My wife and I are moving into another house. I'm considering a gas cooktop.
We aren't high end, gourmet chefs or anything, but we do enjoy cooking and put more thought into it than most people. We have two small kids, so most of our cooking is the throw-something-together-quick type, but we enjoy putting together more complex and involved meals every few weeks.
I've always cooked on electric, but I'd like to get gas because a) it seems pretty unanimous among semi-serious cooks that gas is better and b) anything you do is automatically more fun when an open flame comes into the picture.
Anyway, getting on with it... Based on my research here, it looks like good simmer control can be an issue with gas. From my experience, I'm also concerned about getting a model with enough BTU's. For some reason, one gas cooktop I used took 30-40 minutes to boil a pot of water for pasta.
The cooktops that seem appealing to me are the GE profile smooth top, sealed burner models. I'll get the 36" if the space is there, but I expect to settle for a 30".
On the 30" the burners are:
1 15000 BTU/180degf simmer
1 11000 BTU/150degf simmer
1 9100 BTU/150degf simmer
1 6000 BTU/140degf simmer
As marketed, it appears that this setup offers some pretty nice power at the top end with decent simmer control on the lower end.
My questions:
1) On the high end, is 15,000 BTU's going to be enough?
2) On the low-end, do the simmer controls work well?
3) I'm also kinda interested in the modular models where you can swap bewteen griddle/grill/burners on the left side. Only problem is that these models don't have the variety of burners. They're effectively a 4x10,000BTU cooktop. How are they in terms of top-end heat and low-end simmer control?
Sorry for being long winded. Just curious if anyone has any experience with these..
We aren't high end, gourmet chefs or anything, but we do enjoy cooking and put more thought into it than most people. We have two small kids, so most of our cooking is the throw-something-together-quick type, but we enjoy putting together more complex and involved meals every few weeks.
I've always cooked on electric, but I'd like to get gas because a) it seems pretty unanimous among semi-serious cooks that gas is better and b) anything you do is automatically more fun when an open flame comes into the picture.
Anyway, getting on with it... Based on my research here, it looks like good simmer control can be an issue with gas. From my experience, I'm also concerned about getting a model with enough BTU's. For some reason, one gas cooktop I used took 30-40 minutes to boil a pot of water for pasta.
The cooktops that seem appealing to me are the GE profile smooth top, sealed burner models. I'll get the 36" if the space is there, but I expect to settle for a 30".
On the 30" the burners are:
1 15000 BTU/180degf simmer
1 11000 BTU/150degf simmer
1 9100 BTU/150degf simmer
1 6000 BTU/140degf simmer
As marketed, it appears that this setup offers some pretty nice power at the top end with decent simmer control on the lower end.
My questions:
1) On the high end, is 15,000 BTU's going to be enough?
2) On the low-end, do the simmer controls work well?
3) I'm also kinda interested in the modular models where you can swap bewteen griddle/grill/burners on the left side. Only problem is that these models don't have the variety of burners. They're effectively a 4x10,000BTU cooktop. How are they in terms of top-end heat and low-end simmer control?
Sorry for being long winded. Just curious if anyone has any experience with these..