What are you cooking?

[Similar]

Heating elements have not gotten significantly more efficient, insulation has I suppose.

Right. I think that’s the main problem with my oven; it takes too long to get to the requested temperature and most likely spends more energy staying there (it also takes longer to cook stuff than my parents’ or my sister’s ovens do).

Aside from that, it has some problems in general, like occasionally electrocuting me and blowing all the fuses in the apartment and such. It makes cooking interesting at times.

[Heliocentric]

I’m sure electrocution of meat would be a really fast way to cook it.

[GameCat]

Aside from that, it has some problems in general, like occasionally electrocuting me and blowing all the fuses in the apartment and such.

Cook or get cooked. At some level it’s like hunting, you will never know if you will return with meat or be a meat.

[Gus_Smedstad]

I’m sure electrocution of meat would be a really fast way to cook it.

Pressure cookers use pressure and higher temperatures to get faster results. One potential way to increase pressure and temperature beyond that is explosives.

[GameCat]

Honey, could you grab some dynamite from the store? I want to make a dinner but we’re out of explosives.

[Gus_Smedstad]

I’ve heard rumours of people still using gas in the kitchen, but I haven’t actually seen a gas stove in anyone’s home, ever.

I’m guessing this has to do with your location.

In the US, at least, gas is extremely common. Among other things, it’s much cheaper to run an gas oven than an electric one, and electric ovens offer no meaningful advantages over gas. I can’t imagine why anyone would want a hybrid gas/electric stove instead of a straight gas stove. The comments in this thread about gas ovens being “not nice” and wondering if “anyone makes them anymore” are weird.

At root, electric ovens are pretty low tech. They run electricity through a resistor to generate heat. Beyond the heating element itself, everything else is controls - anything you can do with an electric oven, you can do with a gas one just as easily.

Now, if you’re looking at ovens that are really old, say 40 years or so, the electric ovens tended to be much better insulated than gas, because the cost to generate heat was (and is) much higher. That hasn’t been true for a long time.

Cooktops where you’re dealing with the heating element directly instead of using hot air to cook are another matter. Gas beats the hell out of coil-type electric heating elements. It’s easier to control, and the heat radiates, where electric elements pretty much require direct contact with your pot. Try cooking with a traditional Wok (or anything similar) on an electric cooktop.

Induction cooktops are a third category. I’ve never really used one, personally. They seem interesting, and obviously a lot safer than an open flame or a hot exposed heating coil, but have the same “doesn’t radiate” issue as conventional electric cooktops.

[Wenz]

I’ve never seen an electric one:o

[Heliocentric]

I have an induction. It’s not as powerful as gas, but it has the same speed, essentially it uses transmitted magnetic vibration to heat the pan directly. The pan lies on heat resistant glass usually. It is certainly the safest kind of hob as without a pan or other piece of magnetic metal on top literally no heat is possible to generate, and while one standard of cheap shiny pans and pots won’t work because of the alloy every cheap dull stainless steel pan/pot has worked. You can check if pans will work with a fridge magnet, if it sticks properly you know that the metal is good. Good if you shop in thrift/second hand.

Also it has less heat waste than either other hob type, but gas earns it back with fuel efficiency.

[Jesus_Phish]

I’m guessing this has to do with your location.

In the US, at least, gas is extremely common. Among other things, it’s much cheaper to run an gas oven than an electric one, and electric ovens offer no meaningful advantages over gas. I can’t imagine why anyone would want a hybrid gas/electric stove instead of a straight gas stove. The comments in this thread about gas ovens being “not nice” and wondering if “anyone makes them anymore” are weird.

At root, electric ovens are pretty low tech. They run electricity through a resistor to generate heat. Beyond the heating element itself, everything else is controls - anything you can do with an electric oven, you can do with a gas one just as easily.

Now, if you’re looking at ovens that are really old, say 40 years or so, the electric ovens tended to be much better insulated than gas, because the cost to generate heat was (and is) much higher. That hasn’t been true for a long time.

Cooktops where you’re dealing with the heating element directly instead of using hot air to cook are another matter. Gas beats the hell out of coil-type electric heating elements. It’s easier to control, and the heat radiates, where electric elements pretty much require direct contact with your pot. Try cooking with a traditional Wok (or anything similar) on an electric cooktop.

Induction cooktops are a third category. I’ve never really used one, personally. They seem interesting, and obviously a lot safer than an open flame or a hot exposed heating coil, but have the same “doesn’t radiate” issue as conventional electric cooktops.

My parents have a gas cooktop and a gas oven, they always have as long as I can remember. When I moved out and into an apartment I ended up with an electric cooktop and oven. Using a wok on an electric cooktop is the most pointless task in the world. As soon as you move it even a fraction of the way off the contact point you lose all heat.

[Jams_O_Donnell]

I live in the sticks and can’t get mains gas. I have an electric oven but it has a gas hob/cooktop fueled by propane because there’s no way I’m cooking on an electric hob, especially given the amount of wok-based cooking I do.

Oddly, I hadn’t considered how an electric oven would be less efficient than a gas one, but that does make sense. Oh well, it does a better job with my cakes than the crappy gas oven in my previous place, at least.

[Gus_Smedstad]

One thing about my cooking is that I’m somewhat set in my ways. I mentioned that I’m experimenting with sous vide, but for the most part, I cook the same meals in rotation, month after month.

I have a set of labels on magnetic strips on my refrigerator that I use to manage that. As I cook things they go from the top to the bottom. Some things I like to cook a little more often, so they don’t go all the way to the bottom of the list. Roast beef I generally move a few spots below the bottom, with room for a couple of items above it, since a good roast is expensive.

The stuff I cook ranges from the fairly ordinary to the somewhat eclectic. The list is:

Beef stew
Brocolli-cheese strudel
Celery / cheddar soup
Cheddar pork - not what you might imagine, since it involves a base of spiced rice, cranberries, and small cubes of pork
Chicken enchaladas
Chili
Cous Cous - this is actually a tomato chicken stew poured over the pasta
Hamburgers
Pizza - specifically, a wheat / rye crust with mushrooms, onions, pepperoni, green peppers, and jalapenos
Roast beef
Russian vegetable pie - this is a cabbage, hardboiled egg, and cream cheese dish
Spaghetti
Tacos
Turkey sausages

Since everything on the list makes at least 4 servings, these 14 dishes last about 30 days overall.

I tried at one point to make navratan korma, but the result was pretty bland and uninteresting, not at all like what I’ve had in India.

[Skalpadda]

I’m guessing this has to do with your location.

In the US, at least, gas is extremely common. Among other things, it’s much cheaper to run an gas oven than an electric one, and electric ovens offer no meaningful advantages over gas. I can’t imagine why anyone would want a hybrid gas/electric stove instead of a straight gas stove. The comments in this thread about gas ovens being “not nice” and wondering if “anyone makes them anymore” are weird.

At root, electric ovens are pretty low tech. They run electricity through a resistor to generate heat. Beyond the heating element itself, everything else is controls - anything you can do with an electric oven, you can do with a gas one just as easily.

Now, if you’re looking at ovens that are really old, say 40 years or so, the electric ovens tended to be much better insulated than gas, because the cost to generate heat was (and is) much higher. That hasn’t been true for a long time.

Cooktops where you’re dealing with the heating element directly instead of using hot air to cook are another matter. Gas beats the hell out of coil-type electric heating elements. It’s easier to control, and the heat radiates, where electric elements pretty much require direct contact with your pot. Try cooking with a traditional Wok (or anything similar) on an electric cooktop.

Induction cooktops are a third category. I’ve never really used one, personally. They seem interesting, and obviously a lot safer than an open flame or a hot exposed heating coil, but have the same “doesn’t radiate” issue as conventional electric cooktops.

If you’re talking about the old type of stove where you’d just place your pot on the resistor then I see why you’d prefer gas, but “modern” (as in, have been standard since the 90s) glass-ceramic cook-tops are fairly energy efficient, cheap, easy to keep clean and come with the advantage of not having to pump flammable gas into your home or start a fire in your kitchen every time you want food. It’s also a fair bit friendlier to the environment, but then I gather you still burn a lot of coal and gas for electricity in the US, so perhaps that isn’t much of a factor.

Anyway, kanelbullar! Omnomnom!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10735[/ATTACH]

[EPICTHEFAIL]

I can’t imagine why anyone would want a hybrid gas/electric stove instead of a straight gas stove.

When talking about surfaces, or ovens? I didn’t even know there were gas/electric ovens, but when it comes to surfaces, gas is a lot better but I do have a terrible habit of forgetting to buy bottles (What is this madness about piping gas into your home?), so the electric heaters, though less versatile, less controllable and more dangerous to cats, are a decent backup option since you can usually rely on electricity being available. I will probably switch to an induction top at some point, seeing as they are vastly more efficient and not reliant on big, heavy cans of propane that are an absolute arse to set up.

[Gus_Smedstad]

It’s also a fair bit friendlier to the environment

Burning natural gas doesn’t pollute in any meaningful way. It’s CH4 + 02 -> H2O + CO2. If you’re concerned about CO2 output, the electricity used to heat your oven or cooktop requires more CO2 to generate unless the source is not fossil fuels. Heat source -> turbine -> electricity -> induction or resistors is always going to be less efficient in generating heat than just generating the heat directly from a fuel. The “friendlier to the environment” argument is only meaningful if the source is something like solar or nuclear.

In fact, if you’re looking at electric power plants, those are often natural gas. They’re popular here in the New England because of their low emissions, but they’ve led to relatively pricey electricity.

As for what you said about cooktops - I gather you didn’t read what I wrote too closely, since I distinguished between induction and resistance heating.

[Fanbuoy]

Burning natural gas doesn’t pollute in any meaningful way. It’s CH4 + 02 -> H2O + CO2. If you’re concerned about CO2 output, the electricity used to heat your oven or cooktop requires more CO2 to generate unless the source is not fossil fuels. Heat source -> turbine -> electricity -> induction or resistors is always going to be less efficient in generating heat than just generating the heat directly from a fuel. The “friendlier to the environment” argument is only meaningful if the source is something like solar or nuclear.

Yeah, that’s an important difference. In Sweden, we don’t really use fossil fuels for energy production. (Water and nuclear are about 40-45% each, combined with wind power, biofuel, etc. Fossil fuels are in the low single digits and usually imported reserve power.) As a result, electricity is comparatively clean here. If you’re in a fossil fuel based country, I can imagine you’re right about gas being better.

Also, induction ftw.

[Skalpadda]

Burning natural gas doesn’t pollute in any meaningful way. It’s CH4 + 02 -> H2O + CO2. If you’re concerned about CO2 output, the electricity used to heat your oven or cooktop requires more CO2 to generate unless the source is not fossil fuels. Heat source -> turbine -> electricity -> induction or resistors is always going to be less efficient in generating heat than just generating the heat directly from a fuel. The “friendlier to the environment” argument is only meaningful if the source is something like solar or nuclear.

A bit over 50% of electricity production here is hydroelectric, 35% is nuclear and the rest is almost all various renewables, so this just doesn’t really apply here. I did acknowledge that the US burns a lot of fossil fuels.

As for what you said about cooktops - I gather you didn’t read what I wrote too closely, since I distinguished between induction and resistance heating.

I wasn’t talking about induction stoves at all, but glass-ceramic stoves with either electrical heating elements or IR halogen lamps used for heating. You can see the surface of mine in the picture with the (very yummy!) cinnamon rolls I posted above.

[JamesGoblin]

A simple oatmeal with some fruit, I felt too lazy for anything complicated or (god forbid) my next experiment.

[Gus_Smedstad]

I wasn’t talking about induction stoves at all, but glass-ceramic stoves with either electrical heating elements

Solid surface burners are still resistance burners. Those are easier to clean, but not really any different from coil-type burners in terms of cooking or efficiency. Whatever you’re heating still has to be in contact with the heating element, and efficiency doesn’t really enter into it when you’re converting electricity into heat. In almost any process, converting energy into something else (light, motion), the waste product is heat. If heat is your target, the only inefficiencies are in delivering the electricity to your cook top - once it’s there, the used energy is going into heat and a little bit of light.

Solid surface electric burners haven’t replaced coil heating elements, as you claimed. If I go to Sears’s web site and sort electric stoves by price, the first 60 hits all feature coil-type heating cooktops.

Halogen burners aren’t any more efficient that resistance burners, since the basic approach is the same - run electricity through a filament that gets hot because of its electrical resistance. The main difference being that there’s a lot more radiated heat than in solid-surface or coil heater. I’ve not used one, but I’d guess it’s closer to the gas-cooking experience.

[Jesus_Phish]

I live in the sticks and can’t get mains gas. I have an electric oven but it has a gas hob/cooktop fueled by propane because there’s no way I’m cooking on an electric hob, especially given the amount of wok-based cooking I do.

Oddly, I hadn’t considered how an electric oven would be less efficient than a gas one, but that does make sense. Oh well, it does a better job with my cakes than the crappy gas oven in my previous place, at least.

My folks one wasn’t run off some main gas line. They’d buy gas canisters which we stored behind the house and ran a connection to. Canisters got recycled, when we finished one off there was a corner shop in our estate that we could trade it in for a new one.

[Skalpadda]

Solid surface burners are still resistance burners. Those are easier to clean, but not really any different from coil-type burners in terms of cooking or efficiency. Whatever you’re heating still has to be in contact with the heating element, and efficiency doesn’t really enter into it when you’re converting electricity into heat. In almost any process, converting energy into something else (light, motion), the waste product is heat. If heat is your target, the only inefficiencies are in delivering the electricity to your cook top - once it’s there, the used energy is going into heat and a little bit of light.

Solid surface electric burners haven’t replaced coil heating elements, as you claimed. If I go to Sears’s web site and sort electric stoves by price, the first 60 hits all feature coil-type heating cooktops.

Halogen burners aren’t any more efficient that resistance burners, since the basic approach is the same - run electricity through a filament that gets hot because of its electrical resistance. The main difference being that there’s a lot more radiated heat than in solid-surface or coil heater. I’ve not used one, but I’d guess it’s closer to the gas-cooking experience.

Efficiency in the case of stoves is mostly about not losing heat towards contact or secondary radiation to things other than whatever it is you want to heat. The point of glass-ceramic is that the surface doesn’t absorb heat radiation directly itself, which means that with an insulated heating element almost all of the work (wattage) of your heating element goes to whatever you put on it, rather than other surfaces or radiating into the air.

Since the glass-ceramic surface you put your cookware on doesn’t absorb heat directly from the element (it does absorb contact heat from the cookware and the air), very little heat gets conducted away from where you want it, and if you use cookware with an appropriate sized pot or pan almost no heat is wasted on heating the surrounding air before going into your cooking vessel.

I drew a shitty picture to illustrate:

Induction cook-tops also use glass-ceramic covers since they don’t conduct heat out from the contact point with the pot or pan (cooler surrounding surface is safer and less messy if you spill), but of course they bypass most of the heat loss by generating heat directly in the cooking vessel.

Again, I can’t speak for the US, since I don’t live there.