Deciding what you need - range/stove

[gfweb]

@Shelby Blue Star is at the low end of high end. I forget the name of their budget line, but its at their website. And there is zero electrical stuff except the fan in the oven and the igniters.

[weinoo]

You are in a quandary.

 

I think the only gas ranges with basically zero electronics are that Blue Star and the Wolf I bought at the high end, and some other really low end stuff that'll just drive you crazy.

[weinoo]

Check this out, @Shelby

 

Lehman's

 

http://products.geappliances.com/appliance/gea-specs/JGBS04PPMWW

Edited March 29, 2018 by weinoo (log)

[MelissaH]

My dual fuel GE Monogram is 12 years old. It has electronic igniters, electronic fan, and (of course) electric oven. But it looks like newer versions have added more electronics.

[weinoo]

More:

 

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Premier-30-in-3-91-cu-ft-Battery-Spark-Ignition-Gas-Range-in-White-BFK100OP/203358112

 

https://bensdiscountsupply.com/ranges-stoves/gas-ranges/off-the-grid-propane-or-natural-gas-ranges/

 

This one looks kinda cool...https://www.amazon.com/Thor-Kitchen-Freestanding-Professional-Convection/dp/B0100A3H54/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=appliances&ie=UTF8&qid=1512115341&sr=1-4&keywords=gas+range&linkCode=sl1&tag=coastpc-20&linkId=58514478265b3eed05beab8e27befb0a

 

https://www.amazon.com/NXR-DRGB3001-Pro-Style-Convection-Stainless/dp/B00NN13VAY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1474267243&sr=8-1&keywords=NXR+Professional+DRGB3001&linkCode=sl1&tag=coastpc-20&linkId=8842905614566b5c819fe887d2fc01f0

[gfweb]

Re NXR ranges.We looked at them a couple years ago...bad reviews, lots of breakdowns. Apparently this is still going-on according to the Costco site.

[Shelby]

Many thanks for all the input!  I will be researching and these links are very useful.

 

@weinoo--I love the look of some of those from Lehman's......I'm primitive, but not wood burning stove primitive lol.  Seriously, thanks for all of the links.  

[gfweb]

@Shelby AJ Madison has better reviews of NXR. Maybe they cleaned up their act.

[TechieTechie]

Shelby and Quiet, I would suggest first thinking thru what are your requirements and why and the importance of the requirement (folks often miss the 2nd and 3rd parts)...then find the solution (this is where my Techie background comes in). Or, said another way, how do you cook now,  how often do you cook that way, what are those "I Hate this XYZ moments', and what do you want to cook (or how to cook) more of in the future (current state requirements, pain points, and future state requirements, in my lingo). Most people just jump right to a solution, based upon other's recommendations, but it can be a recipe (no pun intended) for disaster, particularly with a major purchase.

 

For example

 

-I regularly stir fry, canning or want boiling water at lighting speed (High priority solution = 22k BTUs burners, medium priority, 15k burner)

-I do lot of candy making or cook delicate sauces regularly (excellent simmer control, solution = probably not induction)

-I cook sourdourgh boules 6x a a year (solution = steam oven)

-I only cook basic pies, cakes and cookies, usually small batches (solution = plane old gas oven, well regulated, can be smaller size).

-I want to be able to cook massive amounts of cookies on a weekend (solution = either double oven or an oven big enough to fit full sheet pans)

-I need to be able to cook 2 things at two different temperatures at any given time. High priority solution = dual oven . Low Priority (maybe only at the holidays) then maybe 1 oven in the stove and 1 portable/countertop oven that can be stored in the basement is enough.

 

You get my drift....

 

Once you have your requirements and the importance/priority of the requirements (3 = must have, 2 = nice to have, 1 = can live without) look them over again. You should have a 30/30/30 ish type of split in your requirements (if they are all 3s, get ready to spend a bazillion dolloars and have your expectations dashed, because no one product is the tops at everything...it's all about compromising on the things that are not must haves). Once you have your requirements nailed, narrowing down the type of stove becomes a lot easier (you want a stove that hits all your 3s and a lot of the 2s). Particularly because we each have different requirements, so the stove that may be a good fit for me may not be a good fit for you!  Then, once you have found the top contenders, try to cook on them (testing). You'll know pretty quickly if your defined reality (aka requirements) are actually met by the tool (oops, stove). You will probably even identify more things you want/don't want when doing the testing (or things are more/less important that you initially identified).

 

The other thing you can do is keep a notebook by your stove for the next few weeks. Jot down likes and dislikes as you go....will help with the requirements.

 

This can be done with any major purchase.  Techie signing off now. I will bill you all later

 

 

 

 

Edited April 2, 2018 by TechieTechie (log)

[paulraphael]

If I were buying a range and had the budget, high quality open burners would be close to the top of my list. I like a lot of power from a range, and BTU figures only tell part of the story. Even the best sealed burner designs send much of the heat energy to the edges of the pan and way beyond. Good open burners send the fire straight up. More even heating, and more of the energy gets to the food. Look up videos for Bluestar's burners; you'll get the idea. 

 

I'd also look for a very powerful, well designed broiler, like the infra red top broilers on Wolf and Bluestar.

 

A friend of mine has a 48" Wolf (from before the acquisition by Sub Zero) that has both a griddle and "char broiler" grill on top. When the char broiler broke down, an authorized repair guy spent the afternoon scraping burnt-on gunk from its bowels. My friend asked how to keep it from happening again. Repair guy said, "Sir, you shouldn't grill inside the house."

 

So this is a feature I'd pass on.

 

Edited April 2, 2018 by paulraphael (log)

[gfweb]

3 minutes ago, paulraphael said:

If I were buying a range and had the budget, high quality open burners would be close to the top of my list. I like a lot of power from a range, and BTU figures only tell part of the story. Even the best open burner designs send much of the heat energy to the edges of the pan and way beyond. Good open burners send the fire straight up. More even heating, and more of the energy gets to the food. Look up videos for Bluestar's burners; you'll get the idea. 

 

I'd also look for a very powerful, well designed broiler, like the infra red top broilers on Wolf and Bluestar.

 

A friend of mine has a 48" Wolf (from before the acquisition by Sub Zero) that has both a griddle and "char broiler" grill on top. When the char broiler broke down, an authorized repair guy spent the afternoon scraping burnt-on gunk from its bowels. My friend asked how to keep it from happening again. Repair guy said, "Sir, you shouldn't grill inside the house."

 

So this is a feature I'd pass on.

 

The broiler on my Bluestar is nuclear powered, I think. It's HOT.  And the open burners are almost self-cleaning , besides being  quick to heat up a pan.  The oven is big enough for a full sheet pan. It's more expensive than a GE, but at the low end of fancyass stoves. I think I paid about 5,000 for their low end model. 

[tikidoc]

We put in a LaCanche when we redid our kitchen a couple of years ago. We have been very happy with it. We have a gas cooktop and electric ovens with convection, one full width, and one narrow one. Four regular burners plus one large one for a French top that also doubles as a wok burner, which gets super hot. The smallest burner does very well at the low end. We have the Saulieu, which is 43 1/2” wide. The electronics are super simple. 

 

Bonus, it comes in lots of pretty colors.

 

 

Edited April 2, 2018 by tikidoc (log)

[Fernwood]

9 hours ago, paulraphael said:

Even the best open burner designs send much of the heat energy to the edges of the pan and way beyond. Good open burners send the fire straight up. More even heating, and more of the energy gets to the food. Look up videos for Bluestar's burners; you'll get the idea. 

I'm not sure I understand this... or should the first sentence say "Even the best closed burner designs..."?

[weinoo]

What I'm really enjoying on our new Wolf range is the low end/simmer capability of the burners.  They're sealed, of course, but dual stacked, and when you turn the knob all the way counter-clockwise, only the lower of the two levels lights automatically...it has basically two sets of controls, one for each burner level.

 

I have yet to use the broiler, but I do also enjoy these full-extension ball-bearing racks, which have a capacity of 50+ pounds each.

 

 

 

 

 

[lindag]

9 minutes ago, weinoo said:

What I'm really enjoying on our new Wolf range is the low end/simmer capability of the burners.  They're sealed, of course, but dual stacked, and when you turn the knob all the way counter-clockwise, only the lower of the two levels lights automatically...it has basically two sets of controls, one for each burner level.

 

I have yet to use the broiler, but I do also enjoy these full-extension ball-bearing racks, which have a capacity of 50+ pounds each.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice!

[Shelby]

@gfweb and anyone else with a Blue Star.  I keep reading that the back (on the outside) of the stove gets super hot.  Someone took a reading at it was like 360F.  Is this how yours is?  

 

I have to have a slide-in type--and it slides in to a built in bar in my kitchen.  I honestly never thought about how hot the back of my stove now gets.....too late to measure to see.

 

 

[gfweb]

1 hour ago, Shelby said:

@gfweb and anyone else with a Blue Star.  I keep reading that the back (on the outside) of the stove gets super hot.  Someone took a reading at it was like 360F.  Is this how yours is?  

 

I have to have a slide-in type--and it slides in to a built in bar in my kitchen.  I honestly never thought about how hot the back of my stove now gets.....too late to measure to see.

 

 

 I know nothing about this. It would surprise me.

Where on the range did they measure the temp?

[Shelby]

5 minutes ago, gfweb said:

 I know nothing about this. It would surprise me.

Where on the range did they measure the temp?

This person says that the oven gets so hot on the outside that you can't even touch it--the oven handle has to be opened using an oven mitt.  Person went on to say that they registered the back wall at 336F (I was wrong when I said 360).   

 

Obviously I know that everyone has differing opinions and there can be stoves that are lemons.  I am just curious if your oven gets super hot on the outside.

[gfweb]

8 minutes ago, Shelby said:

This person says that the oven gets so hot on the outside that you can't even touch it--the oven handle has to be opened using an oven mitt.  Person went on to say that they registered the back wall at 336F (I was wrong when I said 360).   

 

Obviously I know that everyone has differing opinions and there can be stoves that are lemons.  I am just curious if your oven gets super hot on the outside.

 

My oven handle doesn't get hot.

This report sounds weird.

But I'll fool around tonight and try to find out.

The only complaint I have with it is a small one...the simmer setting is a little hot. I keep a diffuser on that burner which solves the problem

[Shelby]

3 minutes ago, gfweb said:

 

My oven handle doesn't get hot.

This report sounds weird.

But I'll fool around tonight and try to find out.

The only complaint I have with it is a small one...the simmer setting is a little hot. I keep a diffuser on that burner which solves the problem

I'm reading this on a thread on Chowhound.....so....yeah.....it might be....not true.  

[gfweb]

@Shelby I set oven to 350. A half hour later the door and handle were cool to the touch. 71 degrees. The roof of the oven(under the range) was 73 degrees. A screw in the back side of the oven caught my IR thermometer s beam. It was 71 deg. The wall behind the oven was 70 deg. 

[Shelby]

5 minutes ago, gfweb said:

@Shelby I set oven to 350. A half hour later the door and handle were cool to the touch. 71 degrees. The roof of the oven(under the range) was 73 degrees. A screw in the back side of the oven caught my IR thermometer s beam. It was 71 deg. The wall behind the oven was 70 deg. 

Thank  you so very much for testing for me.  

 

 

I can deal with those kind of temps   I just don't want to burn my house down......that would be bad.  I don't have any kind of a heat shield or anything behind my stove....although I guess I could get something.

 

This person on CH says that they even brought a repair person out to check and he said those (high) temps were normal .  This person may just be one of those nuts that can't tell the truth lol.

[gfweb]

4 minutes ago, Shelby said:

Thank  you so very much for testing for me.  

 

 

I can deal with those kind of temps   I just don't want to burn my house down......that would be bad.  I don't have any kind of a heat shield or anything behind my stove....although I guess I could get something.

 

This person on CH says that they even brought a repair person out to check and he said those (high) temps were normal .  This person may just be one of those nuts that can't tell the truth lol.

 

Or maybe they had a restaurant model , which will get hot. We had a Vulcan resto model, sides were hot as a mother.  

[paulraphael]

10 hours ago, Fernwood said:

I'm not sure I understand this... or should the first sentence say "Even the best closed burner designs..."?

 

Yes, thanks, I said the exact opposite of what I meant. Fixed now.

[paulraphael]

19 hours ago, gfweb said:

 

The broiler on my Bluestar is nuclear powered, I think. It's HOT.  And the open burners are almost self-cleaning , besides being  quick to heat up a pan.  The oven is big enough for a full sheet pan. It's more expensive than a GE, but at the low end of fancyass stoves. I think I paid about 5,000 for their low end model. 

 

I think it's at the low end  in terms of fanciness, but not in terms of quality. Of everything I've seen, Bluestar stays the closest to the design and construction of a commercial range. Emphasis on burliness, not features. This could be a plus or a minus, depending on what you're looking for.