First off I'm not talking about cars. My question is mainly about stovetop cooking but I'm sure it will turn into other subjects.

Had gas top stoves growing up and never questioned it. Last three homes I lived in had electric stoves and again never questioned it. It wasn't until I tried to cook a large aluminum pot of sauce for spaghetti that I realized an electric stove wasn't the way to go. It definitely takes longer.

My current home is 33yrs old with an electric stove. I'm guessing that things have improved over the years. I could use a new stove but wonder if it would be better to convert to gas or just suck it up and stick with electric models.

Your thoughts or experience.

I think gas will always cook faster. The gourmet chefs claim gas is better but the best cook that I know cooks on electric.

A good cook can overcome poor tools.

Electric in its various manifestations is a poor substitute for gas.

My preference is to cook with gas but I'm stuck with electric. All electric home and it would be cost prohibitive to run lines for propane (natural gas isn't available).

We have gas.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

I find that I have better control of the cooking temperature when using a gas stove. I notice that the most when using a pressure cooker.

Electric all the way. I don't like gas in my house.

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S&W Accumulator

Gas. Used electric for 30 years. Gas is easier to control temperatures when cooking.

also electric all the way one utility bill and one tax.

Electric is safer; it never leaks and won't explode.

Gas was one of the reasons I bought this house.
I think a lot of those that state safety reasons are trying to reconcile an inferior cooking source they are stuck with.
How many houses blow up because of gas, nowadays?

I have 44 years of apartment and house maintenance experience. I have worked in shacks and million dollar homes.

CONS of gas:

It less expensive to maintain equal quality electric appliances!

As property grows older, gas line leaks appear out of nowhere and in walls that were never intended to be serviced!

You have to screw up more to burn yourself on electric.

Lastly; older gas ovens and furnaces are harder to to adjust and keep adjusted to correct temperature range.

More expensive building costs.

PROS of gas:
Faster response to heat increase.

Warmer feel.

Less expensive energy costs!

What do I have in my condo? Gas heat, electric A/C and Cooking.

Ivan

When it comes to cooking, personally, I think gas can't be beat. It's so much easier to regulate. When I'm cooking up a big pot of soup or stew, I can put it on the back burner and turn it down to simmer and let it go for the next hour or two with no worries about burning or scorching.

Also, (and this is a BIG plus for me living in an area where a big storm can knock out power for days at a time) you can still cook with your gas stove when the power goes out. You just can't use the electric starter...you have to use a match to light the stove's burners. Also, you still have hot water. During times when the power goes, our wood stove keeps the house warm, we can still cook, and we can still take hot showers. Pretty tough to do when the home is all electric.

Of course, that's just my view from the saddle.

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Pack light and cinch tight.

I prefer cooking on gas over electric. Just seems kinda odd cooking with cast iron or a hammered steel wok on an electric stove.
Anyway though, we have electric out here. Works fine for us but ya just gotta learn how to work it. Takes longer to preheat a pan and longer to get down to simmer.
What I really prefer is cooking meat on charcoal.

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Keep on Chooglin'

If you live in an all electric house and want to have gas installed for heat or cooking, you can always have propane installed! You will most likely regret it from the first bill to the last day you live there, but you can do that.

Ivan

If we had the money, our house would've been converted to gas long ago with a big propane tank in the back yard for those very reasons.
Out here in a small town in the mountains of West Virginia, we've lost power for over a week before.

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Keep on Chooglin'

Newer electric stoves are worse than older ones in one aspect. They don't maintain a constant temperature. Instead, they run at full power but cycle on and off. At low heat the burner is mostly off. At high it is mostly or always on. A really stupid design.

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Common sense isn't so common.

Our new home had electric heat and water heater. There was no AC at all.
I had the electric base board heaters removed and since we had natural gas, I had a new furnace, AC, and all related duct work installed. I kept the electric water heater and stove was gas also, which we prefer.

Fortunately our stove's old and obsolete. The oil's gotta be at a constant temperature for cookin' up a batch of fry bread.

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Keep on Chooglin'

Good range reports.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

One of my parent's neighbor's halfway between Arlington and Volga, IA; about 100 last year in Merrimack Valley, MA. Merrimack Valley Explosions | WBUR

The disaster killed one person, injured dozens of others and damaged or destroyed more than 100 buildings in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover.

I have had gas in my home for 41 years (never had any complaints or problems) however my parents use to have an electric stove top which I never liked. Gas stove tops are pretty much trouble free and nothing ever seems to go wrong. I have never had to repair a gas stove that I can remember and they are also better at lighting cigars - LOL!! Did that once on the way out to the patio and Mrs. Chief38 had a fit!

We have used gas as long as I can remember. If I know one thing about gas it is the fact you can control the heat much better than electric.

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I Cor. 10:13 "1611KJV"

I grew up with gas, but prefer electric for cooking, and every other utility use in the home, outdoor grills being the exception.

Secondarily, gas blows up buildings on a regular basis.

Finally, gas cooking gives off carbon monoxide and other toxic indoor pollutants into the home, and my breathing is already severely compromised. A high flow range hood that exhausts to the outdoors would fix that issue if used consistently, but would waste conditioned air that the HVAC system would need to make up for.

Gas definitely!! Stove, Water heaters, and home heat.
Steve W

Put me in the gas camp, too.

So much so that while we have a nice new (2016) Bosch electric stove and range top — glass flat top — in our condo, we cook on an Iwatani butane burner which we set on top of the cooktop! (Condo/HOA is not set up for gas.)

Gas for heating the house and water with a fire place....
My electric stove is top of the line and easier to clean then
a gas stove, spills and such clean up quick.
With a Nuwave 2, it boiled water faster then any gas with a steel
pot......

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Only difference Fool/Mule-ears

consider using your gas grill next time you make sauce.

P.S. use the new stove money to purchase a new S&W.

I am a fan of gas for cooking. I have converted my last two homes from electric stoves & ovens to gas units. My results with gas are far superior than what I have experienced with electric units. Further, I have never had a failure of any type with gas units.

Everything is this Senior Living Joint is Electric. All power was restored in about 8 hours EXCEPT: The very last row of apartments are are hooked up to different main line. My daughter is one of the unfortunate ones with no power. OG&E does not have an estimate when she will get power. People should have a lot of firewood because so many trees are damaged.
My choice would be a gas cook stove and water heater.

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Mighty 90's,Trying 4 a 100!

If they are doing what you describe, what I call gross pulse width modulation (PWM), then it is a rubbish design. PWM done right should work very well, although it has to be done right or there would be all kinds of nasties fed back into the house power.

PWM is the only way to go because ramping the voltage up and down is difficult without some form of adjustable transformer, which are bulky and expensive. If you tried to regulate the current by rheostat the heat you don't want has to be dumped somewhere, and you still use the same amount of energy.

TL;DR, gas regulators are easier and cheaper to make than devices for 220 V AC.

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Release the Kraken

We have natural gas. I specified to the builder that was what I wanted, because it is cheaper, and still works when the power goes off.
I do not trust gas water heaters, though. Our’s is electric.
Have heard of way too many fires started by a faulty heater.
Electric hot water heaters are cheaper to replace when the hard water deposits here start clogging them up.

For cooking, gas for sure. I have had electric a couple of times in rental apartments, hated it, ruined more food and plastic containers than I care to think about.
I wish I could have kept my Mother's gas stove, at least 50 years old and still in perfect condition. It had a large center burner/griddle. But I would have had to turn my kitchen apart, it was 36 or 40 inches instead of the standard 30.

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Super Snooper

I've had both and like gas a lot better.

Wayne,

Care to elaborate on fry bread? Never had it.

terry

Fry bread is a Native American bread that stretches back generations. It's a flat dough bread, fried or deep-fried in oil, shortening, or lard. Made with simple ingredients, frybread can be eaten alone or with various toppings such as honey, jam, powdered sugar, venison, or beef.

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Keep on Chooglin'

Here in the Sierra foothills our power company, PG&E better known as Pacific Graft & Extortion shuts off our power when the wind blows over 10 MPH. So we have propane for our cooking & on demand water heaters. We have a well so installed a 16 KW propane fired generator last spring. Also we heat with wood.

Ours is dual fuel, gas for the range, electric for the oven.

We have an all gas home, except for out clothes dryer which is electric.

This works well when there are power outages. Warm showers, cook food and for central heat a generator to power the gas furnace.

I prefer cooking on a gas stove top, but I prefer the house to be all electric. Since I can't have both, I cook with electric.

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GOA life member

I prefer cooking over a flame but our house is all electric. If I get desperate I take the old green Coleman camp stove out on the deck.

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Infected by Smith&Wesson

First house I bought when I was in my early 20's was built in 1882.

It had a coal to gas converted furnace that was monster size, gas dryer, 2 water heaters, and stove.

I hated it probably due to paranoia, when our daughter was born, I swear I thought I smelled gas all the time.

Not the human kind either.

My current house is all electric, and I love it. Highest bill I had this year was $84.73 and that was in January.

When we bought our home it was all electric, it had a huge Blaze King wood stove in the great room. The wood stove was a hassle, go to the mountains, cut and split the wood there. The Forest Service very closely monitored the rigs loaded with wood heading down from the hills and would ticket their own mother. The stove would creosote like a banshee if it was banked down for the night or if we weren't going to be home for a couple of hours.

There is a natural gas line running in front of our home. About once a year or so a semi with a tank trailer backs, yes backs down our road for about 1/2 mile, it is hauling the mercaptan additive to scent the gas. We bought a very nice natural gas stove and took out the wood stove. It was plumbed in with extra fittings if we wanted gas appliances. So, now we have heat from the natural gas stove and the cooking stove is gas too. When we lose power we can cook and keep the home pleasantly warm.

Our average annual expenditure for the natural gas is around $480. Forty or so bucks a month and we are happy as bugs in a rug.

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U.S. Coast Guard, retired CPO

Definitely gas.

Perhaps. But I fear electricity more-have heard more of cases of electrocution than gas explosions.

Have electric cook top which came with house. Absolutely hate it. So many times have laid a utensil on hot surface or touched the top where it was still hot after turning the knob to off. At least with a flame you know when it's on or off (am blonde and need serious visual aids).

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2 Blessed 2B Stressed

You need to try my electric stove. You get the temp right, it turns off, quits cooking completely. Up the temp a notch, everything burns up. It's supposed to be a good one but I hate it.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

I'd have been real disappointed if someone didn't dig some kind of gas disaster up.

Like many things, cooktops can come in all different shapes, sizes, and configurations. The typical discussion (like this thread), compares gas to electric.

Both gas and electric obviously provide a heat source. However, how they react with the cookware and contents of a pan is totally different. When adjusted in temperature, gas can quickly change how much heat is applied to a pan. Electric will not change as fast. When you combine this difference with pans that are high conductors (copper, copper core, etc..) the speed of the change in heat is remarkable.

Most chefs that I know prefer gas for the reason listed above. When cooking several different things at the same time you need to have complete control over your heat sources. This is also needed when preparing things that are delicate like cream sauces. One wrong move and it’s in the garbage.

In the absence of a gas source, the induction cooktop is typically used. The reaction to heat change is very similar to gas, however since it relies on a magnetic connection to the pan, copper and anodized aluminum cannot be used directly on the surface.

For every day cooking, both gas and electric will work fine. If you are serious about cooking and get involved with complex meals and sauces, gas (or induction) are the preferred method.

It’s kind of like the difference between someone picking a gun to go to the range to plink and another picking a gun to go to a competitive match. Most likely, those will be different types of guns.

Interesting thread.

I prefer cooking over flame. So gas in my case.

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Expect the unexpected

Yes, very interesting! I have gas stove, furnace, dryer, & water heater. Here where I live gas is less expensive. Cooking over fire is easier for me/us. Still need electricity to run oven, furnace, & dryer though. This house was built in '50, so I do check all the joints, etc., with my electronic leak detector a couple times a year. Fixed a couple. All piping is exposed in the cellar and to the stove, so I don't worry.

Grew up with gas, moved semi rural and had electric, now back to gas.
Gas is much easier to control the heat.

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Sure you did

No way would I want an all electric house. Give me gas for heating, hot water and cooking. Electric is for lights and entertainment devises