The oven on my DCS all gas range has a 200 setting and a "Warm" setting below that. The cooktop burners are dual stacked and have an incredible simmer. The oven is convection. Mine has a self-cleaning oven but they make a less expensive model without it.

I have a 10 year old model with 4 16K burners and 1 17.5K burner. I believe a the current model has a couple of smaller burners. I have no idea of current pricing.

I have a 48 inch Bluestar range that I am absolutely delighted with. It goes as low as 150. Slow cooked beef and chicken at 200 is delicious. It is not self clean, but have found I do not miss that option at all. After a year and a half of heavy use, my ovens are still clean and I haven't had to clean them yet, but I am very careful to not make a mess.

It is not in your price range though....it wasn't in ours either, but we sacrificed some other things in our lives and were able to make it work. We are glad we did.

If you want to go low and slow the best way is Sous Vide - you can cook at any temp you want from ambient to boiling. Check out the info on ChefSteps.com to get an understanding of what Sous Vide is.

Induction cook tops will give you much better effective BTU than gas. Read http://theinductionsite.com/how-induction-works.shtml to understand the why. A 1.8Kw induction burner (110v) will give you over 12k BTU while a 3.7Kw (220v) will give you over 26k BTU - this is well in the range of true professional kitchen ranges.

It's possible that there may still be some old-style Wolf's out there at substantially discounted prices. Several GW members have found them in the 3,200 range (including the riser which is ordered separately), but that is somewhat above your limit. In all my searching, I only found the Berta and the NXR to be in your price range.

thanks all for your replies, its seems the manufacturers dont list oven temperature ranges. hopefully theres some others that might have the range reccomendation for me :(

i know the Bertazonni lowest setting is 280... have no info on the NXR.

hows about the Veronas?

This post was edited by Wingw on Fri, Apr 5, 13 at 12:41

Well, funny you should ask because I just discovered that the NXR oven can maintain a steady heat as low as 135F.

The lowest marking for the NXR's oven dial is 150F but it operates below that. Last September, GWbasic ran a test where he was running his NXR oven at 140F. Here's the link with his post and pictures.

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0900375212746.html

The other day, I decided to see if I could use the oven to make yogurt which requires a steady temp around 110F for four or more hours. I was able to get my NXR's oven to hold a steady 135F for three hours. Because it seemed like a stupid pet trick, I quit at that point. Maybe there would be a sous vide recipe or dehydrating process where that temp could be useful?.

That temp is too warm for yogurt and bread proofing. I can get the oven to hold around 95F to 100F by turning on the oven lights. If I put a pan of hot water in the oven with the bread, I can get it to hold about 110F for a little over an hour and a half, but then the temp slowly declines to the 100F range.

Anyway, I've used my NXR oven for extended simmering at 170F and it has had no trouble holding even temps at 200F for slow-cooking/braising tough cuts of beef and pork. I've also done the old Cook's Illustrated "low and slow" roast beef, again with no trouble holding a steady 200F. [EDITED TO ADD: Point of clarification. I just realized that some folks somteimes refer to a "range" as an "oven" and those folks might think I was referring to simmering and braising on the stove top. However, I'm talking about doing these things in the actual oven here, not the stovetop.]

In doing these things, I've verified the oven temp by cross checking with a dial-type oven thermomter and a remote digital probe type.

Is that the kind of info you are looking for?

This post was edited by JWVideo on Sat, Apr 6, 13 at 12:31

There is a cheaper Bluestar, called the RCS model.. probably around $2,700. But I don't know for sure.

BlueStar 30" RCS is available from CostcoCanada for $2399 ($CN), but you have to take delivery in Canada to buy it. Anywhere else, Blue Star RCS stoves run upwards of $3500 ($US/CN) AFAIK. SOmetimes one turns up on eBay or CraigsList for less.

This post was edited by JWVideo on Sat, Apr 6, 13 at 1:53

The NXR fits all your criteria.

I have used ours to make dried tomatoes a few times, I set it to about 140 degrees and turn on the convection fan.
Works great to dehydrate tomatoes.

All 4 burners are both 15K BTU and ultra low simmer.

For $2000 or less you wont find a better range.