Do you use your stovetop as extra counter space?

[Fat Guy]

Come on, admit it.

I do.

It's a really stupid idea, huh?

When was the last time you set fire to a shopping bag that way?

[Jason Perlow]

guilty

[Gifted Gourmet]

I do it all the time .. but haven't done so when any of the burners was still glowing ...

[srhcb]

Perhaps I'm just adept at recalling subliminally planted old safety lessons, but I honestly never put anything on the stove top. I don't even set utensils I'm using on the range.

SB (fortunate to have a large center island)

Edited August 21, 2006 by srhcb (log)

[lesfen]

Ugh. Yeah. I've lost countless storage lids that way.

Edited August 21, 2006 by lesfen (log)

[Anna N]

I will and am doing so right now BUT I make sure the coils are cool before I start, put a sheet pan over them and pull off the control knobs so I can't absent-mindedly turn the stove on! Only this saftey-minded as the result of too many accidents.

[Arey]

No. Neither does my brother, but it probably has something to do with our upbringing.We were brought up by a world class worrier. My s-i-l is not a worrier so my brother worries for both of them. One day my brother was showing a repairman through the kitchen and the repairman noticed that my s-i-l had left a towel lying halfway onto the stove top. The repairman carefully picked it up and moved it onto the counter, and scored points with my brother.

[scubadoo97]

I keep my cast iron/ enamel dutch oven on the back burner because it weighs too much to put in and out of the cabinet. I also keep a tea pot on the stove just in case. Outside of that I only use it to set hot things from the oven onto since my wife refuses to accept that the granite can handle it.

[jgm]

We have a gas stove, so it's pretty obvious if the burners are on or not. I do, then, tend to put stuff on top of the stove. We especially do so when unloading the week's groceries from the car, but they're unpacked and moved off the stovetop within minutes.

In allowing this habit to continue, I am ignoring the fact that the controls for the burners are on the front of the stove, and although I wouldn't tend to put something like a plastic bowl on a burner when it's on, it's always possible that someone could bump one of the controls and turn it on, and ignite whatever I had sitting on the stovetop.

My mother had a habit of storing pies and cakes in her oven. Everything went fine during my childhood, because it was a habit for everyone in the family to open the oven door and check before turning the oven on. When I went to college, my roommates and I didn't keep stuff in the oven, so I got out of the habit of checking. And sure enough, we had an incident involving a Tupperware pie keeper melted all over the bottom of the oven.

[Dave Hatfield]

You mean those large round things aren't trivets?

[Pam R]

Always. I have a glass-top stove - so it seems like another countertop. The little counter between it and the fridge isn't large enough for the groceries.

[edsel]

I have a formica-clad square of plywood that fits on top of the stove. I bring it out when I have a project that requires extra counter space. I like to use it for charcuterie projects because I can really scrub and sterilize it thoroughly. It's just cheap formica, and I don't care if it gets scuffed up when I scour it.

The main disadvantage is that it can't be used when the burners are hot.

[markk]

Yes. And I have a glass top electric range as well, with the knobs lined-up in a row at the side, and although they have little diagrams showing which controls which burner, I apparently have a mental block about understanding them. So I'm forever turning on a burner under something that's using the space to rest on. And I can tell you, you haven't smelled anything until you've melted one of those styrofoam boats that the supermarket packages meat in. Plus when you're called to the kitchen by the stench and you lift the thing off the burner, it makes fine little strings as it stretches and dries in the air, and it won't come off of anything! So, yes, I do. (The only thing is that now that I'm a little older and wiser, knowing that I still can't learn the knobs, I try to make a habbit of clearing off the entire stove before I light even one burner.)

[BarbaraY]

The only time I put things on top of the range are things like cookie sheets or pies that are just out of the oven. Perhaps I might put more things on it but I have a large island and plenty of counter space.

[highchef]

well, I have a gas cook top, so they're open and allow air through therfore they double as cooling racks for cakes. I mean what's the difference? It beats moving the mixer and everything else out of the way and putting the racks on the counter, besides it's right in front of the double ovens, so I don't have to walk around with a hot pan in my hands.

works for me. BUT...no one else in the family has ever turned a knob on my cooktop except me (lazy) so I'm really in no danger of them 'browning' the bottom of my cooling cakes by accident!

[alacarte]

god, yes. but I have to use the stove as a countertop because I'm already using my countertops as surrogate cookbook shelf and pantry!

[kathlucky]

In my very tiny kitchen, the stove is the largest counter space. The other 2 counters are 19 inches deep and 13 inches wide each. When the oven door is open, it barely clears the frig and the sink, and then half the kitchen space is gone.

I use those old fashion round electric covers on each burner. They supply a bit of work room but are really great for keeping the burners clean (drip pans stay spotless). I usually work on a cutting board for my stove working area. I usually restrict myself to two burners at a time. When I need more I extend out to the dining room. I do not cook for more than 6 except on occaison. It all takes alot of planning and stopping to clean everything between projects.

[fiftydollars]

I'll cop to it.

It's a perfectly useful horizontal surface and being in San Francisco those can be hard to come by.

[Hest88]

Totally. And even when I don't have non-cooking stuff on it I have a few frequently used pots and pans just sitting on the stove. For instance, I rarely move my wok from the stove unless I need the space.

[Grub]

Never. When I say 'never,' of course I mean -- like canibalism in the Royal Navy -- almost never.

There are just too many pitfalls and traps in a kitchen, for me to allow this potential to exist -- if I'm just putting down groceries, and I absolutely, utterly, positively KNOW the stove hasn't been touched all day, I have a huge aversion to putting things on the stove. If I do so, it's purely the absolutely last resort, and I never put anything onto the burners themselves -- also, I move things off asap.

Always handle a gun as if it is loaded, a knife as if it is razor sharp, and a stovetop like it's hot.

[C. sapidus]

A friend’s family lost their house to a kitchen fire. Their stove was next to a window, and a cookbook was next to the stove (even safer than on the stove, right?). Anyway, a gust of wind somehow blew a page of the cookbook into the flame. Bye-bye house.

Yeah, I know, it’ll never happen to you.

Never. When I say 'never,' of course I mean -- like canibalism in the Royal Navy -- almost never.

←

This deserves to be repeated

[*Deborah*]

Having my Mahvelous Mr Wolf with 6 burners and a (most-often) covered grill, I tend to keep a pot on the stove top and a ceramic roasting pan that hasn't found a permanent home yet. Oh, and a kettle, of course. Thank heavens my pot holders are decent, and the simmer setting is so low, though, as I toasted a pot holder I put to protect a plate from the hot grate once.

[purplewiz]

Yup, sure do.

This is why I don't have plastic bowls anymore.

There are only two of us in the house, and I do pretty much all the cooking, so I have a pretty good idea of if the stove is hot and when it's been used.

Marcia.

[docsconz]

...and sometimes the sinks too.

We have two stovetops, both glasstop Jenn-Air. One we rarely use as a stovetop. Much to my chagrin this is frequently used as a counter-top. The other less so. My son actually burned and ruined a silicone spatula by leaving it on the stovetop recently. We were lucky that it was the silicone side that was on the stovetop and not the wooden handle.

[johnsmith45678]

I use my stovetop as counterspace, but only temporarily.

Sometimes I confuse which knob controls which burner (front or back) -- since they're all lined up horizontally and each has two circles: a solid white circle and a hollow white circle (guess which means which!) -- and turn on the wrong burner. Two of the burners are coils so it's easy to tell immediately which just got turned on (by putting my hand over it), but the other two are discs which take many minutes to heat up and cool down -- this usually just results in me going "WTF? Why isn't the water boiling by now?", but one time I stacked the burner covers over the disc I wasn't planning on using; a little while later smoke was pouring out of them...

Edited August 22, 2006 by johnsmith45678 (log)