Is the range using propane gas, if yes you might need an adjustment, if no which burner are you using for the rice. American uses 17,000 btu's on some and 13,000, & 9000 on others.

guadalupe, thanks for the response. I just realized that I started on the highest burner 17,000. I just assumed because I was using a large pan, I needed to put the pan on a large burner. That is what I did with my electric stove. I moved the rice to the 9,000 burner and simmered, but it still boiled. It cooked the rice faster and it turned out good for my first time using gas. I simmer rice and beans alot. Any tricks to using gas is appreciated. Thanks

A couple of suggestions. Some ranges, notably Bluestar, allow adjustment of the low setting via a screw driver adjustment accessed by removing the burner knob and inserting a very small screw driver down the gas valve stem to set the flame level. Investigate if American has a similar feature.

Second buy a "flame tamer" which is a cast iron or aluminum disk that sits on top of the burner grate and spreads the simmer flame over a wider area so you don't get a lot of heat concentrated in a ring-shaped area on the bottom of the pot. Trick to using one is to put the tamer on the simmer burner and start heating a good while before you need it (10 minutes or so.) It takes a while to heat the disk up and if you wait to put it on the burner when you need to move to simmer your pot will cool down quite a bit while the disk heats up. Better to have it hot and ready to go. These will give you a much more widely dispersed heating zone that will simmer very low and will avoid burned on areas. The only downside is you have to run the burner a little higher than the lowest setting and thus use a little more gas since you are indirectly heating the pot. You can find these gadgets on line for about $10-15 as I remember.

Last suggestion is to get yourself a nice new set of All-Clad cookware which dissipates heat like a champ. But the flame tamer is a little more affordable.

I have a 36" American range since December. It's great but I do find the simmer is higher than I'd like. I was used to an old gas range that had much less power overall and a very low simmer. I had my American range checked to see if it could be adjusted lower but it doesn't have the adjustable screw that capecodcook was mentioning. I have used the simmer plate sometimes or just moved the pot off center as suggested, both of those methods work. It sometimes works to turn the knob back clockwise after lighting to get a lower flame, but often it starts to click if you get too low.

mcferg626 i used your suggestion from the other post turning the knob back and it worked good for me on my 48".
thanks for that.
john