendly features would be a bonus, my wife likes to bake but she is not a gearhead like me!) I've read that BlueStar is good, though you can expect to need to calibrate the oven and replace igniters on the range, though these are also said to be jobs you can do with just a screwdriver. As far as hardware store brands go I like the look of the dual-oven-zone Samsung that was posed upthread. I'm not opposed to getting something "boring" like Samsung or GE if it meets my needs.

I have just installed a blue star 36" cooktop and I am in love . Although there is only one dealer in Canada I know of (in Montreal) gas ranges should not need much servicing if any IMHO. As Marya says, you just take out the grate of the high output front burner and most decent sized woks will sit nicely in the hole just above the burner. I have in the past week cooked some of my best stir fries ever on this burner. And the simmer burner kept a 2 qt saucepan at a real simmer with no tweaking of the flame.

Sometimes, an object which does everything does none of them very well. High-heat wok-cooking was so important to me that it was distorting the whole selection process. After a great deal of research, I decided that a red-hot wok was best relegated to outdoors: much higher heat and less mess inside. Indoors, I have a 36" dual-fuel Wolf range - great burner control,self cleaning oven with a "stone" mode for baking bread. Outdoors, I have a 60,000+BTU wok burner that I can also use for deep frying, lobster steaming, and other messy tasks such as browning meat for braises. This burner cost me $60 (the wok was $9) and produces results that I doubt I could ever achieve on an inside burner: Bill/SFNM

I neglected to mention that my rangetop is fueled with propane and the unit came propane-ready from the plant, thus giving me the full 22,000btu's and no loss in power. And as C.sapidus mentioned, a powerful hood is a must. I have a 900cfm Vent-a-hood that's 54"x27". The three extra inches all around allow for smoke-free grilling and wok cooking.

"So, here are things I'm looking for and hopefully someone can give me some advice: 1) Prefer a stove that can handle a low simmer and getting a wok red hot. 2) Continuous grate (or some other option) that makes moving pots and pans to the different burners easily. 3) Easy clean up - maybe a tray that can be pulled out and wiped, etc. 4) Wok ring option would be fantastic." I went with a BlueStar for all the same reasons. 1. It has a 350 BTU simmer burner(one of the lowest in the industry). 2. The movement of pots is very easy from grate to grate, at least front to back (the other two burners are at the opposite end with grill and griddle in between.) 3. It has easy to clean open burners and two pull out trays. 4. It does not need a wok ring. You simply flip over one of two 22,000BTU burner grates and the wok recesses into the open fire creating a lot of heat to stir-fry. 5. The burners are the same ones that Garland used for their now defunct semi-pro ranges. They are pretty awesome.

I have a Wolf 48 in. (6 burners and a grill). I got the S-grates. There is a wok option, and the simmer is sweet (500 BTU I think? v low). I think it maxes at 15K BTUs at the top end so not as hot as some others, but fine for my purposes. My convection oven is the bee's knees, I am extremely happy with it. My second (smaller) oven runs cool but that's not a big deal. Here is the range: And a closeup of the S-grates, which I love. Edited for photo codes.

Ah, boy can I weigh in on this one. I JUST replaced and electric drop in range with a new DCS 6 burner gas. I did considerable research before this purchase and am pretty confident that the DCS was the best for me. The DCS has a wok ring as an available option, and a 17.5k btu, they are the largest residential burner outputs on the market. The eyes are a sort of 2 stage thing. They claim that when you are simmering only one stage is operational, which makes that very low simmer possible. I made a huge pot of chicken stock last weekend and the simmer worked great for me. The grates are continuous from front to back for 2 burners, but not side to side. Still, the grates are touching side to side, so you get the same effect. Although the oven is gas, not electric, it does come standard with a convection fan. For a 36 inch, 6 burner, you are looking at over 5K for the price. I've had this new range for about 2 weeks now. Previous to the electric range from hell, I cooked on Wolf commercial ranges over more than 10 years and two houses. This isn't a commercial Wolf, but I'm EXTREMELY happy with it.